Sometimes, I still manage to be awed by the fact that we all got to live through the blink-of-an-eye experience that was one of the most successful comeback stories - if not the most successful comeback story - in American political history.
Is it a comeback story? IA, NH, SC, and NV combined had less than 1% of the delegates. Number wise, Biden had nothing to worry
Narrative wise? Yeah it was a comback to the eyes of the media. But the media isn't the real world. How much media attention did Booty and KLOB get compared to the actual results?
I mean, numbers-wise, of course he had nothing to worry about, which is why they understood that they needed to stay in & why "just make it to SC" became their maxim. The problem with the narratives about it all, though, was that bad narratives generally tend to beget, well, bad outcomes, while the opposite is obviously true of good narratives. For example, Buttigieg would've never made it as far as he did if he hadn't managed to pick up the good Spring 2019 media cycle as well as the resultant narrative that it produced that practically catapulted him into more people giving him a legitimate look. Sure, he didn't end up winning the nomination, but he literally won Iowa less than a year after having been an unknown (relatively-)small-town mayor, & then parlayed the influence thereof into a seat in Biden's Cabinet. That just doesn't happen without the positive media attention that he got. So, in that sense, the media is very much the real world, in that it can make or break the very reality in which these candidates compete. Thus, the Biden candidacy's comeback.
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