Half a billion dollars in campaign ads didn't add up to much for Mike Bloomberg.
But for Joe Biden, 12 words were invaluable.
"I know Joe. We know Joe. But most importantly, Joe knows us," intoned U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn, the deeply respected Democrat from South Carolina whose pre-primary endorsement helped jolt the former vice president's bid for the party's nomination back to life.
The rest, in every sense, is history. Biden gave a vivid victory speech in which Democrats saw the candidate they thought they were getting when they made him the early front-runner.
Next, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar withdrew and threw their support to Biden at a Dallas rally. Texan Beto O'Rourke, who had scuttled his bid weeks earlier, lent his support, too.
And then, three days after his Palmetto State comeback, a superlative Super Tuesday turnout resulted in Biden winning 10 out of 14 states.
But not the one territory, American Samoa, that voted. Bloomberg won there.
That return on investment belied the billionaire's business savvy. In fact, it showed that the strategy of skipping the first four contests in favor of mass saturation advertising wasn't the way to sway voters, even in an era when the political-media complex is one of the defining dynamics of American life.