Joe Biden's Very Good Night

The candidate’s comeback defied expectations. But he still has a long way to go

- Joshua Green

Bill Clinton dubbed himself “The Comeback Kid” after experts wrote him off early in the 1992 Democratic primaries. After the Super Tuesday primaries on March 3, Joe Biden can lay claim to the nickname. Left for dead after dreadful finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former vice president came storming back to edge Bernie Sanders in the delegate lead and narrow the race for the Democratic nomination to a two-man affair. Appearing onstage in Los Angeles, Biden, always prone to overstatement, for once undersold the scale of his victory. “We are very much alive,” he declared.

The emergence of Biden and Sanders presents Democratic voters with a stark choice about how best to take on Donald Trump in the fall: Pick Biden and follow the moderate path that delivered Democrats huge suburban gains in 2018 and control of the House of Representatives —or tack left to embrace Sanders’s message of generational change.

For some Democrats, that quandary summons up memories of another recent presidential primary, one they’d like to forget. With the field narrowing to an establishment favorite and a liberal insurgent, some strategists fear the primary contest could soon mirror the contentious clash four years ago between Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

“What worries me is that we’re looking at a 2016 redux,” says Rebecca Katz, a progressive strategist, “where the nominee limped into Election Day and then lost to Donald Trump.”