Joe Biden said…

Hearing Joe Biden say,

“We now have amassed more popular vote
than
anyone running for the nomination,”

is like…

listening to Hillary say that she won more popular votes than Trump.

It’s the delegates, stupid.

Biden won the South Carolina Democratic Primary held Saturday, 29 February 2020, according to the South Carolina Election Commission, with 45/46 counties reporting (97.83%). Biden won a decisive 256,111 (48.44%), while Sanders collected 105,226 (19.9%), with a 16.04% voter turn-out, and 529,505 ballots cast of 3,300,161 Registered Voters.

Joe Biden in a 2020 South Carolina campaign.

As things now stand, Biden won 38 delegates in South Carolina, while Bernie picked up 15.

Bernie presently has a total of 58 (some say 60) delegates, while Biden has 50 (some say 53).

Regardless, the race is far from over.

Super Tuesday is 2 days away, and with the single largest award in one day, a veritable “lion’s share” (though not a majority) of delegates – 1357 of 3979 Pledged Delegates – will be decided that day. There will remain 2467 Pledged Delegates outstanding which will be awarded as those states’ Presidential Preference Primaries occur, and that’s not including 771 Super Delegates.

Already, Tom Steyer dropped out on Saturday, and today (Sunday), Pete Buttigieg has announced that he’s hanging up his spurs.

So that leaves Sanders, Biden, Warren, and Klobuchar – 3 Senators and a former Vice President.

SO… let’s look at the chances Biden has of winning – historically and statistically speaking, of course.

Historically, Vice Presidents do not get elected as President in their own right.

What means, is that…

apart from succession,
when VPs have campaigned for the Office of the President,
they have not won.

Only 13 former Vice Presidents have ever been POTUS, who all arrived in office either through succession, or through election apart from succession.

Here’s the break-down:

A total of 8 POTUSes have died in office – 4 from natural death, and 4 assassinations.

The majority of VPs who ever became POTUS (8/13) were from a President’s death, so that leaves 5.

A total of 5 POTUSes were former VPs – Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, Nixon, and G.H.W. Bush.

It’s worth repeating:
Only 5 former Vice Presidents were ever elected as President.

That’s 5/45, or 11.1%.

However, the United States Senate website states this about Senators:
“To date, 16 Senators have also served as President of the United States. Three Senators, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama moved directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House.”

That’s 16/45, or 35.5%, of all POTUSes who were ever a Senator. And 3/16, or 18.75%, were elected as POTUS directly from the Senate.

Historically, and statistically, it doesn’t look good for Biden.

And besides… folks aren’t excited about him. The people are about as excited about Joe Biden as they are for a bowl of oatmeal.

Not so with Bernie.

And Joe is not doing well in the fund-raising category, in which Bernie dominates, and is doing so by small donations from the people, not corporations, or Super PACs.

Bernie raised $46.5 million in February alone, from 2.2 million donors “including more than 350,000 people who gave to the Sanders campaign for the first time.” Last month (January), his campaign raised $25 million.

The Washington Post reported that “When Barack Obama was running for office in 2008, he raised $55 million over the same time period.”

The Sanders campaign has raised over $167 million since last February when he started campaigning this election cycle. He has also made the most impressive online of any Democratic candidate this cycle.

In stark comparison, the Biden campaign reported to the Federal Election Commission that his campaign has less than $9 million by the end of 2019, and in January, only raised $8.9 million, and ended the month with $7.1 million in cash on hand.

According to OpenSecrets website, “a closely tied super PAC, Unite the Country, which is providing him air support in New Hampshire and Nevada. Backed by deep-pocketed Biden donors including billionaire real estate magnate George Marcus and Masimo co-founder Joe Kiani among others, the group raised nearly $3.8 million from 70 donors through the end of December. It has spent $6.5 million boosting Biden on the airwaves.”