What happened?
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump nearly swept their respective primaries on Super Tuesday, including in delegate-rich California and Texas. But Nikki Haley won a surprise victory in Vermont’s Republican primary and a little-known Democrat, Jason Palmer, beat Biden in American Samoa’s caucus.
Who said what?
“Millions of voters” showed they are ready to “defend democracy” and “fight back against Donald Trump’s extreme plan to take us backward,” Biden said. Trump called Tuesday an “amazing night” but spent the bulk of his 20-minute speech criticizing Biden’s America. Haley’s campaign highlighted the “large block of Republican primary voters” showing “deep concerns about Donald Trump.” Palmer said he learned he won American Samoa, 51 votes to Biden’s 40, when “my phone started blowing up” with text messages.
The commentary
Trump’s Super Tuesday “dominance” ensures he’ll face Biden in “America’s great presidential unpopularity contest,” where “the two major parties are marching to nominate perhaps the only candidates who could lose to the other,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. There were “cautionary signs” for both candidates, The Associated Press said. Trump keeps losing a “stubborn chunk” of the GOP electorate to Haley, and Biden “faces a lack of Democratic enthusiasm on paper,” though evidently “not in the primary.”
What next?
Even with a third of delegates doled out Tuesday, “not enough states will have voted until later this month for Trump or Biden to formally become their parties’ presumptive nominees,” AP said.