The 2020 Democratic presidential nominating contest is ending as it began. If you look at the polling over the entire course of the race so far, Joe Biden led almost from beginning to end. Up until the voting actually started, Biden was the clear favorite to win the nomination. Indeed, there really was only one other candidate -- out of a total field of 29, mind you -- that showed the strength to even be competitive with the former vice president, and that was Bernie Sanders. Bernie held onto second place in the polling pretty consistently, and this remained almost unchanged from beginning to end. Only one other candidate ever even rose into the ranks Bernie and Joe occupied, but while Elizabeth Warren enjoyed a big spike upwards (briefly snatching first place away from Biden), it almost immediately fell back to where she was really only challenging Sanders for second place. For all the media swooning over this candidate or that (this week it's Beto... no, no, it's Mayor Pete... wait, Kamala's looking pretty good!... hey, how about Amy's debate performance?), none of them ever saw their poll ratings live up to the lavish attention bestowed upon them by the media. The entire race, from even before Biden announced right up until the Iowa caucuses, was really one between only Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Which is where we now find ourselves, once again.

Of course, once people started actually voting, the political twists and turns really began in earnest, which wildly changed the race from a rather stagnant two-person contest into a true multi-candidate scramble. Iowa royally screwed up its vote-counting, which led to Pete Buttigieg winning the delegate race (while Bernie won the most votes), but he failed to really get the wave of enthusiasm he should have gotten, due to all the delays in reporting the results. Bernie went on to win New Hampshire over Pete, and it started to look like maybe the two-person contest was going to be between the two of them, as Biden faded into the background. But then Pete's Achilles' heel showed up, in his dismal showing with voters of color. First Bernie trounced him in Nevada among Latinos, and then Joe Biden began his comeback with a blowout win in South Carolina on the strength of the African-American vote. All the while, Michael Bloomberg spent money like a drunken sailor, only to shoot himself in both feet with his disastrous debate performances.

This is where politics-as-usual went out the window. Because while there were only three days between the South Carolina vote and Super Tuesday, the landscape of the race shifted radically during that period, in a political earthquake of historic proportions. First Pete dropped out, without endorsing anyone. Amy Klobuchar quickly followed with the announcement that not only was she dropping out, but that she was endorsing Biden. Pete suddenly decided to do so as well, which consolidated a lot of the moderate vote behind a single candidate. Mike Bloomberg stuck around (since he hadn't even been on a ballot yet), but his debate performances (which were universally seen as odiferously bad) had already cut the legs out from under any momentum he had been building.

All of which added up to Biden having the night of his political life last night, winning 10 out of a possible 14 states, including some upsets that nobody predicted (myself included) such as winning Massachusetts, Maine, and Minnesota. Biden went -- within a four day period -- from being considered almost out of the race to being the clear frontrunner. That's a political resurrection of historic proportions, obviously. This morning, Michael Bloomberg announced he was dropping out and throwing his support behind Biden. Elizabeth Warren, as of this writing, is considering her future prospects and may also soon announce a withdrawal from the race.

Whether Warren pulls out or not, though, it is now clearly a two-person race. Technically, there could be as many as four candidates on the next Democratic debate stage, since Tulsi Gabbard is still running, and since she picked up a single delegate from American Samoa last night. But whether Gabbard or Warren are on stage or not next time around, it is clearly now a race between two old, white men. So much for diversity among the candidates, eh?

The pressure on Warren to drop out is already intense, because the Bernie team is already pushing the storyline that Biden beat Bernie in so many places because the moderates consolidated while the progressives did not. That's unfair to Warren, because Pete and Amy dropping out was so unusual to begin with. Again, there were only three days between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, and Warren was in nowhere near as bad shape as either Pete or Amy were. But going forward, the argument for Warren staying in the race becomes almost impossible to now make. Which is what she is obviously pondering right now.

There are a few other takeaways from last night's results worth pointing out. The first is that while everyone loves to decry the influence of money in politics, there's a clear lesson here that money isn't everything. Michael Bloomberg spent a half-billion dollars to win... America Samoa. That's not exactly a good return on investment, as the Wall Street folks like to say. But it goes beyond Bloomberg. Democrats were not limited to a single billionaire this time around, after all. There was Tom Steyer, who spend a quarter-billion of his own money to win... nothing at all. And he wasn't even the only other deep-pocket candidate forced to drop out. John Delaney was actually the first Democrat to announce he was running, and he spent a whole lot of his own money on the early states to absolutely no effect whatsoever. Andrew Yang actually did excite a small faction of Democrats (the "Yang Gang"), but never managed to expand his base enough to be a contender. And they weren't even the only ones who had more money than actual political support (Marianne Williamson also springs to mind). So just having a bunch of money and a willingness to spend it freely simply does not equate to actual voter support, no matter how many television ads you force the public to watch. That is an important lesson, but it is one that few will be noticing today (other than to gleefully point out how much Bloomberg spent per vote or per delegate, as some are indeed already doing).

