No Obama endorsement for Joe — yet Welcome to the Maclean's Politics Insider: America 2020, launched for readers who crave U.S. political news during primary season. If you want to receive this new newsletter, take no action, it will arrive in your inbox every weekday at noon. If you'd rather not receive it, please unsubscribe here. Don't expect an Obama endorsement: Remember when Joe Biden's campaign was all but finished? That was two weeks ago, and my how the tables have turned. With his big blowout win in Saturday's South Carolina Democratic primary, the former vice-president is now seen by many as the only establishment Democrat who has a chance of beating Bernie Sanders for the nomination — but he will need a lot of help if he hopes to stop Sanders from winning the most delegates. And the one person who could give him the most help, his former boss Barack Obama, is not about to give it anytime soon. Although he called Biden to congratulate him on his first-ever primary win, CNN reports that Obama has no plans to endorse a candidate before Super Tuesday. Obama, still the most broadly popular person in the Democratic party, is trying to conserve that popularity in case the party goes to the convention without a clear winner: "He feels that he's singularly positioned to help unify the party at the end of this," the Obama confidant said. "And if he were try to put his thumb on the scale now, it would take away his ability to do so when it's most needed — the general election." Mayor Pete suspends campaign: One of the most unlikely success stories of the primaries was Pete Buttigieg, who chose to end his campaign on Sunday after his fourth-place finish in South Carolina. There were at least two things every story seemed to mention about Buttigieg: one, he was the first openly gay politician to run a viable presidential campaign (his husband, Chasten, was by his side for his announcement), and two, although his résumé included military service and a Rhodes scholarship, his highest-level political job was as the Mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana. Buttigieg was frequently compared to Barack Obama , as he successfully positioned himself as the sunny moderate alternative to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, and the young alternative (he just turned 38) to, well, almost every other candidate. He turned this into a strong showing in Iowa, where he won the most delegates, but he could never overcome his inability to attract more voters of colour. Did Mayor Pete fear throwing the race to Sanders?: Buttigieg's departure from the race was not a foregone conclusion, but after meeting with former president Jimmy Carter, he decided not to compete on Super Tuesday, reportedly fearing that he might be blamed for siphoning off moderate votes and allowing Bernie Sanders to walk away with the race. Warren's path to the nomination: One person who hasn't dropped out is Elizabeth Warren, who finished fifth in South Carolina and isn't expected to win many states on Tuesday, if any. But Warren's staffers and friends have told Politico that she intends to stay in until the convention, where she hopes to become the nominee if no candidate arrives there with a majority of delegates. As her campaign manager Roger Lau spelled out in a public memo: “In the road to the nomination, the Wisconsin primary is halftime, and the convention in Milwaukee is the final play.” Klobuchar rally cancelled: Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar also didn't have a good Saturday night, finishing sixth. Sunday night wasn't much better: she tried to hold a rally ahead of the state's Super Tuesday primary, but was met with protests on behalf of Myron Burrell, who was sentenced to life in prison while still a teenager; Klobuchar was the prosecutor in that case, and the case for his guilt has been deemed questionable. The rally was delayed for 40 minutes and finally cancelled outright. —Jaime Weinman | 
