Bernie Sanders Was Even-Money to Win Democratic Nomination Yesterday; He’s a +600 Longshot Today

• After winning South Carolina and most of the Super Tuesday states, Joe Biden now has the delegate lead for the Democratic Nominee
• In even the most rosy projections for both Biden and Bernie Sanders, neither will have a majority, so we’re expecting to see a contested convention.
• Is there value betting Sanders to win the nomination at this point?

The race for the Democratic nomination was turned on its head in just a matter of days. Once viewed as the heavy favorite to win the nomination, Bernie Sanders is now a longshot after Super Tuesday. Is this a serious overreaction or is merely the reality? Let’s take a closer look at the odds.

2020 Democratic Presidential Nominee Odds

Odds taken on Mar. 4.

Biden Has Incredible Turnaround On Super Tuesday

It’s hard to believe what’s happened with former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign over the last week. Remember, Biden finished in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire; he was on complete life support. He was raising no money and basically wasn’t able to spend a dime on the Super Tuesday states.

Biden had long said that South Carolina was his firewall and boy was it ever. After trouncing Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Palmetto State, the momentum started to shift. Then the whole “moderate lane” coalesced behind him as both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out, and both endorsed him.

Buoyed by the endorsements – along with several other high-profile ones – and the South Carolina, Biden not only showed up to Super Tuesday but cleaned Sanders’ clock. Sanders was expecting to be competitive in the South and win everything else. Instead, Biden won the south and much of the northeast.

Add it all up and Biden is not the frontrunner to finish this race with the most delegates, which puts Sanders into a very uncomfortable predicament.

Will Sanders Stick To His Word?

We’ve seen a massive flip-flop by Sanders from 2016 to 2020 in terms of how he feels the Democratic frontrunner should be treated. You might recall that in 2016, Hillary Clinton had the most delegates but she didn’t have the majority. At that point, Sanders felt that the superdelegates should who the winner would be.

This time around, Sanders was asked the same question at the Nevada debate and he said the opposite. At the time, he thought he’d be the clear-cut leader in delegates and superdelegates shouldn’t make the decision. This is something that could have hurt him.

So now what will it be? By most projections and according to the Democratic nomination odds, it’ll be Biden that has the most delegates, so Sanders has hurt himself badly with this flip-flop.

Biden Is Still A Terrible Candidate

Although many people feel that this race is over, you might want to be very careful with that assumption. There’s no question that the Democratic establishment is behind Biden, they’re against Sanders and they’re going to do everything in their power to make sure Biden is the guy who wins the race.

The challenge here is that Biden is a terrible candidate. Sure, it’s not something that anyone wants to address at this point but it is very important to remember this. In May of 2019, Biden had a 26.8 point lead nationally, which looked like an insurmountable lead. He went from 41.4% nationally down to 16.5% last week.

If you’re wondering why that’s the case, it’s because he’s just not that exciting of a candidate. For starters, he has all sorts of flubs on the campaign trail, mixing up his sister and wife after Super Tuesday, forgetting which state he’s in or going to and accidentally claiming that 150 million Americans were killed by guns at the last debate.

He even called Super Tuesday “Super Thursday” last week. On top of that, Biden has been absolutely brutal in debates. His showing in South Carolina was clearly his best, but when he was the frontrunner and attacks were coming his way (specifically by Kamala Harris), he had no answers.

Sanders should run circles around Biden at the debates – especially now that it’s just the two of them – and if Biden doesn’t look like a man who can go up against Trump, I expect him to falter again.

What’s The Best Bet?

Everyone is down on Bernie and let’s face it: he is fighting against the establishment, corporate elites, Wall Street, the healthcare lobby and a lot of other powerful people who don’t want to see him get in power. If he does, a lot of old school democrats would lose their jobs.

At the same time, I still wouldn’t be surprised if he closed this gap. I’d bet Bernie at +600, not because I think he’ll win, but I think we’ll get a chance to hedge this later.

He’s at a low point right now but once we see Biden flop at another debate, his odds will go down as voters will again doubt him.