ST. LOUIS — Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders on Saturday began what amounts to a fresh campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, as the septuagenarians prepare to go head-to-head at the polls for the first time since the field narrowed to two credible candidates.
Biden, the 77-year-old former vice president, spoke to a large crowd of supporters in Missouri, one of 6 states that will hold Democratic primaries on Tuesday, one week after the "Super Tuesday" elections brought about a dramatic reversal of fortunes in his favor.
Standing on an outdoor stage on a sunny day in St Louis, at times wearing his signature aviator sunglasses, the politically moderate Biden savored his spectacular revival in the race for the White House.
"What a difference a day makes," he exulted. "This time last week I was in South Carolina and the press and the pundits had declared Biden's campaign dead."
"But South Carolina had something to say about that, and then came Super Tuesday. And today there are 11 victories behind us and we're leading both in delegates and national votes."
With the monumental Gateway Arch -- a symbolic entryway to the American West -- in the background, the former vice president mentioned Sanders only indirectly.
Biden, having gained key backing from erstwhile rivals Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bloomberg, said he was best positioned to "unite this party," promising not to turn "this primary into a campaign of negative attacks."
"That will only re-elect Donald Trump if we go that route," he said.
Sanders, speaking to an equally enthusiastic crowd in Chicago, underlined his differences with Biden, without directly attacking him.
"Joe Biden is a friend," he said. "I have known him for many years. But we have records, we have a different vision. The American people will hear about it."
With the primary now "down to 2 people," the progressive Vermont senator said, "it is important for the American people to understand the differences between us -- in terms of our record, in terms of our vision for the future."
Sanders is a democratic socialist who wears his uncompromising positions -- government-run health care for all, higher taxes on the wealthy and free university tuition -- proudly on his sleeve.
Biden is a centrist who prides himself on his ability to work with Republicans. He is more middle-of-the-road on key issues like health care, where he favors expanding existing insurance programs, and less punitive additional taxes on the wealthy.
In addition to Missouri, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota and Washington will hold Democratic primaries on Tuesday.
The state of Illinois, where Sanders was speaking, does not hold its primary until March 17.
That falls 2 days after the next Democratic debate, to be held in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is still on Democratic ballots, but trails so badly that she has not qualified for the debate.
That would leave Sanders and Biden in their first head-to-head encounter of the long campaign season.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON — A resurgent Joe Biden rode a wave of momentum to win at least 8 large states on Super Tuesday, but Bernie Sanders won the biggest prize of California to set up a long one-on-one battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Biden rolled to wins across the South, Midwest and New England on the biggest day of the Democratic campaign, as Americans in 14 states voted for a Democratic challenger to Republican President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election.
"They don't call it Super Tuesday for nothing," Biden, the former vice president who had performed poorly in the first 3 nominating contests but broke through with a win in South Carolina, told roaring supporters in California.
"We are very much alive," he said.
Sanders, the one-time front-runner who had hoped to take a big step toward the nomination on Tuesday, was projected by Edison Research to win in his home state of Vermont, Colorado and Utah. Fox News and AP projected Sanders won California.
Edison Research projected Biden the winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia.
More than one-third of the delegates who will pick the eventual nominee at a July convention were up for grabs in the primaries on Tuesday, which provided some clarity at last in a muddled race for the White House.
Without naming him, Sanders took direct aim at Biden during a rally with supporters in Vermont, criticizing his 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq and his support for global trade deals that Sanders opposed.
"We're going to win the Democratic nomination and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country," Sanders said.
The results left Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor who spent more than half a billion dollars on advertising, largely out of the running, with his only victory coming in the US territory of American Samoa.
Bloomberg campaign officials said he would reassess whether to stay in the race on Wednesday, but that did not mean he would drop out.
Biden's burst of momentum after his blowout win in South Carolina on Saturday fueled a flurry of endorsements from a flood of prominent party officials and former rivals.
BROAD BIDEN COALITION
Biden accomplished his main Super Tuesday goal of muscling aside Bloomberg and consolidating support from moderates to turn the race into a one-on-one contest against Sanders.
Biden's showing in the Super Tuesday states was fueled by strong support among a broad coalition of voters including women and men, white and black, those with or without college degrees, and those who considered themselves liberal or moderate.
The results were particularly disappointing for US Senator Elizabeth Warren, who finished well behind Sanders and Biden in most states and was trailing them in her home state of Massachusetts.
Edison Research forecast a record turnout of 1.3 million voters in Virginia, well ahead of 986,203 in 2008 and 785,041 in 2016.
Early exit polls by Edison Research showed Biden was winning large majorities of African-American voters in the South, including 72 percent in Alabama, 71 percent in Virginia, 63 percent in North Carolina and 62 percent in Tennessee.
In Virginia, Biden won the votes of more than 4 of 10 white college educated women, compared to about 2 in 10 each for Sanders and Warren.
Bloomberg was a wild card heading into the voting, as he joined the competition for the first time. In early results, he was winning more than 15 percent of the vote, enough to pick up some delegates, in Tennessee, Texas, Colorado and Arkansas.
The moderate Bloomberg skipped the first four contests and bombarded Super Tuesday and later voting states with ads, but saw his poll numbers slip after coming under fire during Democratic debates over past comments criticized as sexist and a policing policy he employed as New York's mayor seen as racially discriminatory.
Biden is trying to build a bridge between progressive Democrats' desire for big structural change and more moderate Democrats yearning for a candidate who will be able to win over enough independents and Republicans to oust Trump.
FRESH MOMENTUM
That effort gained fresh momentum on the eve of Tuesday's voting as moderate presidential rivals Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, endorsed Biden after withdrawing from the race.
The pace of the Democratic race begins to accelerate after Super Tuesday, with 11 more states voting by the end of March. By then, nearly two-thirds of the delegates will have been allotted.
Sanders headed into Tuesday with 60 delegates to Biden's 54 in the state-by-state nominating fight. Sanders managed a virtual tie with Buttigieg in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire and Nevada.
Besides leading in polls in California, Sanders also is ahead of Biden by a smaller margin in polls in Texas. Sanders' strength with Hispanics should pay dividends in that state, where Latinos comprise one-third of the Democratic electorate.
