Ash Wednesday — Super Tuesday:
The Week That Changed History
Pundits penned political obituaries. After finishing a dismal fourth place in the Iowa Caucuses and a disastrous fifth in New Hampshire, the Biden bust whispers grew into a chorus of naysayers. He missed his chance in 2016; he was past his prime. Heading into Nevada, the question had shifted from whether Biden could beat Trump to whether the Democrats were really going to entrust their ticket to Bernie and his rabid supporters, Bloomberg and his billions, or rely on Klobuchar/Buttigieg/Warren to consolidate. As far as the political elite were concerned, it was the sad end to an otherwise distinguished career.
Everything changed on Ash Wednesday. As he took the stage for a CNN Town Hall in Charleston, he gave up his sanitized style polished by a team of political consultants. Safely positioning himself as the anti-Trump had not been enough. It was time to listen to his friend, Representative Jim Clyburn, who told him that he must focus and he must fight. Meandering messages that were hard to follow and even harder to turn into soundbites for an omnipresent media must go the way of the dinosaur. In their place, a boiled down message that packed a punch.
Biden’s weapon of choice, empathy, was forged in the fires of pain and loss. Joe Biden’s family had been traveling down a rural road in Delaware when a 60,000 lb tractor-trailer plowed into their vehicle. His wife and 13-month old baby girl were dead before they got to the hospital. His two young boys had a broken leg and a fractured skull. In that tragic moment, Joe confessed that he could understand suicide and but for the need to care for his motherless boys, he might have found himself there. But fate had not shot her final piercing arrow of tragedy Biden’s way. In 2015, Beau Biden, the Vice-President’s son, died of brain cancer.
If there was anything Biden knew, it was pain, it was tragedy, it was torment. And then it happened. With millions watching the CNN Town Hall in Charleston, Reverend Anthony Thompson grabbed the microphone. Reverend Thompson’s wife, Myra, was shot and killed in a church-shooting burned into the soul of America in 2015. The question was about faith but it was the answer about purpose that changed everything. With the empathy that only a man who shared in gut-wrenching tragedy can muster, Biden gave an answer of meaning, and hope, and purpose before an audience stunned into silence. From memory, Biden rattled off the name of the pastor and the reverend, the church and the denomination, and recounted their meeting as if it had only been a week ago. But it wasn’t the attention to detail that washed over the crowd, it was the shared pain of two men beaten down by unspeakable loss, holding back tears before a national audience, committed to moving forward in hope steered by the purpose they found in heartbreak.
The next primary was to be held in South Carolina and Congressman Jim Clyburn had not planned to endorse a candidate. Biden had been floundering in early states and falling in South Carolina’s polls as the primary drew near. But, when an elderly constituent asked Clyburn who he would vote for, his answer would be marked by some as the inflection point in the campaign: “We know Joe. But more importantly, Joe knows us.” The previous September, Clyburn’s wife of 58 years passed away. Biden made it a point to be at her funeral and offer words of comfort to his old friend Jim. When Clyburn reshaped the primary in South Carolina he did not do so because he and Emily had been friends with Joe; he did it because Joe had been a friend to him in his darkest moment. “Joe knows us” and by implication, Joe knows you. If not personally, then by a shared experience that exudes empathy.
This rest of the story is well known: Biden would crush Sanders in South Carolina by a margin of 49% to 20%, largely carried by black voters, sixty percent of whom said Clyburn’s endorsement was an important factor. Over the next couple of days, Steyer, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar would all drop out and endorse Biden. When it came time for Beto o’Rourke, he too cited Biden’s empathy as a key factor in making his decision: “I just was struck by his ability to connect with that one person, and then with all of us, simultaneously.” The Vice President would ride this momentum into Super Tuesday with a dominating performance: completely sweeping the South, including five states he hadn’t even campaigned in and beating Warren in her home state of Massachusetts.
The contested primaries would continue for another five weeks, but the die had been cast that Tuesday evening. Joe Biden would be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. In retrospect, it can almost feel as if it was always going to be this way, Joe’s rendezvous with destiny. It’s easy to forget that Biden’s candidacy was dead in the water until one fateful week where everything changed: Ash Wednesday through Super Tuesday, the week that rewrote the history books.
