For a few weeks, it seemed as though Bernie Sanders was really going to win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. He won the most votes in all three of the first states, and was leading national polls. Opinion surveys showed that he was broadly popular among the Democratic electorate, and majorities of primary voters supported his signature ideas like Medicare-for-all.But in a space of about three days, it all went sideways. Joe Biden won a smashing victory in South Carolina, all the other moderate candidates dropped out and endorsed him, and he went on to win convincingly across most Super Tuesday states. Sanders was set far back in the delegate race, and now, a little over a month later, he is suspending his campaign. The main reason he is not going all the way to the convention is surely the coronavirus pandemic, but the race was already effectively over anyway.So what happened? A full campaign postmortem will of course have to wait for more detailed investigations and reporting...
