After making a major push for votes in Iowa, it looks as if former Vice President and one-time “2020 front runner” Joe Biden is going to emerge from the state’s disastrous Democratic caucuses without a single convention delegate.
Since late last fall when the primary campaign came into full swing, Biden had been warned of tepid support in Iowa, where the first in the nation caucuses often set the tone for candidates and their supporters going into the nomination process.
In the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, it would seem that Biden and his team began to quietly panic, according to reports. His campaign redirected hundreds of thousands of dollars originally earmarked for New Hampshire TV slots in an effort to fund an all-out Iowa ad blitz.
Unfortunately for them, it was too little too late. Or maybe the party’s base just isn’t all that crazy about crazy uncle Joe, to begin with.
After finally receiving caucus results, delayed due to Democrats’ technical difficulties, Biden has found himself with a distant fourth-place finish in Iowa, coming in behind Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps worst of all, he barely managed to finish ahead of Amy Klobuchar, who most believe has virtually no chance of winning the party’s nomination for President.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Biden told supporters as his campaign pivoted back to New Hampshire. “We took a gut punch in Iowa.”
A gut-punch is right, and by the looks of polling data in the Granite State, Biden could be poised to take another one.
Less than a week out from the New Hampshire primaries, polls show Biden positioned in an extremely distant third place, running far behind front runner Bernie Sanders and still trailing Pete Buttigieg while once again jockeying for position with Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.
For a candidate chasing his party’s nomination to the presidency, third and fourth place finishes won’t cut it, and worse than a gut punch, an Iowa repeat in New Hampshire would leave Biden with a massive black eye going into the South Carolina primary later this month.
Touting a “firewall” of black voters ready to repay him for his service to the Obama Administration, Biden has made no bones about the need for a major victory in South Carolina.
Unfortunately for his campaign, recent polling data shows that Biden’s once-solid foundation in the state is beginning to crack, as Bernie Sanders has pulled to within 5 points of Biden’s lead, and billionaire Tom Steyer isn’t far behind.
In the primaries, momentum can be everything for a campaign, and right now Biden seems to have none. A failure to secure a victory in South Carolina would be worse than any gut punch or black eye – it would be utter humiliation – and quite possibly signal the beginning of the end for Biden’s campaign, just as it did for Hillary Clinton in 2008.
