Biden set to move closer to prize
The four populous states holding primaries Tuesday could give former vice-president Joe Biden an insurmountable advantage over Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic US presidential nomination.
Voters in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio will go to the polls Tuesday in a nation increasingly under restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden holds an 889-739 lead in pledged delegates, according to realclearpolitics.com. There are 577 pledged delegates in play on Tuesday, with the 219 in Florida the top prize. Illinois has 155 available, followed by Ohio (136) and Arizona (67).
In Democratic presidential primaries, pledged delegates are awarded proportionally, not winner-take-all. However, in order to get any delegates, a candidate must win at least 15 percent of a state's votes.
For example, Biden and Sanders each have 39 delegates from Washington state's primary last week. Eleven delegates have yet to be awarded in the state, where Sanders did not perform as well as expected.
Biden registered a steady performance against Sanders in their debate Sunday. While Sanders, a US senator from Vermont, scored some points in bringing up past positions by Biden, such as alleged support for a proposal to reduce Social Security benefits, he didn't appear to land any blows that could change the trajectory of the campaign.
Biden, 77, probably had his best debate performance so far, and it came at the most opportune time, during a one-on-one debate. He also grabbed headlines by pledging that he would pick a woman to be his running mate, and he didn't make any prominent gaffes that could inspire social media memes.
US Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, whose endorsement boosted Biden in the South Carolina primary Feb 29, reviving a moribund campaign and sending him on a primary hot streak, said Barack Obama's former vice-president should choose an African American woman as his running mate.
Two black women, US Senator Kamala Harris of California, and Stacey Abrams, a former candidate for governor of Georgia, have been mentioned as possible V-P candidates.
Other names mentioned were US Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, also a former presidential candidate, whose endorsement of Biden helped him win that state's primary, and another former candidate, US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, whose progressive stances could attract Sanders voters, some of whom have threatened to vote for Trump or sit home on Election Day.
Both US senators from New Hampshire — Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan — also have been mentioned, according to The New York Times.
The debate on CNN was held in Washington without an audience in light of the coronavirus outbreak.
Sanders, 78, stuck to his signature progressive issues of Medicare for All, income inequality and slamming "billionaires", but didn't expound on them in any game-changing way.
In fact, Biden landed a jab when he noted that Italy, one of the countries worst-hit by the coronavirus, has a "single-payer" healthcare system.
"People are looking for results, not a revolution," Biden said.
While Biden has positioned himself as a sensible centrist compared with Sanders, he has taken some positions that place him markedly to the left of Trump.
"He effectively called for open borders — no deportations," Scott Jennings, a former political aide in the George W. Bush administration, told Christopher Cadelago of politico.com, also noting that Biden "has already raised his hand" to give free healthcare to people in the US illegally.
"So, at the same time he's called for a ban on fracking, he's opening up America to a flood of illegal immigration," Jennings said. "I'm sure this will fly in Pennsylvania and the rest of the upper Midwest."
Biden is forecast to move closer Tuesday to the total 1,991 pledged delegates needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention July 13-16 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Biden has a 23 percent lead over Sanders in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
