Biden and Sanders Offer a Choice: Unite or Fight?

It isn’t hard to imagine a Joe Biden administration in which Kamala Harris is vice president, Michael Bloomberg is treasury secretary, Pete Buttigieg is homeland security secretary, Tom Steyer is climate-change czar and Andrew Yang is commerce secretary—or, well, maybe special envoy for math and numbers and stuff like that.

It is, on the other hand, almost impossible to imagine a Bernie Sanders administration in which that same group of former competitors would unite.

In a nutshell, that illustrates the most basic choice Democrats face now that Mr. Biden’s candidacy was revived in South Carolina’s primary just before this week’s Super Tuesday primaries. Mr. Sanders talks of waging a pitched battle against the status quo of both parties, culminating in a revolution. Mr. Biden proposes a return to the kind of calm and normalcy that prevailed before the arrival of President Trump.

So, are Democrats in 2020 looking for somebody who promises to fight, or somebody who promises to unite?

Mr. Biden framed the choice precisely this way in the speech he delivered after his decisive South Carolina victory Saturday night, perhaps the most definitive address of his candidacy to date: “Winning means uniting America, not sowing more division and anger. It means not only fighting but healing the country. We have to beat Donald Trump and the Republican party. But here’s the deal: We can’t become like them.”