Buttigieg, Klobuchar and O'Rourke Endorse Biden

I continue to worry whether Joe Biden has it in him to defeat Donald Trump if Biden is the Democrat nominee.  Those worries pale, however, compared to my worries of the 2020 presidential results if Bernie Sanders is the Democrat nominee.  While I might well hold my nose and vote for Sanders while gagging on the verge of vomiting, I suspect many voters will not do so - especially in the half dozen key states that will decide the Electoral College results.  From the outset, Pete Buttigieg said his goal was to see Trump defeated and now, he along with Amy Klobuchar and Beto O'Rourke  have all endorsed Joe Biden in the hope of stopping Sanders and a catastrophe in November. Indeed, I have already received emails from Buttigieg's impressive online campaign soliciting donations to the Biden campaign.  It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow on Super Tuesday.  Personally, I hope Sanders gets a severe drubbing (I told the Sanders campaign which had been texting me to delete me from all of their lists).  A piece in the New York Times looks at these latest developments: 

In a last-minute bid to unite the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg on Monday threw their support behind a presidential campaign rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., giving him an extraordinary boost ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries that promised to test his strength against the liberal front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Even by the standards of the tumultuous 2020 campaign, the endorsements from Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg — and their plan to join Mr. Biden at a rally in Dallas on Monday night — was remarkable. Rarely, if ever, have opponents joined forces so dramatically, as Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg went from campaigning at full tilt in the South Carolina primary on Saturday to teaming up on a political rescue mission for a former competitor, Mr. Biden, whom they had once regarded as a spent force.

Rather than delivering a traditional concession speech, Ms. Klobuchar told associates she wanted to leverage her exit to help Mr. Biden and headed directly for the joint rally. Mr. Buttigieg, for his part, endorsed Mr. Biden at a pre-rally stop on Monday evening; he said Mr. Biden would “restore the soul” of the nation as president. And Mr. Biden offered Mr. Buttigieg the highest compliment in his personal vocabulary, several times likening the young politician to his own son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015. [T]he crucial question hanging over the fast-moving events was whether any of it would make a difference in Tuesday’s primaries across 15 states and territories, including the critical battlegrounds of California and Texas. Mr. Sanders signaled on Monday that he was ready for a fight against Mr. Biden, and perhaps a long one, if neither man can achieve a decisive early advantage in a nomination fight that still includes Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City. As news emerged of the shift of centrist support toward Mr. Biden, Mr. Sanders projected confidence and defiance, dismissing it as a phenomenon of “establishment politicians” supporting one another. That Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg decided to align against Mr. Sanders reflected their assessments of him as a general-election candidate: Both have warned he could lose to Mr. Trump, skeptical that his liberal policy agenda would win him broad support in battleground regions like their Midwestern base.

But the one-two punch also involved their own political interests, since leaving the race spared Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar the possibility of a wilting finish on Tuesday.

It is not uncommon for former presidential rivals to endorse each other later in an election season: The vanquished John Edwards helped Barack Obama conquer Hillary Clinton in 2008, for instance, and in the 2016 Republican primaries, Donald J. Trump earned a crucial seal of approval from an adversary he had handily trounced, Chris Christie.

In that 2016 race, some Republican leaders wanted other candidates to drop out early and unite behind one stop-Trump contender; that never happened . . . .

#NeverSanders