The eagerly anticipated Super Tuesday results are in and the Democratic field has crystallized significantly. Let’s begin with the obvious – that it was an exceptionally good night for Joe Biden.

While Bernie Sander’s victory in delegate-fertile California might be enough to keep the Vermont socialist within striking distance of Biden in the running delegate count, there is no denying Biden’s near-miraculous resurrection from electoral purgatory, which seemed so permanent as late as a week ago. Another lesson, lest we needed one, in the mercurial nature of electoral politics.

Biden had a good enough night to not only live to fight another day, but to reclaim frontrunner status. Whether carefully orchestrated or coincidental, the self-ejection of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar evidently coalesced the moderate vote around Biden. Granted, there is precious little in Biden’s 40-year congressional career to lend credence to the “moderate” label, especially for those of us seasoned enough to remember the infamous Bork hearings. We are, nevertheless, to some extent slaves to terminological assignment and rough comparative analysis, and so the moderate he is.

Elizabeth Warren, it would seem, is about finished. If she has not already suspended her campaign by the time this is published, I expect she soon will. She did surprisingly poorly in her home state of Massachusetts (never a positive sign when you fail to convince even your friends and neighbors), and here in Colorado, where she had appeared to have substantial support among the Democratic establishment. If, in fact, she was expected to be the bridge between the radical and adult wings of the Democratic Party, that bridge collapsed, most likely because that role was usurped by Joe Biden.

Two questions spring immediately to mind: first, how much did early voting affect the outcomes? Colorado and California are two of the most prominent states to enact early or mail-in voting, and it is not procacious to wonder if that contributed to Sanders’ slightly anomalous victories in the two states.

A second revolves around what is now assumed to be the inevitable exit of Warren, and the all-important question of to where her supporters will turn. It may be safe to assume that a majority will flock to Sanders, given the ideological parallels, but it is difficult to account for how many will elect for the strategic play and begrudgingly support Biden.

It’s not a trivial question; in Minnesota, for instance, had Sanders’ received as many as two-thirds of Warren’s votes, he would have edged out Biden. In Massachusetts, had he absorbed even half of Warren’s total, he would have decisively won.

Ah, but then there’s Michael Bloomberg to consider. Philosophically he occupies the moderate corner, and by applying the same arithmetic as above, one could conclude that his withdrawal would only strengthen the Biden lead. But Bloomberg also shoveled a cool half a billion dollars into the race, leaving one to wonder how many of those votes were anchored in philosophical alignment and how many were based on purchased name-recognition, susceptible to capture by any surviving candidate? Bloomberg performed better than expected in Colorado, but, as noted last week in this space, he also outspent his opponents by an incredible margin. If you watch the morning news, you probably saw his TV ad about a dozen times before your second cup of coffee. Democrat and Unaffiliated mailboxes were jammed with Bloomberg mailers, perhaps punctuated with a lonely Sanders flyer here and there. It could simply be that the average registered Democrat, like the average registered Republican, doesn’t pay strict attention, and is influenced primarily by the type of powerful name recognition that money can clearly buy.

On the other hand, he did spend $500 million to come away only with American Samoa. He did the calculations quickly, jumped out, and threw his support immediately to Biden. We will now see if his supporters do the same.

What do the results mean for Colorado? Well, Sanders clearly won the hearts and minds of a plurality of the states Democrats, and if you add Warren’s votes, it comes to more than 50%. So the Colorado Democratic party’s leftward drift continues.

As for the GOP, the looming Sanders-Biden duel brings understandable satisfaction. The prevailing attitude among Republicans is that a Sanders nomination would be a hammer-and-sickle-wrapped electoral gift. A word of caution is in order though; be careful what you wish for. Similar sentiments were uttered two years ago concerning a Jared Polis gubernatorial nomination, and here we are.

The Democratic presidential primary is now a contest for the ideological heart and soul of the Democratic Party nationwide, and if Tuesday’s results are any indication, Colorado Democrats may be finding themselves on the losing side if they continue their flirtation with Sanders/Peter Pan school of political thought.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.