Modern-day Lazarus Joe Biden has come back to life, for now

Editorial: While the former vice president may have snatched the lead from Sanders, he is not so overwhelmingly ahead that the result is a foregone conclusion

As a modern-day Lazarus, Joe Biden has not only risen from the dead but sprinted around his tomb.

He’s no quitter. Only a few days ago, the experts – and there are many who profess unique insights into the Democratic Party of the United States – had dismissed Mr Biden’s chances of winning the nomination to take on Donald Trump. Although the former vice president had many high-profile allies – not least Barack Obama – and had made a respectable early start to his campaign, a series of disappointing results and faltering appearances in the TV debates were taking their toll. Soon Mr Trump was not the only one lampooning “sleepy Joe”. The party’s hopes, and votes, started to go to Bernie Sanders; and, to a lesser extent, Pete Buttigieg​ and Elizabeth Warren.

Now things are rather different, yet the same in one crucial respect: there is still the prospect that the party will not have settled its choice by the time of the convention in Milwaukee. A divided party squabbling at a divided convention would be a poor launchpad for whoever does have the task of standing up to Mr Trump’s brutal style of electioneering.

Mr Biden has now taken the lead from Mr Sanders in the number of committed Democratic Party delegates he will take to the convention in the summer which will select the party’s candidate. His popularity among African-Americans and older voters has seen to that – and former candidates Mr Buttigieg​ and Amy Klobuchar have switched their loyalties to him. Mike Bloomberg’s poor return on the $700m he has invested in his campaign – a tokenistic win in tiny American Samoa – has persuaded him to find better ways to spend his money and time. He is also backing Mr Biden now. Senator Elizabeth Warren failed to win over any state on Super Tuesday, including her home state of Massachusetts.

So now it is Mr Biden who has the “Big Mo” – the momentum that was formerly with Mr Sanders. Mr Biden’s win in Texas was especially significant, as Mr Sanders was supposed to do well there and it represents the second-biggest state with 228 convention delegates. Mr Biden won there, along with Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia.

As things stand, Mr Biden has around 550 delegates and Mr Sanders around 480. Though Mr Biden has snatched the lead, he is not so overwhelmingly ahead that the result is a foregone conclusion. It will be a long hot summer for Mr Biden and Mr Sanders as they approach the July convention, slugging it out rally by rally, speech by speech, and state by state.

The trends suggest that neither man will command the 1,991 delegates required to win the White House nomination at the convention. The convention would therefore become “brokered” or “contested”, the first time it has been since the 1950s. After delegate switching, successive rounds of voting, behind-the-scenes politicking and the possible intervention of so-called super delegates, party apparatchiks will then determine the winner. It will be an unedifying spectacle, and will dent the Democrats’ image.

They have already handed President Trump a series of easy wins, such as impeachment, and the president continues to enjoy all the usual advantages of incumbency. Only three incumbent presidents who sought a second elected term in the past century have been rejected by the voters: Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. President Trump’s ratings are not so impressive that he can assume victory, but then again, it is also possible that a Sanders or Biden candidacy would be so weak that Mr Trump would not only win the popular vote (as he did not in 2016) but add to the Republican tally in the Senate. Super Tuesday hasn’t made the Democrats’ task of achieving unity any easier.