WASHINGTON - Democrat Joe Biden and President Donald Trump finally spoke by phone Monday, both sides confirmed, ending days of teasing and squabbling between the presidential election rivals to discuss the national coronavirus upheaval.
The call marked a rare moment of unity for the country seven months before election day and during a frightening health and economic crisis.
"We had a really wonderful warm conversation," centered on the pandemic, Trump said at a regular briefing by his coronavirus task force.
"He gave me his point of view and I fully understood that," Trump said, adding they spoke for about 15 minutes. "I appreciate his calling."
Biden's communication director confirmed the two men had "a good call."
Biden "shared several suggestions for actions" the administration can take "to address the ongoing coronavirus pandemic," Kate Bedingfield said on Twitter.
He also "expressed his appreciation for the spirit of the American people in meeting the challenges facing the nation," she added.
The idea of a telephone call between Trump and Biden, who is self-isolating at home like much of the country, had been in the air for days.
Last week, Trump said he'd "love to speak with" Biden, adding, "I always found him to be a nice guy."
On Thursday, Biden responded that he was "happy to hear he'll take my call."
But if Republican Trump sat all weekend by the phone, he was left disappointed -- and by Monday morning the pair were back to trading barbs.
"What ever happened to that phone call he told the Fake News he wanted to make to me?" Trump complained on Twitter.
Gone was the "nice guy" description -- the tone was back to Trump's default mode when it comes to Biden, whom he has claimed to be losing his mental faculties, smeared with corruption allegations, and nicknamed "Sleepy Joe."
Mocking Biden's suggestion that the Democrats may have to hold their nominating convention online if coronavirus remains a threat this summer, Trump insinuated Biden was dodging having to appear in public.
Hitting back on Twitter, Biden told Trump that whether the Democratic convention is safe to stage or not will "depend on you stepping up and doing what needs to be done to handle this pandemic."
Despite the bickering, the two men still had each other's numbers.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON - With the dramatic winnowing of the Democratic presidential field, the 14 nominating contests held on Tuesday largely came down to a single question: Could former Vice President Joe Biden amass enough delegates to slow US Senator Bernie Sanders’ path to the nomination?
As polls closed in the eastern United States, the emerging answer appeared to be "Yes." Polls showed Biden, whose candidacy was buoyed this week by a wave of high-profile endorsements, outperforming expectations.
The Super Tuesday contests offer the biggest one-day haul of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the party’s nomination at its national convention in July, with about 1,357 delegates, or nearly one-third of the total number, up for grabs.
Here are some initial takeaways from Super Tuesday voting.
A BIDEN COALITION
It appeared clear early on that Biden benefited from the last-minute endorsements from former presidential contenders Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. The Democratic establishment increasingly is coalescing around him as an alternative to Sanders, a democratic socialist.
North Carolina and Virginia were called for Biden immediately when polls closed, with exit polls suggesting Biden was headed for decisive wins.
Those polls suggested Biden was building the broad coalition needed for a presidential nominee. Beyond Biden's longstanding support among African-American voters, he looked to be beating Sanders in both states among white voters who did not graduate from college – a traditional Sanders stronghold.
Perhaps most important for the Democratic race, Biden was easily outperforming Sanders with women voters. More than half of the women in the US now identify with the Democratic Party, according to recent studies.
THE DELEGATE MATH
For Biden, the goal on Tuesday was to draw as near to Sanders in terms of overall pledged delegates to the Democratic national convention as possible. Going into Super Tuesday, Sanders held a slight lead over Biden because of his success in earlier primaries, or nominating contests.
It remained unlikely that Biden would be able to pull even with Sanders. Still, a strong showing might slow Sanders’ momentum enough to allow Biden to catch him in upcoming primaries.
Virginia and North Carolina offered 209 delegates between them, with the delegates awarded proportionally based on the candidates' share of the electorate.
Both Sanders and Biden will finish Tuesday with fewer than 1,000 each, still short of the 1,991 delegates needed to secure the nomination.
A BITTER PILL FOR BLOOMBERG
The result in Virginia is a particularly bitter disappointment for former New York mayor and media mogul Mike Bloomberg, who made winning the state a top priority.
