Reason Roundup

Salty Sanders Supporters Say They Won't Settle For Biden

Plus: Yang endorses Biden, Klobuchar's antitrust bill, and more...

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Did Democratic voters hand Donald Trump the election yesterday? The mood on the left following former Vice President Joe Biden's besting of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) in Tuesday's primaries is one of defiance and scorn about the way the most establishment candidate pretty much always wins in Democratic Party politics. Many are rejecting the idea that it's now their duty to vote for Biden and are pledging not to back Biden should he get the party's nomination, which now seems very likely.

"We don't want to be overly dramatic, but it does seem as if the writing is on the wall for Sanders's campaign after tonight," wrote Sarah Frostenson at FiveThirtyEight shortly after midnight. "And that's because if he was going to mount a comeback, he needed to start tonight. Some of the most favorable states for Sanders left on the primary calendar voted tonight, which means things moving forward are only going to get harder, not easier."

Biden won in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, and Missouri yesterday, while Sanders won in North Dakota. Washington state has still not been called.

With 1,991 Democratic Party delegates declared overall as of 9:30 a.m. this morning, Biden has 846 and Sanders 683, according to the Associated Press. (Going into Tuesday's elections it was 664-573.) When all delegates from yesterday's contests are awarded, 53 percent will still be in play. The math might not be strictly stacked against Sanders yet; the political consensus among journalists, pundits, and political representatives rapidly is. But Sanders supporters seem to be rejecting the idea that this means they must fall in line…

For some segments of Democratic punditocracy, this has only provoked more attempts to shame their more radical elements into supporting Biden:

But there's a (relatively) new twist to this old story: allegations that the drama is all just a product of Russian bots!

People have also been casting blame on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) for Sanders' loss…

… something that Trump, too, has gotten in on:

Interestingly, both Trumpian Republicans and left-leaning Democrats have converged on the idea that Sanders' loss yesterday was Trump 2020's gain.


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