Biden, whose South Carolina win affirmed his popularity with black voters, hoped to win five states where African Americans make up at least a quarter of the Democratic electorate: Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas.
The next contests, on March 10, will be in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington state.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LAS VEGAS -- The top 6 candidates competing for the Democratic nomination to take on US President Donald Trump in November participated in the ninth presidential debate on Wednesday, with one quickly becoming the focus: Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor making his first debate appearance in the race, faced criticism from all his rivals on the stage in Las Vegas:
ELIZABETH WARREN
"We’re running against a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-face lesbians. And no I’m not talking about Donald Trump, I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg. Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop-and-frisk."
Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, also criticized Bloomberg for reports that his namesake media company mistreated women employees. She called on him to release women who sued his company from non-disclosure agreements.
"I hope you heard what his defense was: I've been nice to some women. That just doesn't cut it. The mayor has to stand on his record and what we need to know is what's lurking out there."
"This is not just a question of the mayor's character. This is also a question about electability. We are not going to beat Donald Trump with a man who has who knows how many non-disclosure agreements and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against."
PETE BUTTIGIEG
The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor went after both Bloomberg and US Senator Bernie Sanders.
"Most Americans don’t see where they fit if they have to choose between a socialist who thinks money is the root of all evil and a billionaire who thinks that money ought to be the root of all power. Let's put forward somebody who actually lives and works in the middle class neighborhood in an industrial Midwestern city. Let's put forward somebody who's actually a Democrat."
"We shouldn’t have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out. We can do better."
JOE BIDEN
The former vice president assailed Bloomberg over the stop-and-frisk policing policy in New York City that was criticized for ensnaring disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos.
"The fact of the matter is he has not managed his city very well when he was there. He didn't get a whole lot done. He had stop-and-frisk - throwing close to 5 million young black men up against the wall - and when we came along in our administration, President Obama and I said we're going to send a mediator to stop it, he said that's unnecessary."
Biden said that the Obama administration worked to put an end to the policy.
"Let's get the facts straight. Let's get the order straight. It's not whether you apologize or not, it's the policy. The policy was abhorrent. And it was in fact a violation of every right people have."
AMY KLOBUCHAR
The Minnesota senator responded to reports of the Bloomberg campaign saying the other moderates should drop out to let him fight the liberal Sanders.
"I have been told as a woman, as someone that maybe no one thought was still going to be standing up on this stage, but I am because of pure grit ... I've been told many times to wait my turn and to step aside, and I’m not going to do that now ... I think we need something different than Donald Trump. I think don’t you look at Donald Trump and say, 'We need someone richer in the White House'.”
BERNIE SANDERS
"We are giving a voice to people who would say we are sick and tired of billionaires, like Mr. Bloomberg, seeing huge expansions of their wealth, while a half a million people sleep out on the street tonight ... Maybe it's time for the working class in this country to get a little bit of power in Washington, rather than your billionaire campaign."
Sanders added later: "Maybe we can talk about a billionaire saying that we should not raise the minimum wage, or that we should cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. If that's a way to beat Donald Trump, wow, I would be very surprised."
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG
"I’m a philanthropist who didn’t inherit his money, but made his money. I’m spending that money to get rid of Donald Trump – the worst president we’ve ever had. And if I can get that done, it will be a great contribution to America and to my kids.”
Bloomberg said he had not mistreated women employees but defended his decision not to release those he settled with from non-disclosure agreements, saying they were made consensualy.
"We have a very few non-disclosure agreements. None of them accuse me of anything ... maybe they didn't like the jokes I told."
Bloomberg criticized his opponents, particularly Sanders, for advocating higher taxes on corporations and forcing unions onto boards.
"I can’t think of a better way that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get reelected than listening to this conversation. We’re not gonna throw out capitalism. We tried that, other countries tried that, it was called communism and it just didn’t work."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MIAMI — In a warehouse covered in murals in the Design District here, cater waiters served wine and platters of Cuban sandwiches, summer rolls and kosher pigs in a blanket. They wore all black but for red, white and blue T-shirts reading “I Like Mike Bloomberg.”
Before the candidate took the stage — set against an oversize painting reading “Mike 2020” that a local artist had been paid thousands to produce in 36 hours — the former mayor of Miami Beach, Philip Levine, introduced him.
“We both started from nothing, and we made a few bucks,” Levine said, proudly likening himself to Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who announced his run for president in November. “But he’s got more zeros at the end of his name than I do.”
Bloomberg, the multibillionaire behind Bloomberg LP, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the race, paying to make his voice omnipresent on television and radio. He has deployed his corporation in service of his campaign, reassigning employees from the various arms of his empire and recruiting new ones with powerful financial incentives, including full benefits and salaries well above national campaign norms.
Entry-level field organizing work for Bloomberg, for example, pays $72,000 annually — nearly twice what other campaigns have offered. In under 12 weeks, Bloomberg’s operation has grown to a staff of thousands, with more than 125 offices around the country and a roster of slick events featuring swag, drinks and canapés.
Such spending has helped make Bloomberg an increasingly strong contender in the Democratic presidential primary. While Sen. Bernie Sanders, the leading progressive, has emerged as a front-runner in an exceedingly tight race, former Vice President Joe Biden has faltered and several other candidates have splintered the moderate vote that Bloomberg hopes to capture in the Super Tuesday contests March 3.
In the first quarter of his campaign alone, Bloomberg, who is not accepting political donations, spent $188 million — more than what numerous candidates in the race had spent combined. Seventy percent of that went toward advertising. Millions went toward rent, including for the campaign’s Times Square headquarters as well as furnished apartments on Manhattan’s East Side where some staff members are living.
Millions more have paid a robust network of consultants, lawyers and campaign staff members — some of whom are new to the speculative work of electioneering and are finding it oddly lucrative.
For David Enriquez, a 23-year-old recent graduate of the University of Florida acting as a field organizer for Bloomberg in Tampa, the pay came as a surprise. “I was expecting 30,000 a year, essentially till March, so whatever that is,” he said, referring to a salary that would have translated to $2,500 monthly. He is receiving more than twice that — $6,000 a month — and he expects his work will continue through November, given Bloomberg’s pledge to support the Democratic effort to unseat President Donald Trump regardless of whether his own name is on the ballot.
