Biden's Blowout Win in South Carolina: Can a Cadaver Get a Bounce?

Biden notched a commanding, campaign-saving win yesterday in South Carolina, beating Bernie Sanders by 30 points. The corporate press is going to boom Biden's first-ever win in a presidential primary as proof of life going into Super Tuesday and an omen that the former VP will reclaim his front-runner status in the national polls.

Unfortunately for Biden and Democratic superdelegates, such is not the case. Nate Silver, in rattling off the possible scenarios post-Palmetto State, mentions that Biden's big win might be merely a "dead cat bounce": "Hypothesis No. 1: This was a “dead cat bounce” for Biden because voters were sympathetic to him in one of his best states. It may have been a one-off occurrence."

That's my reading, a reading backed up, believe it or not, by the anti-Sanders New York Times (see "Joe Biden Had a Big Night. He Needs Another in 72 Hours." by Matt Flegenheimer and Katie Glueck). Flegenheimer and Glueck make the obvious point, a point that elections guru Nate Silver inexplicably avoids, that, unlike billionaire Tom Steyer, billionaire Mike Bloomberg is not dropping out before Super Tuesday, and it's Bloomberg's presence on the ballot in Super Tuesday Dixie states like Alabama, where the media mogul has acquired the endorsement of the Alabama Democratic Caucus, that will block a repeat of Biden's South Carolina showing:

Top Democratic officials in key battleground states that go to the polls Tuesday, from Alabama to Texas, have said that Mr. Bloomberg poses an acute threat to Mr. Biden, eating into his standing with moderate voters. It does not help that early voting has already been underway in many states against the backdrop of Mr. Biden’s bleak finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

So, yes, South Carolina was a "dead cat bounce" for the cadaverous candidate Biden. Bloomberg's colossal campaign spending -- I received two pieces of literature in my mailbox Friday from Bloomberg 2020 (Washington's presidential primary election is March 10), which I guess is part of a saturation mailing to all four-for-four voters in the state -- in Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere on Super Tuesday will act as a firewall to any national bounce that Biden might receive for his blowout South Carolina victory.

It is a delicious irony that Bloomberg's entire strategy of avoiding the first four boutique contests in order to dominate Super Tuesday with enormous ad buys will end up benefiting Bernie, the democratic socialist, rather than saving the fraudulent centrism that most voters despise. Just as Bloomberg buying his way into the presidential debates lethally backfired, so too now it appears that his plutocratic "outside-the-box" primary strategy will backfire as well.

Super Tuesday for decades has been the way in which the Democratic National Committee guaranteed that the most corrupt, machine-driven bloc of votes decided the presidential nominee; it was the corporate firewall of Dixiecrat states that would vote Republican in the general.

But Super Tuesday is no longer just the "Southern Primary." Big important progressive Democratic states vote on Super Tuesday as well -- California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota. Sanders will do well if not win all of these states outright. Biden and Bloomberg won't even get close.

The corporate masterclass and the mainstream media circled the wagons after Nevada. Fidel Castro was disinterred from his crypt; Putin's Oz-like visage was once again conjured. But the fundamentals of the primary remain unchanged. Bernie's campaign is the only one that is a popular movement; the rest are concatenations of lobbyists, party apparatchiks, big-dollar donors, with a grassroots sprinkle here and there.

Biden is not a viable nominee.