Trump vs Biden (not Sanders) is the real contrast that counts Super Tuesday (opinion)

And at a time when the key criteria for important government positions, like that of the director of national intelligence, seem to be unquestionable loyalty to Trump, a candidate who embodies experience with a record of putting the country above self-interest would be a huge relief for many Americans. .

With Sanders and Biden, the two candidates most likely to recruit delegates on Super Tuesday, we will get a glimpse of who is considered the strongest alternative to Trump.

Over the past 24 hours, we have seen the central lane of the Democratic field clear up considerably with Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, two proud moderates from the Midwest, bowing and endorsing Biden.

It was the downstream effect of Biden's erupting victory in South Carolina that relaunched his campaign as Lazarus.

To put this in perspective, Biden won more votes in South Carolina than Sanders won in the first three states combined.

Not only was South Carolina much more diverse than Iowa or New Hampshire, but it was also the most representative of the entire Democratic Party.

In terms of ideology, 19% of primary voters in SC described themselves as very liberal, 30% as somewhat liberal, 41% are moderate and 9% say they are conservative.

African Americans made up the majority of South Carolina's primary electorate, and Biden won 61% of black votes – in part thanks to the decisive approval of representative Jim Clyburn – while Sanders didn’t ; held only 17%.

But Biden has cleaned up almost all of the demographics – winning over men and women, veterans and independents as well as new voters. Biden won urban, suburban and rural voters. While Sanders was transporting voters under the age of 30, people who said they never attended church and white men who did not graduate from college (white women without a university degree opted for Biden).

Now the momentum may have returned to Biden – which conducted most of the polls throughout 2019 – but it only had 72 hours to translate that energy into Super Tuesday, when around a third of all the democratic delegates will be decided.

X factors abound. Super Tuesday will be the first time we see Mike Bloomberg on the ballot, testing the power of the hundreds of millions of dollars he has already spent as well as campaigning in states that the other candidates essentially ignored then that they were struggling to succeed in the first four states.

Bernie will benefit from his favorite status which will undoubtedly give him a boost at the start of the vote. But we will see if Biden's strong performance among African-Americans in South Carolina will increase his chances in the Southern States to vote on Super Tuesday, especially in Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia – where Biden recently received approval from Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, former Governor Terry McAuliffe and former Republican Senator John Warner.

As we review total Super votes on Tuesday later this week – including California and Texas – it's worth asking which candidate is most likely to wear purple and even red states to the market. 39; fall and not only in a polarized Democratic primary.

But back to this basic question of contrast in terms of character and experience.

The 1988 campaign was famous by Richard Ben Cramer in a classic volume titled "What It Takes". The chapters on Biden show a middle-class child of Scranton with a stutter that was "hard on the neck". He was flawed but fearless and fought for what he thought was right. He faced a two-decade-old Democratic candidate in a race that no one thought he could win. Shortly after, he lost his first wife and unborn daughter in a car accident that seriously injured his sons. But he went through the pain and deepened his faith.

In the Senate, he was a JFK Democrat wary of extremes and elites who could drive middle-class and blue-collar workers away from a compassionate view of government that has helped everyone move forward in life. He believed that vested interests – to use Cramer's words, "had become so attached to their old" solutions "programs that they made it happen, instead of equality in education. They let food stamp fraud become the problem, instead of food for the hungry. "

When the 1988 campaign broke out, Cramer described a Joe Biden motivated by the belief that people did not want to return to the "fiction of an America that was fair and white, and perfectly authoritarian in its prejudices ( and) political … If Biden was right, what the country wanted was a more perfect realization of its ancient ideals: Freedom, Justice, Compassion. "

In the deeply polarized America of 2020, these old school ideals – just like the personal virtues of decency, empathy and experience – could provide the most compelling contrast to the Trump's presidency. It could attract a broad coalition – including swing voters in the swing states – and it could even help start the daunting task of reunifying the nation.