Was losing IA/NH/NV so badly the best thing that could have happened to Joe?

[thesquanderer]

From the beginning of his campaign, he was expected to do great in South Carolina (his firewall, etc.). If he had come in as a respectable 2nd or 3rd in the earlier states, it would have been in line with expectations, and SC wouldn't have been such a game changer. But now he has this great comeback story that's gotten all the coverage at just the right time for Super Tuesday. I don't know how good today will be for him, but things may have worked out to give him his best shot. Because you can't have a dramatic comeback without having something to come back from.

[LongtimeAZDem]

1. Not a good thing or a bad thing, but completely expected, as many of us said months ago

[Watchfoxheadexplodes]

2. Caucus Smaucus

I just as soon ignore those.

[dumptrump1]

3. whatever happens today he will still be behind bernie in 2 more states.

Definitely not an advantage he would probably like to have.

[beachbumbob]

4. Those 3 states with caucuses and small voting pool is always made a big thing AND

biden knew the "ideologues" in control, he would not be "competitive" at a level of winning anything. It was the media who decided his campaign was dead and buried.

Joe always said wait till South Carolina. and BAM

[relayerbob]

5. The caucus system is pointless

And Biden didn't really really even try in NH.

In any case, those three accounted for about 2% of the vote. So, pretty much a TV spectacle, not much more

[totodeinhere]

6. I don't think that Joe thinks so since he campaigned in all of those states that he lost.

If losing them had been the best thing then why did he campaign in those states? Obviously he had wanted to win those states.

[thesquanderer]

7. I didn't say it was his strategy, just that it may have happened to have worked out well,

even if it wasn't the path he had intended.

[totodeinhere]

8. Point taken. n/t

[Moderateguy]

9. It was basically a perfect storm...

I think what spooked most people is how well Bernie did in Nevada. At that point it dawned on many people that Bernie could actually be the nominee and that if they wanted to beat Bernie in delegates they needed to consolidate around a single moderate candidate. Joe's excellent performance in SC made him that candidate. If he had under-performed in SC, people would have consolidated around another candidate. Rightly or wrongly lots of people believe that Sanders as a nominee would be a disaster waiting to happen and you can't be wishy-washy if you want to prevent that.

[C_U_L8R]

10. Could've been Rope A Dope of a sort.

Certainly there has to be some big strategic unifying to combat Sander's divide & conquer intentions. And you need to run through a few primaries to enact that kind of plan. I think there are some very smart folks working very hard in the Biden camp.

[sweetloukillbot]

11. It certainly shut down Ukraine talk as well

Of course that's starting to ramp up again now...

[Sloumeau]

12. If you look at the RealClearPolitics.com graph...

located here...

[link:https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html|]

You will see that starting around January 25, 2020, as Bloomberg rose, Biden fell. Bloomberg's spending of millions of dollars on well-produced, clever ads against Donald Trump caused millions of voters to switch from Biden to Bloomberg. As Biden began to fall in the polls, people all over the country, including states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, started looking elsewhere for a candidate. At about the same time, both Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg were slipping in certain polls, and many Warren and Buttigieg people seemed to go to Bernie Sanders. So, at about the same time, we had Bernie and Bloomberg rising while we had Warren, Buttigieg and Biden slipping in polls nationally.

However, the national polls did not measure what was happening in the individual states. Buttigieg built campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire based on scooping up delegates from rural districts and small towns. This is why he was able to do well in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Warren spent a lot of money building ground games in both Iowa and New Hampshire, so she did better than the national polls might indicate in those states. Amy Klobuchar spent a fair amount of time and money in Iowa and New Hampshire, so she did better than expected in those two states. Tom Steyer spent a lot of money in South Carolina, which allowed him to do better than there some of the other candidates.

However, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Steyer all basically did the same thing: they put all of their eggs in one or two baskets, which allowed them to overperform in 1 to 3 states, but which was not enough to sustain a campaign. This is why they all dropped out after South Carolina--because none of them had the funding, the national support, or the deep popularity with minority voters that would sustain them through an entire campaign. In a campaign with fewer people, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, or Steyer might have lasted a lot longer, but the same could be said for a whole lot of the 29 candidates in this race. If we have learned anything from this primary, we have learned this:

Twenty Nine candidates is unbelievably stupid. It means there are great candidates that we never get to know, and it means that tens of millions of dollars are spent on candidates that never get close to reaching the finish line. It also means that we end up with a completely unelectable candidate like Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist who used to support Communists, getting a plurality of votes in the first three contests, along with a plurality of delegates. It also means that people like Elizabeth Warren, who is way more electable than Bernie Sanders, ends up trailing him badly.

The DNC needs to take a good hard look at what went wrong in this primary, and it needs to do all it can to make sure that it never happens again.

[rogue emissary]

13. It helps him as it feeds the narrative the media wants to run with.

[DonaldsRump]

14. He was beaten up badly during the impeachment

He was mercilessly pounded every day by Rus-publicans. His decline in January and February had nothing to do with Bernie, and everything to do with impeachment.

They will do it again now that there is Joe-mentum, and he needs to fight back ruthlessly.

[Happy Hoosier]

15. My honest assessment....

Joe did not have a good start in this race. I dunno if he thought he had it in the bag, or if he was running out of pride but without the fire in his belly, but he didn't do great in the debates or on the trail.

All that changed after the first three states. He seems to have remembered who he is and how to connect to people. He showed life for the first time in this campaign, IMO, and it coincided with Bernie finally feeling the glaring light of the front runner (and not doing well in it, IMO).

Joe found his footing and seems to have maintained it. I hope he does.

I preferred Kamala and then Liz. Joe was not at the top of the list for me. But he has demonstrated a resilience I think is important.

[Sneederbunk]

16. Expected him to do better in NV.

[pampango]

17. Maybe he is just smart. Pete and Amy did better than him in the first 3 then Joe won big in SC.

Not only did SC revive his campaign but Pete and Amy dropped out of the race before Super Tuesday, just 3 days after SC despite all of the time they had spent campaigning in those states.

[honest.abe]

18. SC being last of the four has clearly benefited Joe.

Although I and most people thought losing NH, IA and NV was disastrous for Biden but having his best state go last erased all the previous 3 losses and propelled him into Super Tuesday. Yes, oddly fortunate that few would have predicted.