“I was just going to pay the minimum payment on my credit card for an extended period, but when I found out what my salary was, I was like, ‘Wow’,” Enriquez said.
The campaign’s pay for field organizers, the equivalent of $72,000 annually, is well above the $42,000 that other campaigns have offered. Bloomberg staff members have also been issued campaign-owned electronics, including Apple laptops and the latest-generation iPhones, which a spokeswoman said were distributed with cybersecurity in mind.
“I was paid $15 a day as an organizer for Ted Kennedy in 1980,” said Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic strategist, referring to a rate that, adjusted for inflation, would amount to roughly $1,500 monthly today.
Trippi called substantial pay such as what Bloomberg was offering plausible for a campaign’s staff members in key early-voting states, like Iowa or New Hampshire, but highly unusual as a standard for employees across regions — and even more so for the apparent sense of job security through the fall. “That’s never happened before,” he said.
Reflecting similar premiums, Bloomberg’s state communications directors and state political directors uniformly receive $12,000 monthly, according to the campaign, while state press secretaries make $10,000 monthly and the campaign’s national political director commands $30,000 a month, or $360,000 annually.
“Everyone knows that campaigning is hard work, long hours and lousy pay,” said Stu Loeser, a Bloomberg campaign spokesman. “We can’t change the first two, but we can do something about the third.”
For employees working at the New York headquarters, the campaign also offers three meals daily and unlimited snacks in a central cafe that acts as a hub of the office. In late December alone, according to the campaign’s first filing with the Federal Election Commission, it paid more than $16,000 to a sushi restaurant in Manhattan as well as roughly $200,000 to FLIK Hospitality, a catering company.
James Thurber, a professor of government who founded the Campaign Management Institute at American University, said money was an unlikely motivator in campaign work, but he called some of Bloomberg’s spending necessary.
“Since he’s gotten in so late, he’s got to pay above-market salaries to get good people to jump in at all levels,” Thurber said. “You can’t win a campaign on an air war,” he said, referring to a blitz of advertising. “You’ve got to have a ground war. He knows that, so he’s buying the ground war.”
On the ground, an aura of abundance has extended to Bloomberg’s campaign events, where an array of shirts and buttons are laid out for the taking. On offer at recent rallies: “I Like Mike”; “Women for Mike”; “Ganamos con Mike”; “United for Mike,” with a Jewish star; “Mishpucha for Mike”; as well as permutations tailored to different states — “Florida for Mike,” unembellished; “Florida for Mike,” decorated with palm trees.
For a rally in New York City in January, Bloomberg rented out the very same Times Square hotel ballroom in which he had celebrated one of his mayoral victories, with a DJ presiding and wine and beer and goat cheese puffs on hand for all.
At a Philadelphia rally last week, more than 1,000 people were offered cheese steaks, hoagies and platters of honey-coated brie, fig jam and gourmet flatbreads. Michael Dacosta, who was posted up at one of the drinks stations, raved about the selection, expressing regret that he had eaten at Papa John’s beforehand. “I think it’s classy,” said Dacosta, a New Yorker who’d paid $55 to have “Let’s Get Bloomin Again” embroidered on his bomber jacket but also grabbed a “PA for Mike” shirt.
“He’s generous,” Dacosta said, as colorful lights projected Bloomberg’s name on a wall of the National Constitution Center, where the rally was held. “I feel like it’s a nightclub in here. This is what he needs to get people going.”
The fanfare has also drawn some who don’t plan to vote for the billionaire. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Mike Bloomberg,” said Ramon Vivas, who attended Bloomberg’s Miami rally in January and wore one of the free shirts bearing that message, along with two Bloomberg buttons. “But I don’t think he’s going to get the nomination, and I support Bernie.”
Still, Vivas said he thought the Democratic Party had “moved too far to the left” and called Bloomberg a good influence on the race, adding that at other rallies he’d attended, “you typically have to pay for the T-shirts.”
The large-scale painting that Cindy Franco, the Miami artist, produced — a colorful streetscape decorated with the candidate’s name and “Miami Will Get It Done,” a variation on the campaign’s slogan — was a central backdrop for little more than an hour.
“I only had a day and a half to make it,” said Franco, who worked round the clock in the Miami warehouse with security guards provided by the campaign on hand. “They were always asking if I needed anything,” she said, declining to specify exactly how much she was paid but adding: “It was a lot. They were very good to me.” (The campaign did not name the amount, which it will be required to report in its next federal filing.)
Day-to-day, some Bloomberg campaign workers with prior political experience, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about their work for Bloomberg, described what they saw as an unfathomable luxury: the ability to brainstorm and act on their ideas without concern for costs. The campaign has, for instance, hired 70 staff members in Florida and opened field offices in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
But being forced to think about how to stretch dollars in politics can have its advantages, Trippi said, recalling that in 2004 — when he worked for Howard Dean’s campaign, which broke the record at that time for Democratic presidential fundraising — “a lot of the things we pioneered were exactly because we had to be that creative.”
Nonetheless, he added, laughing: “Picking between the advantage of being a little bit more creative with your money, versus having the money to do whatever you want to do — most campaigns would pick having more money.”
Thurber, the American University professor, said that self-funding a campaign could make it difficult to know a candidate’s true popularity. “When you’ve got a lot of money, you can try all kinds of strategies and tactics, and also have the money to measure whether they’re working or not,” he said. “But in a primary, small donors are really the invisible measure of how excited people are about you.”
Financially invested supporters, no matter the size of their donations, also tend to be more loyal and engaged, Trippi said. “If I give $10 to a candidate, I’m much more likely to stay with them and do other things, like call my friend about them,” he said. “There’s buy-in.”
Bloomberg has crisscrossed the country hoping for emotional buy-in. He has come and gone on a schedule, reflecting a candidate famously focused on efficiency. A Bloomberg LP plane has often been waiting to shuttle him to the next destination, with pilot costs and in-flight catering expenses also figuring into the recent report to election authorities.
