And Then There Were Four

Within 24 hours of the Mayor’s demise, Amy calls it a day, too. The timing is surprising to say the least. Or not.

Both of the retiring hopefuls will endorse Uncle Joe tonight at a Texas rally for the moderate wing’s front runner. Klobuchar as recently as this weekend was crowing about how nobody thought she would ever get as far as Super Tuesday, and here on Monday they have been proven correct.

So what happened? Both Klobuchar and Buttigieg had the money to continue, at least until Wednesday. Both had mildly justifiable reasons for hope, though these windows seemed to be rapidly closing and would be dependent on some miraculous finale to keep them ajar. But who remembers a politician giving up while a tiny single-track path to the White House still existed? Nelson Rockefeller made a last gasp stance at the convention to try to block the path of Barry Goldwater, even though he got booed and chanted off the stage. Give up? Not until the final death knell.

But quit they did. Endorse Biden they will.

Entirely speculative, but I can’t see this happening any other way than a backroom deal. Biden, Klobuchar and Buttigieg all see Bernie as the path to four more years of Trump. Dropping out before Super Tuesday is a game changing event. Consolidating the moderate vote under Biden makes this a slug fest rather than a run-away Bernie freight train. All the polls that have come before have lost their validity as predictors of the future, and the prognosticators have free reign for 24 hours. Anything they come up with just might be true.

My theory will be validated or delegitamized if Biden wins and then announces his cabinet and VP picks. I would be shocked if these two were not part of the new inner circle that makes up the new administration. There is nothing illegal about all this. It happens in every campaign to a greater or lesser degree, but this feels more cynical than usual. This seems like another coordinated effort by the party to squeeze out the scary Sanders in spite of his popularity.

Should this go to a brokered convention and super delegates step in and annoint Biden, the party will probably irrevocably split. At a time that Democrats have the possibility of a strong ascendancy, of changing forty years of conservatism to a rising progressivism with real advances for the everyman of this country, the party risks all of that. As the Republicans implode under the weight of supporting a human calamity as president to the detriment of their reputations and integrity, will the Democrats once again find a way to squander that advantage?

For us progressives, this creates quite a quandry. Oh, not which way we will vote. That’s a given. We have the distasteful need to somehow keep Bloomberg in the race. Joe and Bloomberg are fighting for the same space, and no one really knows who’s winning, as Bloomberg’s candidacy has been largely virtual. He has been an advertisement that appears in your mailbox, your phone, your tablet or your television. His personal appearances in the debates have been hugely underwhelming, but the sheer mass of the rest of his media onslaught has had traction in the polling we have seen for Super Tuesday. It will syphon off some of Joe’s supporters, greasing Bernie’s wheels.

The missing link is Liz Warren. I expect her to be out by weeks end. Right now it appears she will not hold on to her home state of Massachusetts, and if you can’t win there, the rest is already written. This would be for the best, as she only serves now to split the Sanders vote that she can not hope to overcome. She is no dummy. She will see what needs to be done and do it and be a loyal soldier in the pursuit of the Bern.

So here we go. The clash of the titans. The “B” boys in a cage match. A week ago this seemed like it was over.

It’s not.