Daniel DePetris

Mathematically speaking, Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign is as dead as disco. After a streak of victories in big, delegate-rich states on and after Super Tuesday, Joe Biden is leading Sanders by 273 delegates. For Sanders to pull off a political miracle, he would need to win 64.2 per cent of the remaining delegates over the next three months, something nobody but the most rabid Bernie supporter envisions the Vermont senator doing.  Some of the largest states left to vote – Georgia, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York – aren’t seen as particularly ripe fruit for the Sanders campaign to pluck.

As tens of millions of Americans remain stuck at home in self-isolation, the country's politicians are busy sniping at each other over who is at fault for a epidemic that Dr. Anthony Fauci – Trump's coronavirus expert – predicts could kill up to 200,000 Americans. It’s a story far more interesting and potentially calamitous than the normal tale of Republicans and Democrats pointing fingers at one another (although there is plenty of that too). America’s federalised system of government is at war with itself. Take President Trump, the man at the very top of the system. Ducking responsibility when something goes wrong and hogging all the credit when everything goes right is standard operating procedure for this president.

What does a leading U.S. presidential candidate do when a deadly and highly contagious virus is spreading throughout the mainland United States and hogging all of the news coverage? Well, build an in-home studio in your basement, of course. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is confronting a conundrum most candidates who run for high office don’t have to deal with. In normal times, candidates lose media coverage when they tumble in the polls, run out of money, or fail to excite voters (and reporters) on the stump. That’s an unfortunate part of the business, but it’s something candidates and their advisers anticipate and even control. If a candidate has money to slosh around, he can air more commercials to keep his face in the minds of voters.

If President Donald Trump at first dismissed coronavirus as a menacing-sounding version of the sniffles, he is certainly taking the virus seriously now. One in ten coronavirus victims are in the United States and it’s clear the fallout from the virus is going to get much worse before it gets better.  ‘I want America to understand: this week, it's going to get bad,’ the US surgeon general Dr Jerome Adams has said. Trump, who cares deeply about his legacy in US history as much as he cares about his public image, continues to watch as Wall Street falls down like a ton of bricks and as more depressing market indicators are published by America’s biggest financial firms. Investors appear unimpressed with the US coronavirus stimulus package.

Ever since Super Tuesday, when Joe Biden pulled off upset wins in Texas, Massachusetts, and Minnesota on his way to ten state-wide wins, the tables have turned. It is now Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner only a few weeks ago, who needs a victory to breath new life into his campaign. The best, and likely only, shot for gaining back momentum in the race: grabbing Michigan. Sanders has some experience shocking the political world with upset political wins. During his first presidential campaign against Democratic establishment favourite Hillary Clinton, the white-haired populist with the Brooklyn accent swept Michigan’s rural counties and did well enough in the suburbs to claim the state by just 1.5 per centage points.

It was a long and winding rollercoaster ride for Elizabeth Warren on the presidential campaign trail. And when that ride ended, everybody who planted their feet back on earth was a little nauseous. Warren, the two-term senator from Massachusetts and anti-bank regulator with a work ethic and professor’s aura, reassessed the state of her campaign today and determined that it was time to get out of the race with dignity. Warren’s team expected to finish in second place in a number of states on ‘Super Tuesday’, which would have given her an excuse to stay in the race ­– as she increased her delegate count.

Joe Biden desperately needed a win in South Carolina. His poor performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, and sub-par showing in Nevada, meant that nothing short of a blowout win in the Palmetto State would suffice for the former vice president. He poured his heart and soul into the state, pulling off the ol’ Joe routine to a tee. It worked better than Biden himself could have imagined. Before a single ballot was counted, the networks called South Carolina for Biden. You may wonder why the election analysts were so confident? Two words: exit polls. Biden dominated with every grouping with the exception of voters under the age of 30 and Americans who were devoutly secular. South Carolinians aged 65 and older went for Biden by 44 points.

Bernie Sanders is a phenomenon in much the same way as Donald Trump was a phenomenon in 2016. His supporters worship him. His enemies detest him. And the reporters covering him are unsure what to make of his rise and appeal. Like Trump’s presidential candidacy four years ago, Sanders’ candidacy is riding on the back of extreme discontent in America. There are millions of Americans working longer hours for stagnant wages and spending a good chunk of what they do take in on health insurance premiums, rent, mortgage payments and loan payoffs. There is a pervasive disgust about the rich sending their money to tax havens while the average schlub is forking over cash to Uncle Sam.

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address began with a snub to Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she extended her hand across the dais for the customary greeting. It ended with a visibly annoyed Pelosi ripping the copy of her speech and slamming it down on the table. And those were the boring parts of the event. Trump, the reality television expert, turned the hour-and-a-half long address into, well, a reality show. He gave a young schoolgirl a scholarship, surprised conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh with the presidential medal of freedom, and shocked a wife and her two children when her military-clad husband emerged from the darkness and hugged her warmly after getting back from his last deployment.

Voters in Iowa lined up in high-school gymnasiums across the state last night to prepare for a long few hours of caucusing. But nobody predicted the process would stretch late into the night without a single vote having been certified by the Iowa Democratic party. By midnight, the rival campaigns were flummoxed, unable to officially declare victory but nonetheless determined to spin the night in glowing terms. Caucuses can be chaotic. But the events last night were nothing short of bedlam. Rumour has it that national frontrunner Joe Biden had a terrible showing, but that didn’t stop the former vice president from rallying the troops and pretending everything was OK. Mayor Pete Buttigieg declared himself the winner, a pronouncement that came as news to every other candidate.