For some younger staff members, the degree to which the campaign’s finances are unusual has not necessarily registered. “I wasn’t surprised because I actually didn’t know how much field organizers make,” said Jordy Portugal, a 22-year-old who recently graduated from Columbia University and lives in Queens.
Portugal said that he had weighed joining the Bloomberg campaign or accepting a job at a media company that would have paid him a salary amounting to roughly $4,700 a month — significantly less than what he now makes placing calls and canvassing voters for Bloomberg.
“Bloomberg’s pay has helped me,” he said. “But I don’t have any prior experience to look at it and say, ‘Wow, these are amazing benefits and experiences,’” he said, adding that the food the campaign provided reminded him of a stint working at a tech company. “This was more an opportunity for me to make an impact.”
For other supporters, the depth of Bloomberg’s coffers is central to his appeal.
“I can’t tell you the pleasure of having someone call me and ask, ‘Who are important people in the community?’” said Patricia Halfen Wexler, a venture capitalist who spoke in support of Bloomberg at one of his recent rallies, “and to not have to think, ‘Who can give money?’”
© 2020 The New York Times Company
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — The Democratic presidential primary is entering an intensely tumultuous phase, after two early contests that have left former Vice President Joe Biden reeling and elevated Sen. Bernie Sanders but failed to make any candidate a dominant force in the battle for the party’s nomination.
Within the Democratic establishment, the results have deepened a mood of anxiety and frustration: The collapse of Biden’s support in the first two states, and the fragmentation of moderate voters among several other candidates, allowed Sanders, a Vermont progressive, to claim a thin victory in New Hampshire and an apparent split decision in Iowa with former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana.
In both states, a majority of voters supported candidates closer to the political center and named defeating President Donald Trump as their top priority, but there was no overwhelming favorite among those voters as to which moderate was the best alternative to Sanders. Unless such a favorite soon emerges, party leaders may increasingly look to Michael Bloomberg as a potential savior.
In an unmistakable sign of Bloomberg’s growing strength and Biden’s decline, 3 black members of Congress endorsed the former mayor of New York City on Wednesday, including Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, a high-profile lawmaker and gun-control champion in her first term — and a senior adviser to Bloomberg told campaign staff that internal polling showed the former mayor now tied with Biden among African Americans in March primary states.
The turmoil in the party has the potential to extend the primary season, exacerbating internal divisions and putting off the headache of uniting for the general election for months.
The Democrats’ proportional system of allocating delegates and the nature of the calendar this year could make it all but impossible to avert such an outcome. With no winner-take-all contests, and no indication yet that Sanders can broaden his appeal or that a moderate can coalesce support, the candidates are poised to keep splitting delegates three or four ways, as they did in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“We are obviously going to have a longer battle here,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who directed an anti-Sanders ad campaign in Iowa.
The leading candidates are plainly worried about the party’s divisions, and signaled as much in their speeches in New Hampshire on primary night: Sanders, blamed by much of the party for his slashing approach to the 2016 primaries, stressed in his victory speech that the most important task was defeating Trump, while Buttigieg urged his supporters to “vote blue, no matter who” in November.
In a particularly urgent plea, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who slumped to a fourth-place finish Tuesday, warned that no candidate should be “willing to burn down the rest of the party in order to be the last man standing.”
At the moment, no one is close to being the last candidate standing. But unless another Democrat rapidly consolidates support, Sanders could continue to win primaries and caucuses without broadening his political appeal, purely on the strength of his rock-solid base on the left — a prospect that alarms Democratic Party leaders who view Sanders and his slogan of democratic socialism as wildly risky bets in a general election.
The Biden team stoked that sense of alarm Wednesday: Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a chairman of Biden’s national campaign and a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, warned on a conference call with reporters that Democrats would risk “down-ballot carnage” if they selected Sanders.
“If Bernie Sanders was at the top of the ticket, we would be in jeopardy of losing the House,” Richmond said. “We would not get the Senate back.”
Yet in a reflection of the multidimensional melee that allowed Sanders to claim victory in New Hampshire with the smallest plurality of any winner in decades, Richmond also criticized two other candidates, Bloomberg and Buttigieg, lumping them into the same risky group and arguing that Democrats should not “take a chance with a self-defined socialist, a mayor of a very small city, a billionaire who all of a sudden is a Democrat.”
Mellman said Sanders would continue to benefit as long as there was a relative abundance of moderate candidates in the race. “The longer more of those people stay in,” he said, “the easier it is for Sanders to skate through.”
There is no sign that any of the half-dozen major candidates left in the race are headed for the exits: Buttigieg and Biden will have to contend in the Nevada caucuses against Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who finished a strong third in New Hampshire, while on the left Sanders still faces a dogged competitor in Warren. Unless one candidate comes out of Nevada and South Carolina with a powerful upper hand, it is quite likely that the same atomized delegate count could continue into Super Tuesday, when 15 states and territories, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all delegates in the Democratic race, cast ballots on March 3.
Indeed, with early voting already taking place in California and other Super Tuesday states, and no dominant front-runner, the fragmentation may already be well underway.
In Arkansas, a Super Tuesday state where early voting starts next week, a poll taken after Iowa illustrated the Democrats’ dilemma: Bloomberg, Biden, Sanders and Buttigieg were each winning 16 percent to 20 percent of the vote.
All of those candidates are increasingly confronting Bloomberg’s presence as a rival in the March primaries. Bloomberg skipped all four February contests but has climbed into double digits in national polls on the strength of an enormous and sustained advertising campaign, funded from his personal fortune.
On a conference call with campaign staff members Wednesday afternoon, Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg’s senior adviser, said that internal tracking data showed that the former mayor had pulled “very narrowly” into first place across the March primary states, inching ahead of Sanders overall and tying Biden among African American voters.
Though Wolfson did not provide specific numbers, he said Biden had “rather precipitously fallen” in the larger array of states voting next month, according to Bloomberg polling.
But Bloomberg is facing new tests as a candidate: For the first time, he may qualify for a televised debate, next week in Las Vegas, and he has come under newly direct criticism from other Democrats for his record on policing and much else.
Wolfson acknowledged as much on the conference call, telling staff members that Bloomberg would have a “bigger target on his back” as his numbers rose. He said Bloomberg would address scrutiny of his support for stop-and-frisk policing by calling it “the biggest regret of his 12 years as mayor,” and saying that the language he had used in the past to defend it did not “reflect who he is or what is in his heart.”
