 Hello and welcome to NewsClick and today we are going to be talking about the Democratic Party primaries in the United States, especially after Super Tuesday, which was yesterday. And to talk more about this, we have with this analyst, D. Raghunand. Thank you, Raghunand for joining us. So, Raghun, the primaries were for 14 states in one territory. At least over a third of the delegates for the Democratic Party Convention would have been decided yesterday, although the results are still coming out. So, before we go into some of the more, some of the details, let's take an overview and say what are your major conclusions from the results, which are still coming, of course. The first major takeaway is that this has been a surprise win for Biden. Till the first four primaries were conducted, he had a very disappointing run. And of course, there were expectations that he would do well in some of the southern states. But the extent to which he has scored in these, as I think, come as a major surprise, partly because of the retirement from the race of major candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Ami Klobuchar, who have helped Biden. And I think more than that, there's been a very serious momentum behind Biden after the South Carolina elections. And once that was seen, then there has been a consolidation of what we can call the moderate vote behind Biden. And I think the scale of the votes that he is getting has taken most observers by surprise. And we also see that, of course, the final delegate counts are yet to be finalized. And it most likely may happen that Sanders may end up much more closer to Biden than what the statewide results show, because although Biden may have one line or ten of the 14, nonetheless, many of the margins are very close. And since it's a proportional representation system, Sanders actually may end up with a lot of very close in terms of delegates. So how do you see the momentum forward for the Sanders campaign? In fact, I would say that the results as they have come out so far have shown that the gap between the number of delegates that Biden has and Sanders has is wider than one would have expected. Because in most of the states, even though Sanders may have won the state, the margin between him and Biden is quite narrow. So they've ended up, if you say Sanders has won a state, but he's got 15 delegates and Biden has got 13. Texas was where Sanders was expecting to win big, but actually Biden has won the states, has walked away with nine or 10 delegates more than Sanders. And in California also, it doesn't look as if Sanders is going to win by such a huge margin because of the proportional delegates that he will open up a big lead between him and Biden. What is also happening is that those candidates who have remained in the race, particularly Bloomberg and Warren, in many states, they have also taken away a substantial proportion of delegates. The trend indicate that in Texas, this has happened. In California also, we are witnessing this. So once again, that means that the gap between Biden and Sanders is not going to be as much in Sanders' favor as would have been thought before this. So I think that's the second story of the night. Biden's victory is, of course, the first. The second is Sanders is not scoring as high in many of these states, particularly among sections of the population which were expected to vote in large numbers for Sanders, such as the young. While proportionately 80% plus of the youth vote has gone to Sanders, their numbers in terms of turnout has not been as high as expected. And even the Latino vote, he has not got such an overwhelming proportion of those votes that we may have thought earlier. And of course, he's not got the black vote at all. So the key question now, especially in considering the candidates remaining in the field, the two key elements, Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren, now Bloomberg has said that he's going to reassess his candidature. It is a possibility that he may drop out considering that his whole reason for being in the race was that he would be a better option than Biden. Biden was not likely to win. On the other hand, the challenge is even larger for Elizabeth Warren because considering that there are some alignments in terms of policy, there's been a lot of calls on her to withdraw from the race so that there can be a consolidation of the progressive sections as well. So do you see that as a possibility or will Warren go to the convention? First as far as Bloomberg is concerned, I feel strongly that he's going to drop out of the race because I think his electoral math will show him that there is no path forward to win the democratic elections. He's a hard-nought businessman and as a businessman, he will realize that the return on his investment of close to half a billion dollars, his return on investment is very low. So I think he will get out. As far as Elizabeth Warren is concerned, I think the electoral math shows she also has no way forward. Look of the progressive vote seems to have rallied behind Sanders except for a few states where Warren has had a good showing but it's not been such a good showing and in terms of delegate count, we'll see once the tally comes out that she'll be way behind. I don't see a path forward for her either and I think it would make sense going forward to allow this to be a two-horse race, to allow the progressives and the moderates within the democratic party to slug it out between the two candidates. Of course, the big surprise is why Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race, which I don't even know if she knows why she's in the race but there you are. So I think for Sanders, there are a couple of challenges. So one, there's a question of how to sort of make sure that this does not halt the momentum, the kind of inspirational campaign, the movement he's been building. Two, like you said, is the question of how do you make sure that more people turn out because that is one of his USP, so to speak, his ability to draw more young voters into the picture. And third is to see that if he can rally together all the progressives and make a stand, so to speak, and take it to such a city and especially Florida is coming up in a couple of weeks, that's another big week state, and to see if they can sort of take it to a place where it's close. But there's a big X factor here which is the unpledged delegates and which is a completely establishment-based set of delegates. So how do you see the convention happening? See, firstly, Sanders himself going forward. As we were saying, the primaries so far have not shown that the young have turned out in such large numbers for Sanders that they would have overcome the momentum in favor of Biden. If that has not happened, even in the primaries, it casts serious doubts on whether that will happen even in the general elections. So that's one. Second is that major chunks of the Democratic vote, which is what happened with Sanders last time when he lost to Hillary Clinton, the trend seems to be similar now. Blacks, non-educated, white, older generation voters, they are not with Sanders. Even the educated young white population, not young, I'm saying 30 plus, 40 plus, is not turning out in favor of Sanders. So I think there are very severe challenges for Sanders going forward. As far as the delegate counter concerned, if present trends continue the way it is, I don't think it will even come to a contested convention. And I think if the present trends continue, then Biden is going to emerge way ahead the way Clinton did. Although he does have a major vulnerability in the sense that he's prone to gaps. Absolutely. His history is extremely... Exactly. And there are debates coming up. The Biden-Sanders debates were... So if there are now going forward, two things I think will tell the story. One, as you said, what can happen which could shift more momentum towards Sanders? That remains to be seen. One is Sanders' ground game, as they call it in the US. How successful is his organization in bringing out the vote? Results so far seem to suggest there's a lot of inspirational drive in the Sanders campaign. There's less in terms of the ground game and mobilization of voters. Biden has got bulk of the Democratic Party establishment behind him, which works to... Right. Despite him not having a ground game inside. Exactly. In fact, in several of the states which Biden has won now in Super Tuesday, he didn't even go to campaign once. But the Democratic Party worked for him. Sanders does not have a similar machine going forward. It remains to be seen whether he's able to create that machine. Second, the third factor is Biden now has huge momentum behind him. Sanders needs to do something special to be able to overcome that and to be able to regain momentum for himself, which I think he would have lost a bit by the end of today. Right. Thank you so much, Raghun. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.