CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM- Despite political polls that favored U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders to win Super Tuesday, former vice president Joe Biden, following his momentous win last week in South Carolina, clinched Super Tuesday with the help of southern Black voters, Black people also the pivotal vote that brought him the primary win in South Carolina, his first win before Super Tuesday.
According to exit polls, more than four and 10 voters who cast ballots in Alabama on Tuesday were Black, Blacks also voting in double digits in Super Tuesday states of Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia.
In North Carolina some 65 percent of Black voters voted for Biden.
It is now a four-way race for the nomination that is narrowed down to Biden, Sanders, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who entered the presidential race and spent millions leading up to Super Tuesday, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg both quitting the race after South Carolina coupled with throwing their support Biden's way. (Editor's note: After pouring some $500 million of his own personal money into the race billionaire Michael Bloomberg quit after Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden).
Fourteen states, including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia, held their presidential primaries Tuesday when a third of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination for president were up for grabs.
At press time Biden had won Massachusetts, Minnesota, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, and Sanders won his home state of Vermont, Utah and Colorado.
Several other states, including Texas, where it is too close to call, and California, where Biden has the edge, is still awaiting election results.
Pundits predict that Biden will win roughly 99 delegates relative to Super Tuesday, Sanders 52, Warren four, and Bloomberg seven.
Biden will likely claim 12 Super Tuesday states, Sanders, four, and Bloomberg one.
Overall, Biden, by predictions, has 326 delegates, Sanders 217, Warren 17 and Bloomberg, whose name was not on primary ballots until Super Tuesday, has 12 delegates thus far.
The winner of the Democratic nomination will face incumbent president Donald Trump for the November general election, a boastful president and avid campaigner facing no serious opposition for the Republican nomination for president.
Biden and his campaign team were ecstatic about his Super Tuesday win.
"I am here to report we are very much alive," said Biden during a campaign rally Tuesday night. "People are talking about a revolution, we started a movement."
He dodged chaos as two opposing protesters stormed the stage while he was speaking, the former president, with his wife Jill Biden by his side on stage, unmoved by the distraction.
He repeated his campaign theme that the Democratic primaries are a "battleground for the soul of America."
Sanders' campaign had hoped that Super Tuesday would distance him from Biden.
After winning in New Hampshire and placing second in Iowa, and following his second place finish in South Carolina, Sanders led with 52 delegates nationwide to Biden's 43 leading up to Super Tuesday.
But Biden, with support from an array of Black voters, outdid him Tuesday, and after Biden, following criticism establishment Democrats, restructured his campaign team.
Speaking at a campaign rally Tuesday evening in his home state of Vermont, Sanders said he has been reinvigorated.
"When we began this race for the presidency everybody said it couldn't be done," said Sanders. "But tonight I tell you with absolute confidence that we are gonna win the Democratic nomination and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country."
In short, the race has become a showdown between Biden, 77, and Sanders 78, Biden wooing Blacks and older voters on Super Tuesday, and Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, winning support from young people, whose turnout Tuesday was mediocre, grassroots voters, and Latinos.
The moderates, said pundits, are consolidating behind Biden, whose slow start in early primary states may have misled his opponents into believing he was out of the game.
He was not.
Vice president under former president Barack Obama, the nations' first Black president Biden, is a former long time U.S. senator who lost the front-runner status to Sanders last month, and obviously regained it on Super Tuesday
U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a Black seasoned federal lawmaker who represents South Carolina's largely Black sixth congressional district who endorsed Biden and threw him a lifeline before his win in South Carolina, told reporters Tuesday night that the exist of Klobuchar, and the departure of Buttigieg, helped Biden.
Clyburn said he is surprised at the upset Tuesday that propelled Biden to front-runner status again.
"It's a little bit of a surprise," said Clyburn to CBS News. "People beyond the borders of South Carolina heard my speech."
The candidates are already gearing up for the next contest on March 10 when six states will hold primaries, including Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho, the next key primaries after that set for March 17 in Illinois and the pivotal states of Arizona, Florida, and Ohio.