But the recently circulated audio recording of Bloomberg in 2015 matter-of-factly stating that “the real crime is” almost always committed by young “male minorities” quickly ricocheted across the tight-knit community of black political leaders.
J. Todd Rutherford, the minority leader of the South Carolina House, said many African Americans had increasingly recognized that Biden did not have “what it takes” and had been ready to bolt to the former New York mayor.
“A lot of people would’ve said Bloomberg last week, but now I don’t know,” said Rutherford, alluding to the recording and declaring that the gnawing uncertainty hanging over the Democratic race was “really scary.”
Biden and other candidates have indicated that they intend to challenge Bloomberg on race in the coming days, and his resiliency, or lack thereof, on the subject could shape the primary campaign.
Yet even supporters of Biden acknowledge that if one of the moderates does not take a clear lead with that faction of the party after Nevada, the eyes of many establishment-aligned Democrats will turn to Manhattan.
“The longer the waters are muddy, the better off Bloomberg is,” said former Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, who recently backed Biden.
The campaign in Nevada is as disordered as anything else in the Democratic race, according to people closely watching the contest there. But as in New Hampshire, Biden long held a considerable advantage as the candidate perceived as the safe and electable choice, while Sanders entered the race with a strong bloc carried over from his last run for the presidency. It remains to be seen whether Biden will bleed support there as rapidly as he did in New Hampshire, or whether any other candidate will be able to take advantage of his fall.
Tick Segerblom, a prominent Sanders backer in the state who is a member of the Clark County Commission, said Biden’s national plunge would upend the campaign in Nevada. He said that Sanders could count his “25 percent” but that his ability to expand his coalition was an open question.
“Bernie is still alive and Biden is definitely a disaster,” Segerblom said. “I think Pete is going to do very well — he’ll be able to pick up the Biden people.”
Rep. Dina Titus, perhaps the most prominent Biden supporter in the state, said the campaign needed to send in the political cavalry to stave off defeat.
“He could certainly use more hands — and they’re supposedly coming now,” she said.
She added that she would spend her time helping Biden with senior groups and labor unions. But the former vice president’s hope that the most influential union in the state, the Culinary Workers, would endorse him in an effort to halt Sanders has been dimmed after his poor performance in the first two states.
In South Carolina, even moderate Democrats who are sympathetic to Biden believe he is in grave danger of losing the state.
“He’s wounded,” Tyler Jones, a Charleston-based Democratic strategist, said of the former vice president. Like other political professionals in the state, Jones is increasingly less concerned about Biden’s weakness than about billionaire Tom Steyer’s strength — and what it means for the nominating process.
Steyer has been pouring money into South Carolina, cutting into Biden’s lead with black voters and raising the specter of Sanders’ winning another state with a plurality thanks to a divided electorate.
“A vote for Steyer is a vote for Bernie, which is a vote for Trump,” said Jones, who believes Sanders cannot win the general election and wants to stop his campaign “dead in its tracks.” But he acknowledged that urging voters to act strategically and reject Steyer was easier in theory than in execution.
Other Democrats are turning to what they believe is a more simple solution.
In early January, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York offered an off-the-cuff assessment of the Democratic race: Should Biden wheeze in the early states, many in the party would turn to Bloomberg as a Plan B.
“If Mr. Biden can’t get out of New Hampshire and Iowa, then Bloomberg has Super Tuesday,” Meeks said at the time.
On Wednesday, he was one of the three black lawmakers who endorsed Bloomberg.
2020 The New York Times Company
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders is accompanied by his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders and other relatives as he arrives to speak at his New Hampshire primary night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States on Tuesday. The left-wing senator narrowly edged out moderate rival Pete Buttigieg in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON — For 3 years, Hillary Clinton has watched the Democratic Party search for a path forward in the Trump era.
She’s watched as liberals and moderates clashed on how best to fight President Donald Trump and a White House that was almost hers. She’s watched as some voters questioned the “electability” of the 6 women running for president, doubts that she once faced. She’s watched as Sen. Bernie Sanders has risen, after his withering opposition to her in the 2016 presidential primary, to become the dominant liberal force in the 2020 race.
And she’d largely refrained from weighing in — until Tuesday morning, when The Hollywood Reporter published an interview with Clinton promoting a new documentary about her that will premiere Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival. In the documentary, she rips into Sanders and declines to say if she would endorse him and campaign on his behalf if he were to win the Democratic nomination.
“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician,” she said. “It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.” Asked by The Reporter recently if that assessment still held, she replied, “Yes, it does.”
Her remarks ricocheted across the Democratic Party on Tuesday, threatening to reopen the barely healed wounds of the 2016 primary, a race that quickly turned from a near-coronation of Clinton as the party’s first female nominee into a bitter battle that exposed a deep ideological rift among Democrats.
That split over what direction the party should take is now a major issue in the current primary, with Sanders arguing for the full-throated leftist agenda and others counseling moderation. At the same time, he is engaged in a standoff with his liberal ally in the 2020 race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, that has divided some on the left, over her accusation that he told her in 2018 that a woman could not win the presidency.
Sanders has denied that remark. Clinton, for her part, seized on it and said it was “part of a pattern,” noting that he said in 2016 that Clinton was unqualified to be president.
Some Democrats fear that Clinton is adding fuel to the tensions within the party, whose leaders have spent years trying to overcome the lingering hostilities of the 2016 campaign, hoping to unify Democrats around the singular mission of defeating Trump.
“I just don’t think it’s appropriate for Democrats to be criticizing other Democrats, especially with personal attacks like that,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, who supported both of Clinton’s primary bids. “I understand why there can be bitterness out there. I believe we just need to leave that behind us.”
Representatives of both Sanders and Clinton moved quickly to try to quell the furor Tuesday. Fresh off recent battles with not only Warren but also former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders’ campaign was eager to avoid another fight that would distract from his closing message less than two weeks before the Iowa presidential caucuses. Sanders apologized Monday to Biden after a Sanders campaign surrogate wrote an opinion article accusing the former vice president of having “a big corruption problem.”
