AMERICAN PRECEDENT

A few days ago, Twitter began tagging publications containing photos, videos or audio that were “substantially altered or fabricated” as ‘manipulated tweets’. The first such tweet was the one from the U.S. President Donald Trump. In his video tweet, former Vice President Joe Biden says the following as part of his election campaign for presidency: “We cannot win this re-election — excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump.” It was a clear demonstration of the lack of cognitive abilities of the Democrat politician. Trump said mockingly that Biden "does not know where he is and what he is doing". President’s personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani also commented that Biden has a dementia.

It seems that in the video Biden really makes a strange statement. But there is one problem that Twitter pointed out - his statement is cropped so as to put Biden in a stupid position. In reality, Biden said the following: "We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad."

Unexpected victory

Primaries (internal party elections) of the Democratic Party began on February 3 to nominate the rival of Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential elections.

For quite a long time, since the Democrats began to identify candidates for primaries at the beginning of 2019, the main contender for victory was considered to be the representative of the centrist, moderately liberal wing of the party, Joe Biden. Trump also considered him the most serious rival and tried to discredit his image by all means. Since the spring of 2019, the leadership of Ukraine began to put forward insistent demands to initiate criminal proceedings against the private gas production company Burisma for paying bribes under the guise of salary payments to the former U.S. Vice President through his son Hunter Biden.

Although there is no clear evidence of corruption and the criminal case against Burisma has not been opened, Biden’s popularity, according to numerous surveys, began to decline markedly. Moreover, in the first primaries in three states, the former vice president suffered a crushing defeat, becoming the fifth after the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, mayor of the small town of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, and senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar.

All polls pointed to the win of Bernie Sanders. All indicators said that his nomination as a presidential candidate is inevitable. His success was to be confirmed on March 3, after the Super Tuesday primaries held in 14 states simultaneously.

But the unexpected happened. It was the first time in the American political history that a candidate who lost primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada could defeat opponents in such a deafening way in one day, winning in 10 states out of 14 and becoming a leader in the nomination.

Further events indicate that the Democrats did not repeat the mistake that the Republicans made in 2016. Then they did not dropped out of the race, which split the votes and, ultimately, helped Trump win the nomination. Democrats took a different path. They suppressed their own ambitions, withdrew from the election, and united around Biden’s candidacy. Moreover, this was done not only by representatives of the centrist bloc - Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who spent $500 million to get elected) and Congressman Beto O'Rourke, but also the senator from California, Kamala Harris. Her left-liberal election platform was close in spirit to the position of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Moreover, in the first stages of the campaign, Harris acted as the most fierce critic of Biden.

Stop Trump!

Now there are two candidates left—Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, except for stubborn Tulsi Gabbard, who, gaining less than one percent of the votes in each state, has no chance of success, but has not yet dropped out.

Democrat voters, many of whom said they were primarily motivated by a desire to choose a candidate who could reunite the country, were more impressed by Biden’s centrist position, rather than the left-wing radical Sanders. 80% of respondents believe in Biden’s victory over Trump, and only 61% support the senator from Vermont.

The Sanders electorate is mostly young people under the age of 31, who are impressed by his promises of radical reforms. Biden is supported by Americans of middle and older ages, African-American voters and residents of suburban areas with higher education who do not request strong reforms, but hope that Biden will be able to stop Trump.

Many of Biden's supporters are independent or moderate Republicans who have supported candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney in the past. They do not want to re-elect Donald Trump and are ready to switch sides to vote for a moderate democrat.

These voters can support Democrats in 14 so-called ‘swing’ states (where no party has an advantage), such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona or North Carolina, in the general election. Their numerical strength was fully demonstrated on March 3 in Virginia and Texas, where the voter turnout was 74 and 87% higher than four years ago (anyone can participate in the primaries, not just a registered democrat). In general, in Iowa, the turnout of Democratic voters was lower than in 2016, but rose sharply (by 38%) in Dallas County, which has always been considered pro-Republican. And all of them overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden.

Polls showed that these voters do not want the socialist revolution that Sanders promises, but simply a democrat who would end the current chaos and split of the country. For example, Michael Taylor, Republican Mayor of Sterling Heights, MI, who voted for Trump in 2016, told The Chicago Tribune that he feels that “Biden is a candidate that can unite all Democrats” and “appeal to moderates and Republicans like me who don’t want to see Trump for another four years.”

After another defeat on March 10 at the primaries in six cities, Sanders was forced to agree that he was losing to Biden precisely in terms of competitiveness with Trump.

“A lot of people tell me that they like my platform, but they are going to vote for Joe Biden, because they think that Joe is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump,” Sanders admitted. “It is needless to say that I strongly disagree with this statement, but this is what millions of Democrats and independent citizens believe today.”

Time bomb

Some political analysts in the United States believe that Bernie Sanders is a time bomb for the Democrats, which, with both victory and defeat in the democratic primaries, reduces the Democrats' ability to defeat Trump in November.

Historically, the rivals, despite all the emotions of the election campaign in the primaries, shook hands, and the losing side did everything possible to unite the party around the winner. As soon as the struggle was over, the loser understood that now it was necessary to compete for the interests of the political party, not for his own.

Hillary Clinton, having lost to Barack Obama in 2008, actively involved the entire Clinton political apparatus to support Obama in the elections. In 2016, Bernie Sanders did nothing to unite the party, to consolidate his supporters around Clinton. And the result was evident. According to Newsweek, 12% of Sanders' voters voted for Trump, 10% for another candidate (not Clinton), and about 5% did not vote at all. It was these voters who helped Trump defeat the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

If Biden wins, then many of Sanders’s supporters will not vote for him. According to surveys, approximately 20% of Sander’s supporters are willing to vote for Trump if Sanders is not a Democratic nominee.

Third participant of primaries

Democratic primaries will run until June. They can still have many unexpected twists. But with voting in states such as Florida and Georgia at the end of this month, the situation is likely to get worse for Sanders.

In addition, the outbreak of coronavirus led to the cancellation of all face-to-face meetings with voters, which for a populist, who, without a doubt, is Sanders, is similar to death. All that remains is communication through the TV screen or on the radio. But not everything is easy here too. Coronavirus hits the headlines of American media outlets everyday, and all other news is either related to it, or almost go unnoticed. The polls conducted by Edison Research showed that amidst the inaction of the current administration, the rapidly spreading virus helped to increase the attractiveness of former vice president Joe Biden among voters of both parties.

In order to be nominated as a presidential candidate from the Democrats at the national convention of the party, which will be held on July 13-16, the applicant must get the support of  1991 delegates. According to recent forecasts, by the end of the primaries, Biden and Sanders will have 1738 and 1363 delegates, respectively. There is no obvious favorite yet, which means that internal disputes and accusations can still take place.