It was the first state where he held a campaign event after announcing his candidacy, and recent polls showed him competitive in the state.
Final vote totals had Bloomberg finishing below the 15 percent threshold needed to win delegates, shutting him out in that state. He appeared to be in slightly better shape in North Carolina.
Even so, such a disastrous showing in what appeared to be winnable states will likely intensify calls for the billionaire, who spent more than $200 million of his own fortune on ads for Super Tuesday, to exit the Democratic race in favor of Biden.
BEATING TRUMP
The exit polls appeared to bolster Biden’s claim that he is best positioned to defeat President Donald Trump in the general election in November.
Polls from North Carolina and Virginia gave him a clear advantage over Sanders among voters who said they would rather have a nominee who can beat Trump than who agrees with them on major issues. In Virginia, for example, 64% of those who prioritized beating Trump backed Biden compared to just 16% for Sanders.
Such results appeared to suggest a growing belief within the party that nominating Sanders would hand Trump a second term.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
DALLAS -- Former Vice President Joe Biden's Democratic presidential bid picked up steam on Monday with the endorsements of two former 2020 rivals - Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar - who planned to join him on the stage at a rally on the eve of the Super Tuesday primary elections
But Biden still faces a challenge from billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg among voters hoping the party will nominate a moderate.
Klobuchar, a senator from Minnesota, will become the third 2020 candidate in as many days to drop out of the race when she announces the suspension of her campaign in Dallas, where she will also publicly back Biden, a Klobuchar aide said.
Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who ended his White House bid on Sunday, also plans to endorse Biden in Dallas, a top adviser said.
Biden is fresh off a resounding victory in Saturday's South Carolina primary and is aiming for a strong showing on Super Tuesday against Senator Bernie Sanders, the national frontrunner and a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont.
The Super Tuesday contests offer the biggest one-day haul of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the party's nomination at its national convention in July, with about 1,357 delegates, or nearly one-third of the total number, up for grabs.
Fourteen states - California, Texas, Virginia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Vermont, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina and Maine - as well as American Samoa and Democrats living abroad cast ballots on Tuesday. (The primary for expatriate Americans is scheduled to run through March 10.)
Bloomberg, a late entrant to the race, will make his ballot-box debut. He is betting the $500 million of his own money he has poured into his campaign will allow him to make up for not competing in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.
Five candidates - Biden, Bloomberg, Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and US Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii - remain in the running for the nomination to take on Republican President Donald Trump in November's election, down from more than 20 earlier in the campaign.
Bloomberg and Biden have emerged as the main contenders for the votes of moderate Democrats, while Sanders is the progressive front-runner nationally, eclipsing Warren.
BIDEN'S MOMENTUM
Biden's high-stakes triumph in South Carolina, where his campaign had said his popularity with black voters would propel him to victory after early disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, helped winnow the field.
Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer also gave up his campaign on Saturday night after a third-place finish in the Southern state in which he had invested most heavily.
One of Buttigieg's top fundraisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some of his supporters planned to donate to Biden's campaign.
Sanders' momentum might not be easily slowed. On Monday, his campaign downplayed the efforts by moderates to present a united front.
"The establishment is nervous, not because we can't beat Trump, but because we will," said Sanders' campaign manager, Faiz Shakir. "And when we do, the Democratic Party will again be a party of the working class."
It was not immediately clear who would immediately benefit from the departures of Buttigieg and Klobuchar. A Morning Consult poll taken Feb. 23 to 27, for example, before Buttigieg exited the race, showed that 21 percent of his supporters named Sanders as their second choice, 19 percent picked Biden, another 19 percent chose Warren and 17 percent favored Bloomberg.
Biden still lags his rivals in spending and organization in Super Tuesday states and beyond, but his campaign said on Sunday it had raised more than $10 million over the preceding two days.
Endorsements of the former vice president from elected officials and community leaders poured in on Monday as Democrats who believe a moderate is the best candidate to defeat Trump tried to circle the wagons around Biden.
