Stay tuned after the show for a message from Google.

Happy Super Tuesday. I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing.

And I'm Jake Sherman in Minneapolis. Joe Biden said yesterday, this isn't an election to spend

all of our time in the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. We're in the battle for the

soul of the country. It's one of his usual lines, but now it's wrong. for that's exactly what this race has become an existential battle between two competing forces in the Democratic

Party, and in that, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders now have the race they wanted.

Biden is consolidating establishment democratic support with speed and precision as he makes

the case that he, and only he, can steer the party through an election

with Donald Trump atop the ballot. Biden is rounding up prominent supporters like Pete Buttigieg,

Amy Klobuchar, and Beto O'Rourg in Dallas on Monday night, and he's finally beginning to raise

the millions he needs to continue deep into March and April.

Biden is so eager for unity that he told a local reporter in Houston on Monday that he would ask

Buttigieg to be in his administration. Sanders, on the other hand, has the Democratic forces

lining up against him as the party pooh-bos poo-poo his candidacy. He's packing public parks,

aircraft hangers, and here in the Twin Cities on Monday night, an auditorium with more than 8,000 people, where he managed to both whack the establishment and court establishment democratic support. He invited Klobuchar and Buttigieg's supporters to side with him while saying the establishment was nervous and out to get him. This is Bernie Sweet Spot, rail against the establishment, and used that to rally his base.

Sanders' unity plea included a mention of how all the Democrats who have run for the nomination

shared the understanding that together they can beat Donald Trump.

But then right after it, he went into an establishment broadside, saying, now, as you all

know, you can't miss it if you turn on the TV,

the establishment in this country, the economic establishment, and the political establishment,

are becoming very nervous. Sanders even allowed this. Imagine, a Democratic Party in which

working people and young people finally have a voice. This primary is likely to go clear through the month of March.

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