To say that”centrists” at the top of the Democratic Party, as I’ve heard and read, reasserted themselves on Super Tuesday misses the most salient point of yesterday’s primaries. Which is that a broadly based and diverse voting coalition with little help from the “centrists” in the DNC or anywhere else took the bull by the horns and catapulted Joe Biden to the front of the presidential primary.
This mega wave in Joe Biden’s favor, however, didn’t begin yesterday, but a few days earlier in South Carolina where Black voters cast their carefully and strategically considered votes for Joe Biden in record numbers.
Their action, as it turned out, was both inspiration for and prelude to other voters, millions of them in fact, from Virginia to North Carolina, from Texas to California and from places in between doing the same yesterday. And in doing so to assert their will and control over the presidential primary. No one expected this voter surge. And it surely wasn’t the brainchild of the leaders of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Its genesis lies elsewhere, that is, in the desires, intelligence, and actions of ordinary people to put their stamp on the presidential primary by selecting a candidate who they think can defeat Trump and, in doing so, reclaim our democracy and country.
Not to see this, not to shine a light on this, not to make this democratic eruption of people across the country the main story is, at best, to miss the forest for the trees. At worst, well I won’t go there.