Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a brilliant debater and policy expert who ran a disciplined, proficient campaign. Yet she dropped her presidential bid after winning none of the first 20 primary elections and placing a dismal third in her home state of Massachusetts. What happened?

The answer lies not just in Warren’s flameout, but in the shrinking campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was the frontrunner a week ago but is now behind the recently moribund Joe Biden. With a large sampling of votes representing all cross sections of the Democratic electorate now in the bag, it’s evident that voters simply don’t want the radical, disruptive regime Sanders and Warren have both promised.

Sanders first. He’d remake the U.S. economy most dramatically, with a vastly expanded welfare state. College would be free for everybody. The government would finance healthcare for all. Fossil fuels would be out. Green energy would be in. Fired workers from disfavored energy and industrial sectors would go on the government dole if they didn’t magically find new work in Sandersland. All these goodies and more would be paid for by sharply higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy that could cut into the availability of private capital and shrink the economy.

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Like most revolutions, the Sanders insurgency relies on idealistic young people manning the barricades. But young people aren’t. The portion of primary voters aged 18-29 is actually lower so far in 2020 than it was at the same point in 2016. Sanders is winning those voters by 41 percentage points over Biden, and he’s also winning 30- to 44-year-olds by 19 percentage points. But Sanders isn’t persuading more younger people to vote. “Sanders hasn’t expanded the universe of younger voters,” analyst Amy Walter wrote for the Cook Political Report. Biden, meanwhile, has large leads among older voters who are turning out in high numbers.

A surge of younger voters is crucial for Sanders, because if he were the Democratic nominee, that’s the only chance he’d have at beating President Trump. Sanders isn’t even drawing enough new young voters to beat a stale Joe Biden. Young people may be discovering that revolution usually sounds better than it is.

Flight to safety

Voters are also sending the unmistakable message that they want a safe candidate with the best chance of beating Trump, rather than a bomb-thrower like Sanders. “Biden’s smashing win in South Carolina restored faith in his presumed electability, and the twin dropouts and endorsements by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar allowed Biden to keep riding the wave,” Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics explained after Biden’s dramatic overperformance in the March 3 Super Tuesday elections. The best evidence for this flight to safety among voters is Biden’s surprise win in Massachusetts on March 3. Sanders was favored to win, and Elizabeth Warren to come in second, since it’s her home state. Biden barely even campaigned there, knowing his odds were long. Yet Bay Staters said no thanks to Sanders and Warren, we’ll take Biden.