Lloyd Green at The Guardian:
On Sunday, America caught a glimpse of the coming campaign: two septuagenarians battling each other without a live audience applauding and goading. The debate changed nothing, but at the end of the evening Joe Biden was sitting on the cusp of the Democratic nomination. Come Tuesday, the former vice-president is poised for lopsided wins in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio.
Without Hillary Clinton as a foil and target, Sanders’ luster appears gone. It is no longer his time, if it ever was. As Biden put it: “We have problems we have to solve now. What’s a revolution going to do? Disrupt everything in the meantime?”
Faced with a pestilential presidency, the Democrats are ready to rally to around the Delaware Democrat. Even better for Biden, so too may be the rest of the country. Nationally, the latest polls give Biden a nine-point lead over Donald Trump. Whether Biden can sustain that edge remains to be seen.
Amid a pandemic, a battered stock market and zero-interest rates, a president disclaiming his own responsibility is more than America can afford or bear. Unalloyed self-absolution and the Oval Office are a toxic brew. A Biden presidency would not be flashy but it would definitely be engaged.
John F. Harris at Politico:
The assumption that there is no practical way the Democratic Party can put forward a presidential ticket with two white men has become so widely accepted in journalistic and political circles that a major development at last night’s debate was greeted in some quarters with something of a shrug.
But Joseph Biden’s firm public commitment that he would select a woman as his running mate in the event he stays atop the Democratic race and is the party’s 2020 nominee is historically unprecedented: No major candidate has ever made such a pledge based on demographic characteristics, nor has one narrowed the field of potential vice presidential nominees this early in the year, several months before the decision is usually made.
