WASHINGTON _ The Democratic presidential campaign has turned into a two-person contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, as former New York Mayor Michael D. Bloomberg dropped out of the race Wednesday and threw his support behind Biden. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was also weighing her future in the dwindling field.
"I've always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it," said Bloomberg, ditching his long-shot bid after spending more than $660 million of his own money on the effort and coming up with only a handful of delegates in Tuesday's 14-state primary. "After yesterday's vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden."
In the wake of Tuesday's voting, which delivered a remarkable comeback for Biden, the race now moves to major battleground states in a contest that splits the party along ideological and generational lines.
Turning to the next round of primary battles, Sanders launched new, sharper attacks on Biden on Wednesday, releasing two new ads criticizing Biden's record on Social Security and trade _ and a third trying to ally Sanders with former President Barack Obama.
Biden will be speaking and holding a fundraiser in Los Angeles on Wednesday, and later this week he'll travel to two states _ due to vote March 10 _ that play to his strengths among black and moderate voters: Mississippi and Missouri. Sanders campaigns Thursday in Arizona, which votes March 17, where his strong support among Latinos could give him a boost.
It is not clear which of the two candidates will end up with the delegate lead after Tuesday's balloting because California, among other states, is still counting late-arriving mail-in and provisional ballots. But, especially now with Bloomberg out of the race, it is clear that Sanders has lost his status as the unchallenged front-runner, transformed overnight by Biden's revival of his once-flagging campaign.
The two split Tuesday's biggest prizes, with Sanders capturing California and Biden taking Texas. The independent Vermont senator also won Colorado and Utah, as well as his home state.
Biden, who had been all but written off after a stumbling start in Iowa and New Hampshire, emphatically marked his comeback with victories _ some by double digits _ in Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The race in Maine remained too close to call.
The biggest upcoming primaries on March 10 are in Michigan, which will test Sanders' and Biden's competing appeal to white, working-class voters. Mississippi, like many Southern states Biden won Tuesday, has a large population of black voters. Missouri, a swing state, tends to elect moderate Democrats.
A week later, Democrats will vote March 17 in big states that will be crucial in the general election: Arizona, Florida and Ohio.
In between, the next debate will be held March 15 in Phoenix. A key question is whether Biden and Sanders will be the only candidates left on the stage.
Bloomberg announced his decision to quit after a Wednesday morning call with campaign leaders.
Warren also had a bad night, winning no states and placing third in her home state's primary. She has previously insisted she will stay in the race, hoping to amass enough delegates to give her a strong voice at the party convention _ especially if no one arrives with a majority of delegates.
But she will face pressure from Sanders' supporters to drop out, on the assumption that he would pick up the lion's share of her progressive supporters.
In a memo to campaign staff Wednesday morning, top Warren adviser Roger Lau acknowledged that Tuesday's results "fell well short of viability goals and projections."
"We are obviously disappointed," Lau said, but he added that Warren was still assessing what her next steps would be. "She's going to take time right now to think through the right way to continue this fight."
President Trump weighed in on the Democratic primary results Wednesday morning, renewing his oft-repeated claim that party leaders are trying to undermine Sanders.
"The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN!" Trump said on Twitter. "Even the fact that Elizabeth Warren stayed in the race was devastating to Bernie and allowed Sleepy Joe to unthinkably win Massachusetts. It was a perfect storm, with many good states remaining for Joe!"
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Biden backer, warned Democrats against allowing Trump to fuel party divisions.
Promising he would back Sanders "100%" if he won the nomination, Garcetti said in an MSNBC interview Wednesday morning: "It is really important not to let the White House get excited because we are all divided."
Exit polls showed Biden's campaign still had weaknesses that he would have to overcome to unify the party. A key question is whether he can win over the younger and more liberal voters who have responded to Sanders' call for fundamental change in American politics and the economy.
"You cannot beat Trump with the same-old, same-old kind of politics," Sanders said, addressing supporters Tuesday night. "What we need is a new politics that brings working-class people into our political movement."
Sanders is trying to press that case in new ads that will air in at least nine states with upcoming primaries. The ads criticize Biden for backing measures to rein in Social Security spending and for supporting free-trade agreements that Sanders says hurt workers.
More striking than those familiar attacks on Biden, Sanders' third ad includes a voice-over from Obama praising him _ the first time he has used a technique other candidates, especially Biden, have deployed to ally themselves with the popular former president. Sanders, who had many policy differences with Obama, has come under attack from Biden, who claimed Sanders considered challenging Obama in the 2012 primary.
Now, Sanders' new ad ends with a clip of Obama saying to a cheering crowd, "That's right. Feel the Bern!"
One of the biggest questions after Super Tuesday vote-counting is completed will be whether Biden surpasses Sanders in delegates.
Sanders entered the day with a narrow lead over Biden in the pledged delegate count, according to The Associated Press, based on the four earliest-voting states. Biden pulled ahead Tuesday night. But it will take some time before California and Texas divvy up their share, which together accounted for nearly half the delegates being awarded on Tuesday.
Under rules established by the Democratic Party, delegates were allotted on a percentage basis, based on a candidate's performance at both the statewide and congressional district levels. In each, candidates needed to meet a 15% threshold of support to receive any delegates.
The outcome in California, whose 415 delegates are the largest trove in the country, will remain unsettled for days, if not weeks, as state officials count millions of provisional and late-arriving mail-in ballots and calculate the state's complex delegate math. Sanders won the state, but Biden, Bloomberg and Warren have enough support statewide and in individual congressional districts to claim delegates.
Regardless of who comes out ahead in the delegate count, it will be far closer than anyone predicted before Super Tuesday, when the main question was whether Sanders' delegate lead would be insurmountable.
Biden's surprisingly strong showing came after his big win in South Carolina's primary uncorked a burst of momentum and a flood of high-level endorsements that allowed him to sweep across the country and win primaries by landslide margins. Key to his victories were African Americans and late-deciding voters who had been looking for an alternative to Sanders but were unsure if Biden would be strong enough to beat Trump in the general election.
The momentum following South Carolina was so strong that it propelled Biden to win in states like Warren's home state of Massachusetts, where he had not even campaigned and had virtually no campaign infrastructure.
