When Donald Trump woke up at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Wednesday, he had every reason to feel very pleased with himself.

Efforts by Nikki Haley, other major rivals and “Never Trump supporters” to block his bid for the Republican nomination have evaporated.

The U.S. Supreme Court — which doesn’t even order takeout pizza by unanimous consent these days — unanimously rejected a legal effort Monday to block Trump from seeking a return to the Oval Office. Criminal trials could still ensnare the former president and send him to prison for decades, but they are gradually receding from the legal arena.

Super Tuesday often represents the punctuation mark in the U.S. presidential campaign. But it’s usually just a comma, not a period. In most election cycles, it provides the first sense of the national mood and prompts some presidential candidates to face reality and pause their campaigns.

This year, the country no longer needs runners and riders in any kind of presidential race. There were only two of them. These are two issues the country faces in 2020. Super Tuesday marks the beginning of a long new chapter: more than eight painful months in the presidential race between Trump and Biden.

Democrats must comfort themselves that Trump — who has successfully jumped so many hurdles — could still stumble over future hurdles.

His biggest problem remains the four separate criminal complaints filed against him and the 91 separate charges he faces. But no American is better at the art of legal delay and obfuscation, and so far, those tactics have worked entirely to Trump’s advantage.

Two federal cases brought against the former president by special counsel Jack Smith, who Trump blasted on Monday as a “Trump hater” and a “savage,” are floundering. There will be no new start date for cases related to election interference until the Supreme Court rules on Trump’s specious claim that the former president enjoys blanket immunity, even if he sparked a deadly riot on Capitol Hill.

His second federal trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents is currently scheduled to begin on May 20 in Florida. But even prosecutors acknowledged that date would be cancelled. They now hope to put Trump in the dock in July. The former president’s legal team wants a delay until after the November election.

A criminal case in Georgia charging Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators with election interference is currently at a standstill. Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis faces the possibility of being disqualified from her case after admitting she had an affair with one of the prosecutors. Even if a judge refuses to expel her from the trial next week, Trump and his co-defendants will be able to appeal the decision and further delay his court date.

The only criminal case likely to make its way to court before the summer involves Trump’s 2016 hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. It seems highly unlikely that a conviction over this relatively minor incident would lead to jail time for the former president or harm his electoral pursuit in any way.

The unprecedented length of the upcoming campaign will undoubtedly increase the possibility that Trump may suffer unforced errors. His repeated imitations of the campaign could cause problems in the coming weeks. But Biden is also no stranger to gaffes and his own goals.

Both are showing increasingly obvious signs of age. The 77-year-old Trump — like the 81-year-old Biden — now makes frequent mistakes on the campaign trail. At a rally last weekend, he confused Biden with Barack Obama.

Biden insists he is in good health and is eager for the chance to face off against Trump again.in a Rare White House interviewthe president told The New Yorker Evan Osnos says he defeated Trump in 2020 and will defeat Trump again. “I’m not the only one who can beat him. But I will beat him,” the president acknowledged for the first time that he may not be entirely indispensable in the effort to save American democracy.

The game is on. The results are uncertain. But Trump is rising, a reality his critics never imagined they would wake up to the morning after Super Tuesday night.