Those of you supporting Sanders should be wanting all the other candidates to stay in the race as long as possible. He only looks strong because of the way the field is split. (Until he becomes strong, ala Trump in 2016.) If all eight candidates go into Super Tuesday next week, Sanders will likely emerge with 25~30% of the vote and 65+/-% of the delegates thanks to the 15% threshold rule for earning delegates.
If only Sanders, Biden and Bloomberg were to go into Super Tuesday, the result would look something more like this:
Bloomberg isn’t wrong about who should be dropping out. The problem, a repeat of the Republicans in 2016, is they are all closely bunched enough together that each has a story for why it should be the other candidates dropping out. The cold equation, however, is Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar have no path to the nomination outside of a brokered convention. (And Steyer and Gabbard are nothing more than vanity candidates.) A brokered convention will only not erupt into absolute chaos if it is candidates more or less close in delegate counts. If it’s Sanders with 40+% of the delegates and everyone else under 20%, then there’s no way the Democratic Party gets away with trying to give it to anyone but Sanders.
Since I did this analysis, I’ve had an additional thought that if Biden loses South Carolina, then the key predicate of his candidacy — that he has the support of the African American community — will have proved to not be true. In that case, he should be the one dropping out. And then the proverbial chips fall where they may.
I will be pleasantly surprised if any of the candidates drop out after South Carolina and give the moderate cause a better chance, but I am more mentally preparing myself for Sanders to be our nominee. In that case, the youth better not forget where the polling stations are come Election Day.