Speaking to reporters Tuesday in Washington, Sanders said: “Secretary Clinton is entitled to her point of view. My job today is to focus on the impeachment trial.”
When asked for his response to Clinton’s assertion that no one liked him, he joked that “on a good day, my wife likes me, so let’s clear the air on that one.”
Clinton tried to clarify her remarks Tuesday evening. “I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!” she wrote on Twitter. “But to be serious, the number one priority for our country and world is retiring Trump, and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee.”
Those who have spoken to Clinton recently confirm that she has every intention of supporting the Democratic nominee — even if Sanders ends up winning the primary. Still, even some longtime allies were shocked that she voiced such criticisms of Sanders in an election year, so close to the start of primary voting.
They were far less surprised by the content of her remarks.
Sanders’ denial in his dispute with Warren over whether he had told her a woman could not defeat Trump infuriated Clinton, according to people close to her. Sanders’ subsequent refusal to chastise his supporters for attacking Warren and her team online only added to her concern.
“It’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros,” Clinton told The Reporter. “It should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, seems to really be very much supporting it.”
People close to Clinton say she has grown worried that attacks from Sanders’ campaign could hurt the future Democratic nominee in much the same way that she believes they did lasting damage to her. She worries he will not drop out of the race even if it becomes clear he cannot win the nomination, a situation that could exacerbate divisions in the party.
Clinton also does not believe Sanders could beat Trump, telling friends for months that he has never sustained harsh attacks from fellow Democrats on his record and self-described democratic socialism.
Since Sanders endorsed Clinton in July 2016, the acrimony between the two camps has lingered. Clinton and her former aides maintain that his endorsement came too late and was too lukewarm to truly unify the party. Some supporters of Sanders still argue that the Democratic National Committee “rigged” the rules to help her secure the nomination.
Unlike nearly all of the other two dozen Democratic candidates this primary cycle, Sanders did not call Clinton before he entered the race.
Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska Democratic Party chairwoman, said that she understood Clinton’s concerns but that voicing frustrations was unproductive for the party.
“She has obviously a very different vantage than any of us ever will. She worked her entire career and she was taken down by forces out of her control,” said Kleeb, who backed Sanders in the 2016 primary but recalled crying as she listened to Clinton’s audiobook about her campaign. “I understand why she’s frustrated with Senator Sanders but I also think this is time to go after Trump.”
Though Clinton’s presidential defeat still weighs heavily on her, friends say she is busy with a variety of other projects, traveling to accept awards and honorary degrees. An avid theatergoer, she attends Broadway shows and has been spotted at several concerts, including Fleetwood Mac, Earth Wind and Fire, and Billy Joel. She spends a lot of time with her three grandchildren and, this fall, released a book profiling “gutsy women” with her daughter, Chelsea.
Still, at times, Clinton’s pique about 2016 has come out.
In December, she participated in a 2 1/2-hour interview with radio host Howard Stern, during which she argued that Sanders “hurt” her during the 2016 campaign.
Among some in Sanders’ campaign, there was hope that Clinton’s remarks would lead to a similar bump in fundraising.
On Twitter, the hashtag #ILikeBernie became a top trending topic. Many supporters pounced on Clinton’s remarks, arguing that she remained out of touch with the working-class Americans who back Sanders.
“No apologies, no backing down, the scorn and hatred that all of official Washington DC and the Democratic Party has for him and his supporters is his closing case,” Will Menaker, a host of the progressive podcast Chapo Trap House, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “They are corrupt and evil, they hate him and they hate you because you are not.”
Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of the progressive group Justice Democrats, called Clinton’s statement “unacceptable, out of touch and dangerous.”
Though some of his supporters and staff members have been itching for confrontation, Sanders has rejected recent traps to get him to relitigate 2016. Last week, after Trump tried to goad Sanders by saying the Democratic Party was rigging the 2020 election against him again, he refused to bite and instead issued a statement attacking Trump.
Yet the furor over Clinton’s remarks is unlikely to die down anytime soon, as she continues promoting the new documentary, “Hillary,” which is set to be released on Hulu a few days after Super Tuesday.
“She obviously has deeply held feelings about what happened in 2016 and is hellbent on stopping Sanders now,” said David Axelrod, who served as a top strategist on Barack Obama’s primary bid against Clinton in 2008. “If the goal of Democrats is to win, I’m not sure that interventions like this are likely to help unify and mobilize all elements of the party in the fall. She, of all people, should know that.”
2020 The New York Times Company
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NEW YORK -- Former Vice President Joe Biden and US Senator Bernie Sanders remain the top candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination as potential voters appear increasingly interested in picking a winner this year instead of someone who shares their interests, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday.
The national public opinion poll found that Biden has a slight advantage among registered Democrats, though Sanders has the most support when independents are factored in. While each state sets its own rules for picking the party's nominee, two of the early primary states - New Hampshire and South Carolina - allow independents to participate.
According to the Jan. 8-9 poll, 23 percent of registered Democrats said they supported Biden, while 20 percent supported Sanders and 15 percent said they would vote for US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was backed by 8 percent of registered Democrats and 7 percent supported Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
None of the other candidates received more than 3 percent, and another 13 percent of registered Democrats said they do not know which candidate to support.
The top 5 candidates remained the same when independents were factored in, though Sanders had a 2 percentage point advantage over Biden among the larger group.
Sanders also was picked by the largest share of Democrats and independents as the best steward of the environment and economy, as well as the candidate who would be the best at handling the country's healthcare system.
Biden, however, was largely considered to be most likely of all of the candidates to beat Trump in a general election.
The perception that Biden is the most electable could play a bigger role this year as the party picks a nominee. According to Reuters/Ipsos polling over the past few years, Democrats appear to be increasingly interested in simply finding a candidate who can win in the November general election.
According to the poll, 15 percent of Democrats said the main reason they were supporting a particular candidate was because they felt that candidate could win. In comparison, only 7 percent of Democrats said that in a similar poll that was conducted in August and September of 2015.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,116 adults in all, including 479 Democrats and 144 independents. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 5 percentage points.
To view the full poll results, click here.
