Of all the possible outcomes of the 2020 Democratic primaries, I never imagined Bernie Sanders would be rendered irrelevant by early March. The left-wing vision of a contested convention, of controversy in Milwaukee, turned out to be a fantasy. Sanders was nowhere close to winning the nomination. Of course, this was partly due to some behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. But in the end Sanders was ignored with surprising ease.
In a fractured field, Sanders was decisively ahead. On the night he won Nevada, it appeared a Sanders nomination was an inescapable conclusion. Yet at the eleventh hour, just as Super Tuesday voters were making their plans to go vote, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar both dropped out and threw their political weight behind Joe Biden on the strength of his decisive win in South Carolina.
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