(CN) – With the Democratic presidential primary in a state of extreme flux, former Vice President Joe Biden continued to marshal the vast middle ground of Democratic voters Monday with endorsements from Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar whose campaigns died on the field of electoral battle in South Carolina.
With his campaign flailing after losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden rose from the near-dead and won almost 50% of the vote in South Carolina on Saturday, catapulting him virtually overnight into the moderate that front-runner Bernie Sanders has to beat. The coalescing followed quickly on the victory, and on Monday outside of a Dallas restaurant, Buttigieg turned his rhetoric and his support to the man in the middle.
“When I ran for president, we made it clear that the whole idea was about rallying the country together to defeat Donald Trump,” Buttigieg said. “It is in the name of that very same goal that I am delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for president.”
Biden thanked Buttigieg in a speech that visibly moved the former mayor. “He reminds me of my son, Beau,” Biden said, referring to his oldest son who died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. “It’s the highest compliment I can give any man or woman. Like Beau, he has a backbone like a ramrod.”
Biden indicated that if he wins the nomination and the presidency, he will ask Buttigieg to join in his administration.
Klobuchar threw her support behind Biden at a Dallas rally alongside former 2020 contender Beto O’Rourke.
“It is up to us, all of us, to put our country back together to heal this county,” Klobuchar said. “I believe we can do this together, and that is why today I am ending my campaign and endorsing Joe Biden for president.”
After Klobuchar, former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke entered the stage to raucous applause.
“I will be casting my ballot for Joe Biden,” O’Rourke announced. “We need somebody who can bring us together and heal us … we need Joe Biden.”
Biden told the audience it won’t be the last they see of O’Rourke.
“You are going to take care of this gun problem with me,” Biden said, embracing the former congressman.
Despite the slew of endorsements for Biden, the middle may not be a safe place in the hectic competition to rack up Democratic convention votes.
“Bernie can be really divisive. But I think he’s the only one with a solid grassroots following. Since he’s got a different strategy, he’s activating people who are unactivated,” said 27-year-old Jason Schwartz at a Biden rally earlier in Houston. “Younger voters and people in more rural communities, especially in manufacturing areas of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”
The former vice president’s campaign ran in high gear Monday as he also held a rally at a historic black college in Houston, reinforcing his ties to a core constituency that revived his campaign ahead of crucial Super Tuesday primary elections.
Texas Southern University, founded in 1927, has 10,000 students and an endowment of $59 million. Its 150-acre campus is within blocks of the University of Houston’s main 667-acre campus, which has more than 40,000 students and an endowment of $959 million.
Ringed by supporters in the atrium of a TSU science building, Biden stepped to the microphone as his former boss President Barack Obama’s voice played on speakers.