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NEW YORK - Bernie Sanders put his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on hold Wednesday after being treated for a blocked artery, becoming the first in a race dominated by septuagenarians to halt their campaign for health reasons.
At 78, the leftist senator from Vermont is the oldest candidate vying to take on President Donald Trump in 2020 and one of the leading contenders behind favorites Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.
Sanders' team said he was canceling events and appearances "until further notice" after complaining of chest pains while on the stump in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday.
Sanders later wrote on Twitter that he was "feeling good."
"During a campaign event yesterday evening Sen. Sanders experienced some chest discomfort," Sanders' senior advisor Jeff Weaver said in a statement.
"Following medical evaluation and testing he was found to have a blockage in one artery and two stents were successfully inserted."
He added that the senator was talking and in good spirits, and would be resting over the "next few days."
Sanders -- a self-described Democratic socialist -- pushed 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton right to the wire three years ago and is sitting third in the polls this time around.
He was one of the first to argue loudly for taxing the rich and for the introduction of universal health care, policies now embraced by some of the other candidates.
His Democratic rivals rushed to wish Sanders a swift recovery.
"Anyone who knows Bernie understands what a force he is. We are confident that he will have a full and speedy recovery and look forward to seeing him on the trail soon," tweeted Democratic frontrunner Biden.
Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, tweeted that she hoped "to see my friend back on the campaign trail very soon," while Kamala Harris said she was "thinking" of Sanders.
Sanders thanked well wishers and used the opportunity to trumpet one of his key election pledges.
"I'm fortunate to have good health care and great doctors and nurses helping me to recover," he tweeted.
"None of us know when a medical emergency might affect us. And no one should fear going bankrupt if it occurs. Medicare for All!"
Sanders has served in Congress as an independent aligned with Democrats since 1991, first as a representative of Vermont and then, since 2007, as the state's junior senator.
'Crazy hard'
Earlier this year he was running consistently in second place behind former vice president Biden, who is two years younger, in the race for the Democratic Party nomination for president.
Since July, he has jockeyed for position with Warren, who recently moved slightly ahead of him in polls in the crowded field.
Both Sanders' and Biden's age has been raised as an issue in their candidacies. Trump is 73, while Warren is 70.
Sanders' health has generally been good for his age, however, and it has been Biden who has had to bat away questions about his stamina and mental sharpness.
In March, Sanders gashed his head on a shower door and had seven stitches, but quickly returned to the campaign trail.
Last month, he canceled three events in South Carolina to rest his voice, which had become hoarse.
Sanders sounded raspy during the third Democratic debate and his campaign said it was because of a "vigorous campaign schedule."
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Sanders' hospitalization highlighted the rigors of running for office.
"A lot of people don't understand how crazy hard grassroots campaigning is -- for organizers and candidates alike. Rest up, friend. We're with you!" she wrote on Twitter.
Sanders faces a long and bruising battle ahead, with the first Democratic primaries not taking place until February.
He is currently third in an average of national polls, with 16.7 percent, according to RealClearPolitics.
Biden leads at 26.1 percent, with Warren second with 24.4 percent.
It was not immediately clear whether Sanders would be fit to appear in the fourth Democratic debate scheduled for October 15 in Ohio.
Trump, who likes to tout his own health, famously mocked Clinton when she became ill during a 9/11 memorial ceremony in 2016.
The president did not immediately comment on Sanders' announcement.
pmh-pdh/ft
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WASHINGTON - US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders teamed up with rapper Cardi B Monday to encourage young voters to turn out for the 2020 election.
The unlikely duo met at a nail salon in Detroit to film a campaign video aimed at younger voters -- a fitting spot for Cardi B, who is known for her elaborate manicures in addition to chart-topping hits.
"We (are) working on a way to involve more young people in the political process," Sanders, 77, told CNN before filming began.
"They are voting in large numbers, but not enough numbers."
Democratic polling shows Sanders is the number 2 candidate in a crowded field seeking the party's nomination to defeat Donald Trump, although Sanders has about half the support of the leader Joe Biden.
After the shoot, Cardi B posted a picture on Instagram of her interviewing the Vermont senator in the salon.
"Thank you Senator Bernie Sanders for sitting with me and sharing your plans on how you will change this country," the Grammy-winning artist captioned the image.
She added she had asked her followers to suggest questions for the left-wing Sanders and advised them to "stay tuned to see how he will fight for economic, racial and social justice for all."
According to Sanders, he and the 26-year-old rap superstar discussed a range of issues, including raising the minimum wage, canceling student debt, and climate change.
This is not Cardi B's first foray into the political arena. Earlier this month she was vocal in her support for Sanders, tweeting, "We let him down in 2016," when he lost to Hillary Clinton.
In January, Cardi B, born Belcalis Almanzar, posted a profanity-laced video on Instagram blasting Trump and the US government shutdown.
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WASHINGTON -- A nationwide Fox News poll released Sunday shows President Donald Trump trailing former vice president Joe Biden and no fewer than 4 other Democratic contenders as early campaigning for the 2020 election begins to gain steam.
A separate survey of key battleground states, by CBS, shows Democrats strongly favor Biden as the candidate most likely to beat Trump in next year's elections.
While the latest polling news proved heartening to Democrats, the Trump re-election campaign reportedly has cut ties to 3 of its own pollsters after some of their results -- showing Trump trailing far behind Biden in key states -- leaked.
The Fox poll showed Biden leading Trump by 49 percent to 39 percent among all registered voters nationwide, while Senator Bernie Sanders held nearly the same advantage over the president, at 49 percent to 40 percent.
Holding edges of 1 or 2 points over Trump -- albeit within the poll's 3-point margin of error -- were senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana.
The polling comes more than 500 days before the Nov. 3, 2020 election, an eternity in the political world. One widely viewed tweet this week shows 5 presidential candidates in recent decades who trailed at this point in their campaigns -- including Trump -- but who went on to win.
The president does not officially launch his re-election campaign until Tuesday, when he plans an elaborate, rally-style event in a huge arena in Orlando, Florida.
