The application of a popular front strategy isn’t reducible to simply a commitment to beat Trump. That’s a good start, but not enough. It also entails a readiness to build an extensive set of political and social alliances that while not precluding struggle within the front/coalition, accents broad people’s unity against Trump in the first place. And certainly not a war against the “Democratic Party establishment” (reminds me of the “sixties”).

I can hear a Bernie supporter saying, “But they attack us.” I have no doubt about that, but the left, again because of the existential stakes of this election, should act like the grown up in the room. So far neither Bernie nor many of his supporters have conducted themselves in that manner. It’s not to late. Much hangs on it, including the success of Bernie’s campaign for the Democratic Party nomination.

First of all, Joe Biden was never my first choice; Elizabeth Warren was. But I don’t subscribe to the view that he can’t beat Trump. This claim rests more on ideological disposition and defeatism than facts on the ground. Indeed, facts on the ground, namely the recent primaries, tell a very different story. Turnout for Biden has been higher than expected, while Bernie voters have under performed.

Moreover, the coalition supporting Biden is more expansive than the coalition supporting Bernie. A moment like this begs for sober calculation, not the rage of a lover spurned and wishful thinking.

Lenin, yes the guy who lead the Russian revolution a century ago, once wrote that “defeated armies learn well.” Perhaps he’s right about armies, but I’m reluctant to think his observation applies to political and social movements as well. Too many of the latter, instead of learning from defeat, double down on their erroneous — magical — thinking. We see it today.

I’ve heard in recent days that African American voters who support Biden and not Bernie, are “pragmatic” and in the South, even “conservative.” Fear is what motivated them. This really misses the mark. First of all, who isn’t fearful of a second Trump term? But more to the point, Black voters are the most politically astute and strategically sophisticated component of the electorate. This has been the case for a long time. And their votes in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday demonstrate this fact. In their calculus, I would argue, Joe Biden was considered the candidate best able to assemble the kind of expansive election coalition that is capable of defeating Trump and regaining control of the Senate, while retaining a Democratic majority in the House. It looks like in the wake of Super Tuesday that they are right. In the coming weeks we will find out for sure. 

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.