Backing from Ohio Democrats including Representative Marcia Fudge and former Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory added to endorsements from Senator Tim Kaine and state House of Delegates Majority Leader Charniele Herring of Virginia. In Colorado, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has backed Biden. In California, Representative Gil Cisneros is supporting the former vice president.
On Wednesday, Hollywood mogul Sherry Lansing is hosting a fundraiser for Biden featuring Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Supporters of Sanders and Warren also rushed to weigh in for their candidates. The progressive magazine "The Nation" endorsed Sanders, and the women's fundraising organization Emily's List endorsed Warren.
Former President Barack Obama planned to wait until after the primaries to endorse a candidate, a source familiar with his thinking said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
DETROIT -- Pete Buttigieg, who entered the Democratic presidential race as a relative unknown and positioned himself as the future of the party during an improbable rise to the top tier of a crowded field, ended his White House bid on Sunday.
Buttigieg, 38, a former two-term mayor of South Bend, Indiana, an Afghanistan war veteran and the first openly gay candidate to make a competitive run for the US presidency, narrowly won the Iowa caucuses that kicked off the nominating race in February and finished a close second in New Hampshire.
But his early momentum from those rural, mostly white states did not translate into electoral success in the more diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina.
After finishing a distant third in the Nevada caucuses, Buttigieg came in fourth on Saturday in South Carolina, where he won support from just 3 percent of African-American voters.
The centrist Democrat's withdrawal from the race could help former Vice President Joe Biden, a fellow moderate who got a much-needed victory on Saturday and now is looking to wrest momentum from liberal front-runner Bernie Sanders in this week's 14-state Super Tuesday nominating contests.
Speaking in South Bend, Buttigieg said his campaign began its "unlikely journey" with a staff of four, no big email lists and no personal fortune.
"We got into this race in order to defeat the current president and in order to usher in a new kind of politics," Buttigieg told a crowd of supporters. Now, he said, it was time to "step aside and help bring our party and our country together."
In a tweet, Biden said Buttigieg had run a “trail-blazing campaign based on courage, compassion, and honesty,” adding: “This is just the beginning of his time on the national stage.”
Buttigieg had sought to unite Democrats, independents and moderate Republican voters, arguing his status as a Washington outsider could rebuild a majority to defeat Republican President Donald Trump in November's election.
But he faced persistent questions about his ability to win over black voters, a core Democratic voting bloc.
Buttigieg's tenure as South Bend mayor, which ended on Jan. 1, drew scrutiny for a lack of diversity on the local police force and a fatal shooting of a black resident by a police officer. He also lacked Biden's national profile or long-standing relationships with the black community.
HISTORIC CAMPAIGN
Buttigieg would have been the first openly gay major-party presidential nominee in US history. He did not make his sexuality a centerpiece of his candidacy, although his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, a teacher he married in 2018, regularly accompanied him on the campaign trail.
Buttigieg, often referred to simply as "Mayor Pete," promised a departure from the politics of the past. As a "proud son" of Indiana, he argued he could speak directly to voters struggling economically in crucial swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin that handed Trump the presidency in 2016.
A US Navy veteran who often spoke of his military service and Christian faith, Buttigieg was critical of Sanders' uncompromising liberal proposals, which Buttigieg warned could alienate moderate Democratic voters ahead of "the fight of our lives" to unseat Trump.
At the televised debate ahead of the South Carolina primary, Buttigieg said Sanders' shifting estimates to fund proposals such as a government-run healthcare system for all would doom the Democratic Party in November.
"I can tell you exactly how it all adds up. It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump," Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg had considerable early success in fundraising, proving popular with the Hollywood and big-tech money scenes. He came under fire from Democratic competitors, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, who questioned whether he was beholden to his big-money donors and criticized his ritzy, closed-door fundraiser in a wine cave in California.
His campaign, however, faced tighter purse strings after heavy investments in the first two voting states and raised only $6 million in January. Sanders, by comparison, raised $25 million the same month.
Before Biden's South Carolina win, Buttigieg had argued he was the only candidate who had proven he could beat Sanders in state contests. His campaign had laid out a strategy to get through Super Tuesday contests and focus on later primaries where it believed it had an edge.
