Back in 2020 he was a supposed frontrunner struggling to look like one, fresh off a sluggish performance in the 2020 Iowa caucuses. He asked New Hampshire voters to help him flip the narrative and deliver him a comeback. He snarked back at critics, belittled a younger challenger and called one woman “a lying, dog-faced pony soldier” at a campaign event.
Then he skipped his own campaign party, headed to South Carolina, and finished a distant fifth in New Hampshire’s primary, faring worse than the former mayor of a midsized Midwestern city.
Well, that’s the stated rationale, and you may take it at face value. I don’t trust the party’s word that easily. It’s the same party it was in 2016, and they know that red states favor centrists. Particularly South Carolina, which was the crux of Biden’s primary win in 2020.