Why Bernie Won the California Primary
Bernie Sanders didn’t win California because it’s a liberal bastion and he's “extremely liberal.” He won it because the state’s working class is tired of the bipartisan, pro-corporate agenda that threatens to transform California into a social dystopia — and they’re ready to fight back.
A voter fills out a registration form at a polling station in City Hall in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty
Bernie Sanders emerged from Super Tuesday in stiff competition with the freshly and begrudgingly coronated Joe Biden. At the time of this writing, Biden has officially garnered sixty-five more assigned delegates than Sanders, and centrist pundits are eager to broadcast Biden’s victory.
But given that over four thousand pledged delegates attend the convention and a candidate needs nearly two thousand to win on the first ballot, sixty-five is a negligible delegate lead. Additionally, the Super Tuesday results are incomplete. Hundreds of delegates from California have yet to be assigned, and California went decisively for Bernie.
Any commentary that downplays Bernie’s victory in California is disingenuous. California contributes the greatest number of delegates to the nomination process by far, with over 10 percent of pledged delegates in Milwaukee this summer. Clocking in at 415, California gets 141 more pledged delegates than the next most delegate-rich state, New York, which yields 274.
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