That changed as the race remained outsized and questions mounted about possibly non-viable contenders splitting moderate votes to give Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, an easy path to the nomination. A campaign aide told Reuters that Buttigieg was not going to be a "spoiler" who helped Sanders win.
Still, his decision to drop out before Super Tuesday caught some supporters by surprise. Buttigieg spent the day in Selma, Alabama, commemorating a landmark civil rights march in 1965. A big crowd had gathered later on Sunday for the candidate's scheduled event in Dallas when they learned he was no longer coming.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee — Consider it progress for a presidential candidate on a steep learning curve: Michael Bloomberg now thanks his hecklers.
That is not how he has always handled unwanted interruptions on the campaign trail. In Nashville, Tennessee, in December, for instance, Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York, took the bait when environmental activists started shouting at him. “I’m doing more on the climate than you’ve even dreamed of,” he snapped, according to CBS News. “I’ve put a fortune into this thing.”
But on a return trip to Tennessee last month, when a man in Chattanooga started bellowing “Bernie! Bernie!” in the middle of Bloomberg’s speech, the candidate had all the graciousness of a maître d’ tending to a displeased patron.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, smiling and continuing on with his remarks. Later, in Memphis, Tennessee, Houston, and just about anywhere else a protester yelled out mid-speech — there is almost always one — Bloomberg delivered the same reply, “Thank you for making me feel like I’m at home in New York.”
Bloomberg’s bid for the presidency, which faces its first test before voters Tuesday when 14 states go to the polls, has exposed to the country what New Yorkers have long known: He was never admired for his gifts as a retail politician.
Now as he tries to connect with Americans who know little about him, other than what they see in his ubiquitous, slickly produced ads, his campaign is trying to buff the rough exterior of a 77-year-old who can be surly, inelegant and averse to talking about himself in a way that voters find revealing and personal.
His aides have warned him about rolling his eyes in public, especially during presidential debates. Though they initially said no to appearances on cable news town-hall-style programs, some advisers acknowledged that Bloomberg could have benefited from the practice, if only they had agreed to do them before last week. They have shown him television clips of surrogates who have defended the most damaging moments from Bloomberg’s past, like his defense of racially biased policing practices, more persuasively than he has.
And when he is faced with questions about his wealth, aides have pointed him toward polling that has shown voters respond favorably when they learn he did not inherit his money, but earned it himself.
In an interview, Bloomberg said he did not believe that voters would see this as an election where charisma is paramount, given how deeply many Americans feel that President Donald Trump has led the country in the wrong direction.
As president, he said, “You have to have somebody that the public thinks, ‘Whether I like the guy or the woman or not, he is smart, well meaning and knows how to manage the process.’ ” As for the subject of his wealth, he said, “it’s tricky,” adding: “People in America fundamentally don’t want to take away what you have. They want to find a way so that they can get it as well.”
So his speeches include a line that hits directly at the self-made part of his biography, and a personal critique of the president’s signature legislative achievement, the 2017 tax cut, in which the benefits went disproportionately to wealthy people like Bloomberg.
“I didn’t need a tax cut, thank you very much,” he said last week in Oklahoma City.
Still, delivering a good line off a teleprompter — Bloomberg reads from one at almost every public event — means little if he cannot nail the moments when the script isn’t there. And then there are the times he mangles the script anyway, like telling the crowd in Greensboro, North Carolina, how nice it was to be in “Gainesboro.” Or how much he was looking forward to competing in “Super Bowl Tuesday.”
His audiences seem not to mind terribly much. In Greensboro, a few people in the crowd called out to correct him, but that was the end of it. “Very, very impressed,” said Jimmy Sipsis, 60, a property manager and self-described independent. “Based on his record, you look at it, and see he can stand up there and say, ‘I’ve done this, I’ve done that.’ ”
Once Bloomberg entered the race late last year, the campaign benefited from almost two months in which the candidate could hone his public speaking skills, rusty and sclerotic after a decade since his last run, without too much scrutiny. The attention of the political world was trained on Iowa and New Hampshire, where Bloomberg did not compete, so hardly anyone noticed the gaffes like when he opened a campaign office in Denver in early February and joked about wishing someone else could have spoken for him so that he could spend the day at his home in Vail, Colorado.
