A week or so ago, the candidacy of Joe Biden was at death’s door.

Today, Biden’s candidacy is not only alive. He is first in votes, victories and delegates, and is favored to win the nomination and, by most polls, to defeat Donald Trump in November.

“The World Turned Upside Down” was a song the British army band is said to have played at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. That title applies to what happened in the U.S. political world in the five days from Feb. 29 to March 4.

Going into South Carolina on Feb. 29, Biden had run a miserable and losing campaign.

All in all, a triumphal week for Biden, who racked up 11 state primary victories.

But if earlier reports of the demise of Biden were premature, so, too, are today’s confident predictions of a Biden sweep this November, marching over the political corpse of Trump and bringing in a Democratic Senate and Democratic House.

As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Sanders’ “Revolution” remains unreconciled to a Beltway-Biden restoration, against which many of the Democratic candidates railed before dropping out, including Elizabeth Warren.

Sanders, for whom this is the last hurrah, must decide whether he wants to go down fighting for his cause or stack arms and march into Biden’s camp.

If Sanders chooses to fight, he can, even in near-certain defeat, be victorious in history if his “movement” one day captures the national party as it has captured a plurality of the party’s young.

If Sanders goes into the coming debates and forces Biden to defend his votes — for George Bush’s war in Iraq and for NAFTA and WTO trade concessions to Communist China — he may still be crushed.

Then there is Biden’s vulnerability.

He may be hailed by a fickle media as a conquering hero today. But after the cheering stops, Biden is going to be, for the next eight months, the same candidate he has been for the last eight months. Here is a description of that candidate by The New York Times the day after his Super Tuesday triumph:

“Any suggestion that Mr. Biden is now a risk-free option would appear to contradict the available evidence. He is no safer with a microphone, no likelier to complete a thought without exaggeration or bewildering detour.

“Mr. Biden has blundered this chance before — the establishment front-runner; the last, best hope for moderates — fumbling his initial 2020 advantages in a hail of disappointing fund-raising, feeble campaign organization and staggering underperformance.”

It ain’t over till it’s over.

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