South Carolina tomorrow!

What everyone needs:

Slow Joe Biden: Certainly there are a lot of Joe eggs in this particular basket. The polling has moved in his favor (for some fairly unknown reason) and this will be make or break. In some ways, polling showing him up 15-20 points sort of sets those expectations. If he wins, but only by single digits, it may end up being a disappointment. So I think Biden need a big double digit win, and ideally enough delegates to propel him into second place in delegate count. Anything short of that, and Biden will be wobbling into Super Tuesday, rather than marching.

Bernie Sanders: Bernie has this a little bit easier. He probably just needs a reasonable second place finish, where he isn't totally blown out of the water. Ideally something within ten points, where the third place finisher is struggling to garner delegates. At this point, Bernie needs to continue to rack up the delegates, and that would be best done by splitting the bulk of the delegates two ways instead of three or four.

Pete Buttigieg: Technically, Buttigieg resides in second place and has done remarkably well so far (finishing 1, 2, and 3). But in reality Buttigieg (like everyone besides Bernie, Slow Joe, and Billionaire Bloomberg) is on life support. Ideally a third place finish garnering some valuable delegates would be a good result that he can probably live with. But if he were to finish behind Steyer, Warren, or god forbid Klobuchar/Gabbard, then it might be a death blow.

Michael Bloomberg: Not competing in this State, but it still matters. Ideally he would like Buttigieg, Biden and Steyer to under-perform. Obviously another big result for Bernie would make the Socialist's path to victory stronger, but before Bloomberg can deal with Bernie, he needs to clear his lane. That means Buttigieg, Biden and Steyer have to go. As long as he is competing for that "moderate lane" he will not catch up to Sanders.

Tom Steyer: Tom needs a third place finish and some delegates pledged to his campaign. He's invested heavily in this state, and he needs some sort of results to continue to believe he is even reasonably viable. He may choose to go into Super Tuesday either way (he obviously has no money problems), but it would be much less embarrassing for him to do so with a good finish in South Carolina.

And the rest:  Obviously there are not much expectation for any of the remaining females in South Carolina. Warren "once" polled in double digits, but that was only once. Klobuchar and Gabbard have a snow balls chance in hell of coming out with delegates. The question for all three will be what to do after Super Tuesday. I know both Warren and Klobuchar have been running ads in Super Tuesday state (and I believe Klobuchar is leading here in Minnesota). Gabbard just doesn't drop out. So you get the feeling that they are just bypassing South Carolina at this point as if it doesn't matter (and it probably doesn't for them).