America does everything super-size, from burgers and shakes to primaries and caucuses.
The case was no different on March 1, as Super Tuesday pushed the unfolding, high-drama election season into warp speed and yielded bountiful results for the front runner candidates of the Democratic and Republican Parties — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump respectively.
Ms. Clinton, a former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator, won seven out of 11 States that went to the polls and Mr. Trump, a real estate billionaire from New York, scooped up the exact same number of States.
Yet rather than the number of States won, a transfixed America was closely watching a different parameter — the delegate count.
After the blitzkrieg of Super Tuesday, the delegate count stands as follows: Ms. Clinton has won a total of about 1033 delegates — including super-delegates — and her only rival , Senator from Vermont and self-professed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, has won a total of 408 delegates.
To secure the Democratic Party nomination, a candidate would have to win 2,383 delegates.
Hence, there is still a long battle ahead for Ms. Clinton, especially as Mr. Sanders proved on Tuesday that he was very much in the fight by denying her a victory in four States.
The red corner went into Super Tuesday with what is essentially a three-way tussle, between Mr. Trump and, trailing him relatively far behind in the opinion polls, U.S. Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, and U.S. Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio.
As the results started becoming clear, Mr. Trump’s total tally stood at 316 delegates, , Mr. Cruz’s at 226 delegates, and Mr. Rubio’s at 106 delegates — each of them quite far from the 1,237 figure needed to clinch the nomination.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Rubio, respectively, cornered three States and one State.
The electrifying effect of Super Tuesday has taken the attention of the nation further to that important date: November 8, 2016, the day on which the next President will be elected. A CNN poll of 910 registered voters on their likely pick in a hypothetical race between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump has handed Ms. Clinton a 52 per cent margin over Mr. Trump’s 44 per cent.
Is Ms. Clinton the best person then, to bring the Democrats four more years at the White House?
Hillary vs. Sanders
Notwithstanding her growing lead in the delegate count and the opinion polls, it is certainly possible to imagine reasons why she may not in fact be the ultimate nominee.
For instance, it is not clear whether Ms. Clinton has recovered politically from the fallout of the Benghazi controversy or from the more troubling questions surrounding her use of a private e-mail server while handling classified documents.
Her closeness to Wall Street and her unapologetic reliance on the funding of deep-pocketed donors have been flagged multiple times and her discomfort with that line of attack has been discernible. Mr. Sanders, on the other hand, is likely to carry with him a large swathe of the liberal population.
Even more troubling for Ms. Clinton could be liberal movements such as ‘Bernie or Bust’, which vow that if Mr. Sanders loses the nomination they will either write in his name in the general election or consider casting their ballot for a Republican.
Yet, the strongest reason for Democrats to continue coalescing behind Ms. Clinton might be that she is far closer to the centre of the American political spectrum than Mr. Sanders is, and in that position she has the best chance of carrying with her not only the independent and undecided voters, but also African-Americans, Hispanics, and many other minority communities.
In the event that it is Mr. Trump from the Republican side, with his alarming brand of far-right politics, liberal America would do well to throw its weight behind the candidate with the highest odds of unifying the country and not allowing it to polarise at the extremes.
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