Since the last time this blog was updated, the race has narrowed down tremendously. With Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard announcing the suspension of her campaign this morning, the two remaining candidates in the Democratic Primary are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Gone are the days of a crowded, diverse field with multiple candidates vying for viability across the early primary contests. Indeed, since the surprising upset victories across the country on Super Tuesday, the Democratic primary has become a one-note race. Even though there are still thousands of delegates still up for grabs, the writing is on the wall: Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee and the former Vice President will be taking on President Donald J. Trump come November.
With the end of his 2020 bid in sight, all eyes are now on the next moves that Senator Bernie Sanders will take. After suffering three more devastating losses on Tuesday evening in Illinois, Arizona, and Florida, campaign manager Faiz Shakir for Sanders stated that the senator was now planning to “assess his campaign“. Earlier this week, Axios reported that the Sanders 2020 campaign suspended all Facebook advertising, a move that mirrors many previous candidates that soon dropped out. Amid cries from Democratic partisans to drop out for the sake of unity, many Sanders supporters have expressed discontent with the primary results and massive policy differences with the Biden campaign.
As Biden has shifted his attention towards the general election, Sanders has an important political calculus to make: how will he use the political capital he’s accumulated in the past years of campaigning to affect November? Already there are signs that Sanders is attempting to pull Biden leftward, and recent changes in Biden’s policy platform in regards to tuition-free universities and adopting Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy bill have shown that the former Vice President is shifting to the left. But with a raging pandemic drawing all the world’s attention, pressure is mounting for Bernie Sanders to once more bend the knee.