BATTLEGROUND STATES
Still, the Fox poll, conducted June 9 to June 12, was welcomed by Democrats eager to chip away at Trump's popularity, particularly in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The president's campaign had recently dismissed leaked data from its own pollsters showing Biden with double-digit leads in some critically important states, including Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- three states Trump won in 2016.
Trump himself denied the data -- "those polls don't exist," he told ABC -- but his campaign later acknowledged the negative news while discounting it as "ancient" because it dated from March.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the president's campaign, furious over the data leak, was cutting ties to three of its five pollsters. They included Polling Company, the former firm of close Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
And NBC quoted Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale as conferring a positive spin on the latest results, saying "the president's new polling is extraordinary and his numbers have never been better."
WARREN ON THE RISE
The new CBS poll, conducted May 31 to June 12, confirms a significant Biden lead in battleground states among Democratic voters, as the crowded race for that party's nomination begins to take shape.
Those voters told pollsters that their support was based above all on a sense that Biden was the candidate best positioned to defeat Trump in 2020.
The CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker survey found that Biden had the backing of 31 percent of Democratic voters in 18 key states, ahead of senators Elizabeth Warren (17 percent), Sanders (16 percent) and Kamala Harris (10 percent).
The poll, with a 1.5 percent margin of error, was conducted in influential early-voting states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as well as in populous states in the upper Midwest where Trump eked out narrow but decisive victories in 2016.
Elizabeth Warren has been steadily rising in the polls, while Sanders' support has slipped.
He acknowledged on Sunday that "polls go up and polls go down," but insisted that the survey showed he was well-placed to defeat Trump.
"I think we can win in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and some of the other battleground states," the self-styled democratic socialist told "Fox News Sunday."
Democrats begin more earnestly winnowing down their large field of candidates when they hold successive nights of televised debates on June 26 and 27.
The Fox poll found that Democratic voters, by roughly three-to-one, favor a nominee who would provide "steady, reliable leadership" rather than a "bold new agenda."
But Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the fiery 29-year-old New Yorker who has emerged as a heroine to young voters and progressives, suggested Sunday that Democrats could be in trouble if they fail to nominate an energizing candidate with working-class appeal.
She said she would support the 76-year-old Biden if he wins the nomination but added on ABC that "we have to really factor in the enthusiasm of voters."
"We need to pick a candidate that's going to be exciting to vote for -- all people, women, people of all genders, races, income levels."
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MONTPELIER, Vermont — Sen. Bernie Sanders returned to his home state Saturday for the first time since he declared in February that he was running for president again, displaying the uncompromisingly liberal defiance that many of those in the audience have been hearing for decades.
Under overcast skies, Sanders lamented big corporations, argued for “Medicare for All” and assailed fossil fuels. He also took the opportunity to emphasize his foreign policy agenda — including his opposition to the war in Iraq and to US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen — while lacing his remarks with criticism for the news media even as he criticized President Donald Trump for calling journalists “the enemy of the people.”
“Recently, I have been attacked in the media because of my views, actions and votes on foreign policy issues,” he said. “I make no apologies,” he repeated several times.
In recent days, news outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post have published reports about Sanders’s foreign policy record in the 1980s when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, which included trips to Nicaragua in support of the Sandinista government, as well as to the Soviet Union.
But though people on stage before him listed his accomplishments in Vermont, he did not, preferring instead to stick largely to his typical rally script.
If his stop in Vermont’s tiny capital was to be a homecoming, it also served as something of a reset for his campaign. For months, Sanders had enjoyed the status of front-runner, holding big rallies to demonstrate his strength and barely deviating from his anti-establishment message even as advisers urged him to talk more about himself.
But with the entrance last month of former Vice President Joe Biden into the crowded 2020 Democratic field, Sanders is running second — by double digits — in most national polls. A recent survey from Morning Consult showed that the advantage for Sanders among 18- to 29-year-old voters — his strongest voting bloc — had slipped.
Though campaign aides are content, for now, for Sanders to sit in second place, there have also been signs of a battle to come. In the weeks since Biden entered the race, Sanders has lodged a series of broadsides against the former vice president, attacking him for his history of supporting free trade measures and for voting for the war in Iraq. Not to be outdone by Biden’s retail politicking, Sanders plans to hold a series of ice cream socials in New Hampshire on Monday before making a return trip to Nevada.
He is also starting to host in-person grassroots fundraisers, which his campaign said would allow the senator to show appreciation for, and interact with, donors in smaller venues. Ticket prices will be tiered, according to his campaign, with the first level starting at $27, and the events will be open to the news media. (Though his 2016 campaign was known for its online fundraising prowess, it held meet-and-greet fundraisers as well.)
Sanders’ appearance, before enthusiastic supporters who packed the vast lawn in front of the State House, was marked by an enduring pride in Vermont. Though he hit many of his usual themes, he also checked off the state’s notable moments throughout history: participating in the underground railroad, outlawing slavery, legalizing same-sex marriage.
“Maybe we run in 2020 on a message that says, ‘Cherry Garcia in every freezer,’” he said, in a nod to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, founded in Vermont, which was supplied free at the rally.
(A campaign aide said Sanders was appearing this weekend in Montpelier, not Burlington, because “it is a beautiful venue that speaks to his commitment to the state.” Burlington, as it happens, is also hosting a marathon this weekend.)
There is some debate over how effective Sanders has been as a Vermont official. As Burlington’s mayor, he at times faced criticism for focusing too much on foreign policy. But he also successfully turned the shores of Lake Champlain, much of which had been industrial wasteland, into a bustling, accessible waterfront — an accomplishment his campaign highlighted in a video about his mayoralty that it released Friday.
Among Vermonters, Sanders still engenders a strong sense of loyalty, and his presence in the state Saturday was, for many, a welcome sight.
“I believe it’s the last time that we’ll be able to touch him like we usually do without him belonging to the country,” said Brenda Lee LeClair, 55, of Richmond. “We have to be unselfish and give him up.”
Leigh Seddon, 68, of Montpelier, said he had worked with Sanders and had “been a Bernie fan for a long time.”
But he could not resist needling the senator’s grander ambitions just a bit.
“He doesn’t get a lot of time for Vermont anymore — that’s OK,” he shrugged. “He cares about Vermont, but he has bigger things on his mind.”
2019 New York Times News Service
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