ALL ABOARD: Beto O’Rourke, Buttigieg, Klobuchar Endorse Joe Biden for President
Richard Moorhead
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Three former candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden, a sign of the centrist lane of the party coalescing behind the senior figure.
Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Beto O’Rourke were confirmed to be endorsing Biden in quick succession on Monday.
Klobuchar and Buttigieg are expected to endorse Biden at a rally in Texas on Monday night. The state will vote tomorrow as part of Super Tuesday, and Biden is polling competitively with Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders in the state. If Biden fails to prevent Sanders from winning both California and Texas- the biggest states in the country- it’s hard to imagine that he could prevent the Vermont democratic socialist from securing the Democratic nomination.
The timing of the endorsements on Monday- having taken place a day after Buttigieg’s departure from the race and merely hours after Klobuchar ended her campaign- raises questions about the possibility of their coordination. Buttigieg was confirmed to have spoken to former President Barack Obama on Monday, and it seems possible that Obama instructed the Democrat to fall in line behind his former Vice President.
In any case, it’s clear that the losers in the Democratic primary are lining up with the express intent of stopping Bernie Sanders campaign. They were largely content with the prospect of running against Biden merely days ago, with the exception of O’Rourke who was forced to drop out before the Iowa caucuses after running a dismal campaign. Their support of the septuagenarian and at-times memory challenged senior party figure appears rooted more in animosity to the anti-establishment socialist than genuine deference to Biden.
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