Dem consultant: Joe’s Titanic Challenge

At Fox News, Mary Anne Marsh has some “bad news” for Joe Biden: Despite his big win in South Carolina, he is “still behind” Bernie Sanders in the delegate count and “so needs South Carolina-size wins all day on Super Tuesday and beyond.” And that will be hard: For one thing, he lacks “any money to buy ads or an organization” in Super Tuesday states. He will probably do well in Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, which have “large pockets of African-American voters” — but those states combined have only 324 delegates. Sanders could “win even more delegates” in “California alone.” At this point, Marsh predicts, nothing short of a “deal” at a contested convention will probably stop Sanders.

From the left: #NeverSanders Is Unserious

Democratic superdelegates who oppose Bernie Sanders “want you to know they’re scared” that he will win their party’s nomination — yet, Vox’s Dylan Matthews sighs, they aren’t “taking the one step that would most plausibly imperil Sanders’ nomination”: encouraging voters to back Joe Biden. The ex-veep, after all, “actually stands a chance against Sanders.” Not only does he have “strength” in “many Super Tuesday states,” he is also “second in national polling to Sanders” — and, unlike Mike Bloomberg, is “a lifelong Democrat with a deep connection to the popular Obama administration.” If “swing-district House members and party elites really want to stop Sanders,” the simple answer is to endorse Biden and “hit the campaign trail” for him.” If they don’t, it shows they aren’t “serious” about nipping socialism in the bud.

2020 watch: Why Buttigieg Called It Quits

“Pete Buttigieg pulled off a surprisingly successful presidential run,” ­salutes FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon, Jr. — but “beating expectations and winning primaries and caucuses are different things.” That’s why Buttigieg’s decision to drop out was no surprise: After finishing “far behind” Bernie Sanders in Nevada and “way, way behind” Joe Biden in South Carolina, he had no apparent “path to start accumulating delegates” on Super Tuesday, and he “never gained much popularity” with blacks and Latinos. He also “stepped aside in part to help the center-left bloc of the party consolidate around Biden” and stop Sanders. That promotes comity with party elites and “Biden in particular.” If “Biden is elected president,” it will be good for the elites — and “probably for Pete Buttigieg, as well.”

Campaign watch: Liz’s Hail Mary

Elizabeth Warren may “walk away from Super Tuesday having not carried any of the first 18 contests,” notes Politico’s Alex Thompson. Yet “she, her campaign and their close allies say she’s in the race all the way to the convention.” Warren advisers’ plan: As “her less well-financed rivals” drop, she’ll try “to collect their supporters.” Even if she doesn’t “win any states outright,” she can probably pocket “a significant number of delegates on ­Super Tuesday and then again on March 10,” giving her power in a contested convention. That’s why Warren is now “more willing to knock her rivals,” including Bernie Sanders, and (delusionally, perhaps) “casting herself as the more ‘effective’ progressive”: She still thinks she can win.

Foreign desk: Judicial Tyranny in Germany

With its ruling last week overturning a 2015 law banning commercially assisted suicide, Monsignor Hans Feichtinger fumes at First Things, Germany’s Constitutional Court “has established an absolute, unlimited right to suicide ‘in all stages of a person’s existence.’  ” As usual, judicial fiat produced a “more radical” solution than a legislative approach: The court did away with the “unbearable-suffering” justification that is the pretext for most assisted-suicide and euthanasia laws. “We should all be afraid of a world in which anything like this is sanctioned under the mantle of the rule of law,” Feichtinger warns, since “totalitarian individualism is no better than any other totalitarianism, even if it appears more humane.” The decision also “demonstrates that delegating such weighty issues to the high courts of our countries is a terrible idea.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Sohrab Ahmari