Who Is Advising Biden?

Realistically, Joe Biden is the only external barrier between Bernie Sanders and the Democratic nomination. (The other obstacle is Sanders' own health situation.) Most of Biden's appeal is that he's "safe."  While he would embrace policies to the left of most Democratic candidates from the past 40 years, he's still the safe, centrist candidate.  His other appeal - which he will be happy to remind you of - is his connection to Obama. 

The problem is that Biden has not properly learned from Obama on how to win a campaign.  It is undeniably true that Biden is and always has been a poor candidate.  He has spectacularly flamed out twice before.  But presumably he - or his advisors - would have learned from Obama's 2008 campaign the power of organizing. 

Yet, on the verge of Super Tuesday, Biden's ground game is apparently non-existent. While it looks like Biden could finally get a win in South Carolina, Sanders, Buttigieg and Warren look to have done a lot more organizing at the field level.

Biden's strategy looks similar to Bloomberg's, and there's some interesting overlap there.  Biden and Bloomberg are both counting on media over organizing, and being "not Trump."  Neither are especially charismatic nor does either have any sort of popular army of supporters.  They are the candidates of safety.  As Warren has destroyed Bloomberg, some of that support is naturally bleeding back to Biden.

There's an argument that Biden could make especially good use of Bloomberg's promise of spending a billion dollars to defeat Trump. Field organizing and registering voters is extremely cost efficient, and Bloomberg seems to realize this at least to a certain degree.

I would worry, though, about Biden's lack of strategic or tactical acumen to this point.  Campaigns aren't JUST the candidate.  It's about how they leverage support.  Bernie's supporters can be very nettlesome, but they are passionate.  Buttigieg has shown really sound strategic practices, to a fault.  He often sounds like a parody of an Obama imitation.

Can Booker or Harris get back in?