Also somewhat surprising is the fact that not only does money play less of a role in elections than you would think, but endorsements play an even bigger role than many had come to believe. Endorsements were "old-school" politics that didn't really matter in the digital social-media age, some said, and more attention was at times paid to big entertainment figures who endorsed one candidate or the other than to the traditional political endorsements from sitting members of Congress, sitting state elected officials, and respected former politicians. But Joe Biden simply would not have had such a good week if it hadn't been for his last-minute endorsements. In South Carolina, James Clyburn proved to be the kingmaker. An overwhelming amount of voters in the exit polls said that Clyburn's endorsement mattered when they were making up their minds. Many voters said they decided very late, which also meant that Clyburn's endorsement likely played a key role. But after Biden's big South Carolina win, he got the two biggest endorsements of all from Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. Candidates who previously ran against you coming over to your team is a clear show of strength, and a lot of the voters who were planning on casting a ballot for Amy and Pete yesterday were obviously influenced by them throwing their support behind Biden. Beto O'Rourke's endorsement also must have mattered (on a lesser scale), since Biden scored an upset victory in Texas over Bernie. Endorsements still do matter, from key politicians that voters still look up to -- even when they come at the last minute.

The good news overall for Democrats is that we should all be thankful for Donald Trump, because he is unifying the party like nobody else ever has. Beating Trump is such an overriding concern that Trump is actually spurring voter turnout to record highs -- higher even than Barack Obama's historic win in 2008. Crucially, voter turnout is surging to all-time highs among suburban voters -- the same ones that propelled Democrats to such a big 2018 midterm victory. That bodes very well indeed for November. Suburban women gave the House back to Nancy Pelosi, and they may also prove to be the biggest force in Trump's defeat.

So where do we go from here? Well, a two-person race means a long slog, most likely. Since California is so slow to verify its results, there are still hundreds of delegates left to be assigned. It's even unclear who will have the lead in delegates after all the votes are counted. Right now, Biden is ahead in the count, and he may wind up retaining this lead. But Bernie could also wind up with more delegates, although the impact of this will be muted since it wasn't announced on the actual night of the election. Either way, it's a pretty close race right now, that either one of them could conceivably win in the end. Even if Bernie manages to edge Biden out in the final count from last night, this will be nowhere near the commanding delegate lead he was expected to now have.

One thing that should have died last night was the media's obsession with the possibility of a contested convention. As I've been pointed out for a while, the most important thing in the race was likely going to be when candidates dropped out, and so far this has proven to be true. The media had to pretend that all the top candidates were going to continue their campaigns right up to the convention, which never really made much sense. Sure, if Pete and Amy and Mike stayed in it for the long haul, then the possibility existed that no single candidate would have a clear majority of delegates; but in a two-man race, that's looking less and less within the realm of possibility. The media really should have realized (or admitted) in the past few weeks that this was going to be the much more likely outcome -- but it was more fun to engage in rampant speculation instead, I suppose.

Psychologically, Joe Biden is the clear frontrunner right now, no matter what the final Super Tuesday delegate count turns out to be. Biden won 10 out of 14 states, while Bernie only picked up four. Biden will also likely lead in the total number of voters who voted for him in all the primaries to date. And Biden obviously is the one with the momentum on his side right now.

But while the media may give itself whiplash in shifting from the storyline: "Bernie Sanders is going to be the inevitable nominee" to the new one: "Joe Biden is now all but inevitable," neither was ever really completely true. There are still a whole lot of states left to vote, and anything could happen. Bernie could have another heart attack. Biden could self-destruct in a future debate. Nobody is inevitable, at this still-rather-early date.

Even so, it is beginning to look a lot like the 2016 race at this point. Bernie Sanders will likely have to play catch-up in the delegate race, which could turn out to be impossible (as indeed it proved to be versus Hillary Clinton). Unless Bernie has a night comparable to Biden's big victories last night, he will be the underdog from this point on, fighting against the tide of Biden's newfound momentum. The real question for November is how ugly this race could get. If Joe and Bernie absolutely savage each other for the next few months, then they could build resentment among their respective voting bases against each other to the point where party unity becomes extremely hard to achieve once the primary race is over. If they can avoid personal attacks to the degree that allows for the voters to move on once the nominee is crowned, then that will obviously be a better situation for Democrats heading into the general election.

Bernie will likely be leaning heavily on the idea that "electability didn't work in 2016," and he'll definitively have a point. Clinton was easily seen as "the most electable" candidate, right up until she lost to Trump. Biden can't just coast on the wave of "I'm the safest candidate to nominate" -- he's got to start doing a much better job of giving the voters a real theme to vote for, instead of just being against either Bernie or Trump himself.

But for now, Biden can bask in a spectacular finish on Super Tuesday, on top of his equally-impressive showing in South Carolina. He not only beat all expectations, he pulled off one of the biggest political comebacks this country has ever seen. That's a monumental achievement, and it's what cleared all the other moderate candidates out of his lane. In one week we went from a fractured field with five major candidates down to what is now essentially a two-person race. That's a turnaround for the ages, and it's why Biden now has the wind at his back heading into the rest of the primary calendar.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant