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Democrats Default to Normalcy: Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday Miracle

Carla Seaquist
4 min readMar 5, 2020

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Ah, Normalcy. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you. But: How long you staying?

After three years — it seems like a century — of Donald the Crazy, Donald the Cruel, Donald the Destroyer, it is a new feeling, but not entirely unfamiliar, this feeling of normalcy, to see Joe Biden’s smiling and familiar face, “Uncle Joe,” pop up on the TV screen as the winner of state after state, 10 out of 14 in play, this Super Tuesday.

As the night wore on, I had a vision of normalcy spreading across the map — from Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas (Texas?).

And after a year of a crowded and increasingly rancorous Democratic presidential campaign — it too feels like it’s been waged a century — the race was shaping up, pre-Super Tuesday, as a final showdown between two very angry men: Bernie Sanders, democratic socialist who disdains the Democratic party label and vows a “political revolution,” versus Donald Trump, belching human furnace of craziness, cruelty, destruction.

That distressing prospect was captured by The Economist’s current cover, showing Sanders and Trump in full bellow mode and headlined: “American Nightmare: Could It Come to This?” (Note the cowering Uncle Sam.)

Contrasted with these two angry men, moderate Joe Biden is so….refreshing. Ah, Normalcy.

Am I equating normalcy with nice-guy equanimity, with not-shouting? Maybe. America has been hopping angry for years now — I called 2016 “the Anger Election” — but all this anger has illuminated nothing, it has forced us far from our best selves, far from any semblance of normalcy. At our best, Americans prize normalcy.

Amidst all this anger and sub-normalcy, then, is it really any wonder that, given the chance, millions of Democrats reacted — in the moment, during the 72-hour span of a remarkable realignment of the electoral stars — and opted on Super Tuesday for the candidate who epitomizes normalcy: Joe Biden, son of Scranton PA, Uncle Joe?

About that realignment of the stars: Biden, who’d performed poorly in the debates and in the voting in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, banked everything on South Carolina, with its large African-American population who esteem him as Barack Obama’s vice-president and wingman. With Congressman James Clyburn endorsing him as “a good man,” Biden won a smashing victory, enough to cause…

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Carla Seaquist
Carla Seaquist

Written by Carla Seaquist

Carla (1944-2024) examined life at the crossroads of politics, culture and the American character. New book "Across the Kitchen Table." www.carlaseaquist.com.

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