The truth is that the two-way race between Biden and Warren didn’t exist until after Iowa, where both candidates performed poorly — Biden worse than Warren, but both worse than they had anticipated. As voters in New Hampshire make their decisions in today’s primary, Biden and Warren are tied for fourth place in the Real Clear Politics polling average — behind Sanders and Pete Buttigieg by a large margin and Amy Klobuchar by almost a point.

“They’ve both taken on the stench of death,” a staffer on a rival campaign told me.

“Biden has lurched between different messages each of the last few days and delivered them to rooms so quiet you could hear a pin drop,” the staffer said. “His events have all the enthusiasm of a wake.”

“Warren has been squeezed — she was never going to out-Bernie Bernie,” the staffer added, “and she’s struggled with how exactly to position herself. Given that she’s from Massachusetts and shares a massive media market with New Hampshire, it’s hard to imagine how anything but a first- or second-place showing could be good for her campaign.”