Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.
Democrats are no longer in disarray.
This afternoon, Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden, ending days of speculation over how eagerly the party’s liberal standard-bearer would work to unify Democrats behind the former vice president before the general election.
In a different time, there would be a splashy rally or a surprise appearance at a campaign event to promote the endorsement. Alas, that’s not how we live now. So, instead, the two men turned to the great connector of our coronavirus age — the video conference.
“We need you in the White House,” Mr. Sanders said to Mr. Biden on a live stream, speaking from his slightly fuzzy side of the screen. “And I will do all that I can to make that happen.”
The split-screen campaign event wasn’t the only striking difference from four years ago, when Mr. Sanders begrudgingly backed Hillary Clinton. That endorsement happened three months later in the year, at a joint rally in July shortly before Democrats gathered for their national convention.
This time, all it seemed to take to bring about unity was the formation of six working groups on education, climate change, economy, immigration, health care and criminal justice. (After all, what epitomizes Democratic politics more than policy working groups?)
Some of the speed clearly has to do with the unique political dynamics surrounding this race: a deadly pandemic, the threat of economic collapse and an incumbent president reviled by Democrats.
But it was clear watching Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders exchange warm smiles that this was a very different relationship, lacking much of the resentment that characterized the 2016 race. They joked about boring viewers by playing chess, and exchanged greetings to wives.
“You and I are friends. We’ve been friends,” said Mr. Biden. “I appreciate your friendship and I will not let you down.”
Yet, buried amid all the comity and light comedy was a serious pivot for Mr. Biden and his campaign from their primary messaging. As Mr. Sanders campaigned across the country calling for “political revolution,” Mr. Biden had cast his candidacy as a restoration of the Obama era, promising a return to the ethos of a pre-Trump Washington.
Today, Mr. Biden shifted course, saying that the havoc wreaked by the pandemic would force a new reckoning in the country.
“When we come out of this, we can’t just go back to business as usual,” he said. “When we come out of this, our whole country will have to take a deep look and say, how can we fix what is broken?”
That’s not a shift some Sanders supporters are quite ready to believe.
Mr. Sanders’s appearance shocked progressive grass-roots leaders, who had little warning that the liberal champion they supported was going to endorse Mr. Biden so quickly after exiting the race. Some worried the speed of his public support diminished their political leverage to win more concessions from the Biden campaign.
Some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters were left in the awkward position of endorsing his policy platform but not his political choices.
The question now facing both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden is: Will the movement follow the man?
Drop us a line!
We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
It’s election night, sort of
Remember when Wisconsin voted last Tuesday? Well, the results are only coming in now, thanks to a federal judge’s ruling that prohibited their release while absentee ballots were in the mail.
Mr. Biden has been declared the winner of the state’s Democratic presidential primary. Now that Mr. Sanders is out of the race, that outcome may seem moot. But the map will be closely scrutinized for relative pockets of Mr. Biden’s strengths and weaknesses in a state that some project could be the tipping point of the entire presidential race in November.
Meanwhile, a statewide race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is arguably the most important contest tonight. The balance of power on the court is at stake; the court is technically nonpartisan, but a victory for the conservative incumbent would preserve the court’s five-to-two conservative advantage. The winner will be in a position to decide a case before the court that could purge more than 200,000 people from the Wisconsin voter rolls.
We’re tracking all the returns on our live results pages for the Democratic presidential primary and Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
We’re also posting live updates from our reporters as the numbers roll in.
Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.
… Seriously
This is a very useful P.S.A.
Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos.
On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
