BOSTON— At around 9 p.m. on Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders supporters waiting to get into a bar for his results watch party started to hear the surprising news about Vice President Joe Biden’s lead.
“If you want four more years of Trump, Biden’s the ticket,” Jared Hicks, a 29-year-old who organized for Sanders in Massachusetts told another supporter standing outside the bar.”We’re really trying to save the party from itself.”
Until about 10 p.m., the line of mostly young professionals waiting to get in snaked down the sidewalk on a busy street in downtown Boston. At times, the smell of marijuana smoke wafted over the queue.
An hour later, with Biden maintaining a lead of about seven points over Sanders — and a second place finish for the Vermont senator looked all but certain — the line evaporated.
Inside Democracy Brewing, a warmly lit bar with long wooden tables, the crowd had noticeably thinned.
When results from California and Texas — where Sanders was leading at the time — flashed on television screens, cheers erupted throughout the bar. (Biden later overtook Sanders in Texas.)
But when the results from Massachusetts were displayed, the Sanders supporters quietly stared at the screens.
“I thought the worst case scenario was that Warren was going to win,” said Bernardo Jimenez, a 24-year-old sitting at a table at the front of the bar. “There’s not a pundit alive that thought that Biden was going to do so well in Massachusetts.”
Biden’s upset in Massachusetts was one of the vice president’s many victories on Super Tuesday. His performance across the country elevated his status in the 2020 presidential race, and the threat level he poses to the Vermont senator, who had previously been seen as the clear front-runner.
The race in Massachusetts had been expected to be a close contest between Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who after poor showings in the earlier contests was expected to do well in her home state.
But it was Biden, riding a wave of momentum after his South Carolina victory last week, who scored a major win in the Bay State with 33% of the vote when the race was called around 11 p.m. Sanders earned 27% while Warren had won only 21%.
While many Sanders backers were in shock as the results rolled in, others said they saw it coming.
“That does not surprise me,” said Ciro Faienza, a 36-year-old diversity trainer, as he watched CNN call the race. “It would have two weeks ago, but as of the last few days it’s what I was expecting.”
Faienza and many other Sanders supporters believe Biden’s victory came largely from the decision by moderate candidates Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar to drop out of the race and endorse Biden just before Super Tuesday. (Billionaire Michael Bloomberg dropped out on Wednesday.)
Warren, who spoke in Detroit on Tuesday evening, and didn’t finish above third place in any Super Tuesday states, signaled her campaign would continue despite the mounting losses.
“You don’t get what you don’t fight for,” she said. “I am in this fight.”
On Wednesday, the campaign’s tune changed slightly, with campaign officials confirming that the Massachusetts senator was assessing whether to continue.
From a rally in Los Angeles, Biden basked in his Super Tuesday results.
“Just a few days ago the press and the pundits declared the campaign dead,” he said. “I’m here to report we are very much alive. And make no mistake about it, this campaign will send Donald Trump packing.”
Sanders supporters at the bar worried Biden would not be able to beat Trump in November.
“I think Biden will lose. My generation is not going to show up for him,” Hicks said.
Hicks also blamed Warren for the disappointing results for Sanders, arguing the Massachusetts senator should have dropped out and rallied behind the Vermont senator.
“I think she cost us the Massachusetts election,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Warren made a brief appearance in Massachusetts at a local elementary school in Cambridge to cast her ballot.
A crowd of hundreds gathered along the street holding blue and white signs. Warren was mobbed by television cameras as she shook hands and on her way inside the school.
After she cast her ballot, she gave a two-minute stump speech in the bed of a white pickup truck and took questions from reporters. She said she wasn’t worried about the threat posed by Sanders in her home state.
“I’m not worried. I am happy to be part of the democratic process,” she said.
She added many of her major policy priorities — universal child care, expanding Social Security and canceling student loan debt — gained more traction.
“For me this is just an amazing opportunity to be able to talk to people around this country about what we can do to build a better America,” she said.
Like most pundits, many of Warren’s supporters didn’t expect the Massachusetts primary to be a battle between Sanders and Biden, but Warren and Sanders.
“It’s going to catapult Bernie, and I think it’s likely to happen,” Paul Feinberg, a 75-year-old retired lawyer, and Warren supporter said of the possibility of a Massachusetts victory for Sanders.
He didn’t know whether he was going to vote for Warren or Sanders until he heard her speak outside the polling place.
“She’s the brightest and she’s also a politician,” he said. “She’s not an ideologue like Sanders.”
Despite the losses, Sanders supporters tried to stay optimistic Tuesday evening, pointing to his leads in California and Texas.
Biden eventually overtook Sanders in Texas and was declared the winner early Wednesday morning. In California, Sanders was declared the winner.
Nicolas Hyacinthe, standing near the bar after Biden was declared the night’s victor, wasn’t expecting that outcome. Like many others, he believed the battle was between Sanders and Warren.
Hyacinthe doesn’t believe Biden’s victories will hold Sanders back from wins in other states going forward.
He pointed to Sanders’ rally in Boston last weekend, which drew thousands, as a sign that enthusiasm for the Vermont senator is still strong.
“The energy’s ours,” Hyacinthe said. “Those 13,000 people we saw at the Boston Common — that’s just the beginning.”
The former vice president moves on from Super Tuesday, the winner of 10 states — including Texas, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Maine — and with the overall lead in delegates.
“I think it is going to be a slug fest,” said Matthew Dickinson, a professor of political science at Middlebury College.
“But I do not see Biden delivering a knockout blow,” Dickinson added.
Linda Fowler, a professor and political analyst at Dartmouth College, said she believes that after Tuesday, the pressure is now on Sanders to prove to voters that he has widespread support across the country and that he can win.
“The onus has now shifted to him to demonstrate his electability,” she said.
Fowler added she has seldomly seen such “dramatic a shift” in the power dynamic in a primary as what occurred Tuesday night.
“You often don’t see endorsements make a big difference in primaries but here it did,” Fowler said, specifically about Biden’s ability to win and out perform Sanders in Minnesota and Maine.
Fowler believes the final hour decision by Buttigieg and Klobuchar to suspend their campaigns and back Biden had an enormous amount of sway with voters.
“When you have a very uncertain electorate, when you have that situation, late breaking events can have a huge effect,” Fowler said.
“Buttigeg and Klohbuchar pulling out and Steyer pulling out and endorsing Biden, I think it added confidence to choose Biden and it was the last thing they heard before they went into the voting booths,” she added.
On Wednesday, progressives — on social media and in the press — called for Warren to suspend her campaign and support Sanders as a response to moderates coming together around Biden.
“I think it was very frustrating for progressives that there was this sort of almost Republican-style ‘everybody fall into line strategy’ that the centrists seem to be taking,” said Patricia Siplon, a professor of political science at Saint Michael’s College.
“I personally question whether the progressive side should do the same thing or not, I don’t necessarily agree with people who are saying Warren has to drop out immediately and turn it over to Sanders,” she added.
Fowler said that if Warren does choose to bow out and endorse Sanders, she could do it strategically to give the Vermont senator a boost just before voters in six states head to the polls on March 10.
“That could be a late breaking event for next week’s primary,” Fowler said.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct when the results watch party was. It was on Tuesday evening, not Wednesday.