His campaign strategy was never to pretend to have a feel-your-pain magic touch. Instead, it has leaned hard into his experience running the nation’s largest city through trying times, like the recovery from the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Sandy, an approach his aides hope will help elevate him above his rivals given the events of the past week.
With a 3-minute, direct-to-camera television ad that will air nationwide Sunday night and a sharpened stump speech highlighting his leadership as mayor, Bloomberg is hoping to draw a stark contrast with Trump’s handling of the coronavirus and the managerial records of some of his Democratic opponents.
At his first appearance in a televised debate last month, he was halting, flat and silent as his opponents pummeled him over his record as mayor, and allegations that he had spoken demeaningly of women. His second debate performance was more aggressive and confident, though he had moments when he flubbed what should have been easy comebacks. At one point, when defending his commitment to the Democratic Party by explaining how he had spent $100 million helping Democrats win the House of Representatives in 2018, he caught himself after almost saying he “bought” the majority that made Nancy Pelosi the speaker. “I got them,” he said, making the moment only slightly less awkward.
Those who attend his campaign events now hear a message that is tightly focused on his appeal as the “un-Trump,” a pitch that has been redrafted multiple times in the two months he has been campaigning full time. There is an element of high and low to the approach, in which Bloomberg boasts of policy achievements like fighting for stricter gun control legislation and closing coal-fired power plants (even when he’s in eastern Tennessee, the heart of coal country) in one paragraph and, in the next, goads the president.
Seeing little use for subtlety, Bloomberg and his advisers have taken an approach they hope will not just showcase his competence as a leader, but also expose some of Trump’s biggest insecurities
“It’s not all about Trump, but there are useful moments when we can invoke Trump, compare Mike to him and poke the bear,” said Tim O’Brien, a journalist who wrote a biography about Trump and is now working as one of Bloomberg’s senior advisers. “It’s so easy,” he added.
Needling Trump, who has taken the bait by responding with a flurry of angry tweets about “Mini Mike,” is one thing Bloomberg needs little coaching to do.
The president so loathes the informality of “Donald” that he demanded that contestants on his reality show “The Apprentice” refer to him as “Mr. Trump,” yet Bloomberg repeatedly calls him by his first name.
In one regular line of Bloomberg’s that gets a guaranteed laugh, he says, “People ask me, ‘Do you really want a general election between two New York billionaires?’ To which I say, ‘Who’s the other one?’”
The contrast to Trump is at the core of Bloomberg’s campaign. He closes out his pitch to voters by making the differences, as he sees them, between the two 70-something New Yorkers clear.
“Even though Donald and I are both from New York, the truth is we could not be more different,” he said recently in Nashville. “He breaks promises, I keep them. He divides people, I unite them. He’s a climate change denier. I’m an engineer.”
“He looks out for people who inherited their wealth like him,” Bloomberg added, “and I’m self-made.”
2020 The New York Times Company
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
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
source: news.abs-cbn.com
ANAMOSA, Iowa — As the Democratic presidential candidates fanned out across Iowa and New Hampshire on Thursday to address voters still scarred by President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, Joe Biden argued that any Democratic nominee would be vulnerable to baseless criticism and disinformation in the general election.
Biden’s remarks in Iowa, at his first political event of the 2020 election year, came a day after a deceptive video of him circulated online, highlighting how campaigns are still struggling to combat false information on the internet.
“You’re going to see a lot more of not only my statements being taken out of context and lied about or altered, you’re going to see whomever the Democratic nominee is, because that’s how this guy operates,” Biden said, adding that Democratic candidates would face unfair attacks from Trump “if I were to drop out of the race tomorrow” or “if I were to drop dead tomorrow” (There was no evidence that the video was connected to the president.)
Biden’s comment came in response to an event attendee who asked him about his ability to beat Trump and also to clarify his remarks in the video, which had been misleadingly edited to wrongly suggest that Biden was making racist remarks. In fact he was emphasizing the need to change “our culture” around violence toward women.
Still, the video spread rapidly on social media, amplified by many right-wing verified users on Twitter, including reporters at conservative news outlets, the former speaker of the Missouri House and Republican strategists, according to data compiled by Vinesight, a company that detects disinformation on social media. It is an online environment that alarms many Democratic voters who are gripped by anxiety over how best to defeat Trump.
The president, who was impeached in the House of Representatives in connection with asking Ukraine to investigate Biden, is comfortable only in a “mosh pit,” said Biden, who has faced months of false or exaggerated attacks from Trump and other Republicans.
Still, he argued that the Democratic Party was in a far stronger position today to confront Trump than in 2016, noting support for the president’s impeachment among some voters — “Hillary didn’t have that advantage” — and saying that in the previous campaign, not everyone took Trump seriously.
In response to the questioner, who also asked whether he was running a better campaign than Hillary Clinton had, Biden offered a wide-ranging answer and relitigated how Clinton handled a debate after Trump was caught on tape bragging about making unsolicited sexual advances. Biden also noted sexism as he discussed the last campaign, which he called “unfair,” but added, “That’s not going to happen with me.”
It was not just Biden who was ruminating on the 2016 election Thursday; Clinton’s loss in the Electoral College was on the minds of other candidates as well as voters.
At a campaign office opening in Plymouth, New Hampshire, entrepreneur Andrew Yang told voters: “Donald Trump is our president today because he had a very simple message — he said he was going to ‘make America great again.’ What did Hillary Clinton say in response? ‘America is already great.’ ”
“That did not quite work,” Yang said. “The problems are real. The struggles are real. Many Americans are being left behind. But Donald Trump’s solutions were not what we need.”
And Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, campaigning at a town-hall-style event in Concord, New Hampshire, was asked by a voter whether she would work to unite the party around the Democratic nominee if it was not her. The voter noted how some supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont did not rally behind Clinton in the general election against Trump.
Warren began a lengthy answer by first committing to party unity: “Every single person who is in the race for the Democratic nomination for president would make a far better president than Donald Trump,” she said to applause.
“I’m in all the way,” she added, and started making the case for differences between the 2020 race and the 2016 campaign — chiefly, in her telling, the palpably greater determination and intensity among Democrats to beat Trump.
“What we have to remind ourselves is, 2020 is not 2016. The world has changed,” she said, recalling the protest marches after Trump’s inauguration and the Democratic victories in 2018 in the House of Representatives and key governorships, and in 2019 in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia.
“We are getting stronger and we are in this fight,” she said. “2020 gives us this remarkable moment that is very different from ’16 or ’12 or ’08 or however far you want to go back. This moment where Americans are off the sidelines.”
Saying that “the door is open a crack” to an era of major reforms and the end of “business as usual,” she added: “Think about it — a nation that elects someone like Donald Trump is a nation that has got serious problems. Going back is not where we want to be. Our chance in 2020 is to look at that crack, drop our shoulder, run hard at it and build the America we want to be.”
Sanders, another leading progressive in the race, also waded into the debate over how to defeat Trump as he uncorked some of his fiercest criticism of Biden to date in an interview with The Washington Post.
“It’s just a lot of baggage that Joe takes into a campaign, which isn’t going to create energy and excitement,” Sanders said. “He brings into this campaign a record which is so weak that it just cannot create the kind of excitement and energy that is going to be needed to defeat Donald Trump.”
Sanders on Thursday reported an eye-popping fundraising haul of more than $34.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to his campaign, ahead of Biden at $22.7 million — Biden’s strongest quarter to date — as well as former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, whose campaign reported more than $24.7 million.
Even as Sanders sharpened his attacks on Biden in the interview, he largely stuck to his familiar message on the trail in Iowa on Thursday, denouncing income inequality and championing his signature policy proposal, “Medicare for All.” At a canvass kickoff in Grinnell, he jokingly named a young girl as his running mate.
As he boarded his new campaign bus after that event, he briefly answered a question about his fourth-quarter fundraising, calling attention specifically to the more than 5 million contributions his campaign had received since he entered the race. “That tells me the kind of grassroots support that we have and tells me why we’re going to win the nomination and why we’re going to defeat Donald Trump,” he said.
2020 The New York Times Company
source: news.abs-cbn.com
