As the polls begin to close on March 3, dubbed Super Tuesday, the race has tightened to two candidates. 

The drama started on Saturday with the South Carolina Primary when the dead was resurrected by a predictable and much-assured win in South Carolina. We‘re talking about former Vice President Joe Biden, of course. His campaign had staked its aspirations with a final stand in South Carolina where he had always polled well.

What happened next played out like a well-written show of alliances, fealty, and backstabbing. It wasn’t a House of Cards, rather more like Game of Thrones. It started late Sunday night when former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg suspended his campaign. The next day we learned that Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) would also be dropping and planning to endorse Biden immediately.

It’s not unheard of for people to drop, but two candidates dropping within less than a day of one another and endorsing the biggest competitor in the moderate lane was strange. Even odder was that they quickly bent the knee to Biden, who suddenly became anointed frontrunner again in the eyes of corporate media.

The moderates all gathered in Texas to have their small convention on Monday night with both Buttigieg and Klobuchar heaping high praises to their former foe. Biden had successfully consolidated the moderate vote.

But, we had one more person bend the knee: a former media darling who pretended to be progressive. The one they call Roberto ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, who decided to join the endorsement pile in Texas. While O’Rourke became irrelevant and dropped out of the race rather early, his endorsement was well-timed as Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has pulled ahead of Biden in the Lonestar State.

The race has clearly become a two-way contest between Biden and Sanders, while former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has become stagnant after his debate performances. 

The only strange case is Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), whose campaign was on its deathbed. That is until a transfusion of Super PAC money (Persist 2020) brought it back to life despite no chance of catching up in delegates to the top two candidates.

It is worthy of speculation that, while Biden has gathered an alliance of moderates, Elizabeth Warren is a sort of outlier. It’s curious that she would hang on despite having the least amount of delegate when compared to Buttigieg.