US Elections: Democrats Fear A 2016 Repeat In 2020

There was no brilliant shift in strategy that lifted Biden’s campaign from near-death before South Carolina to victory there and then to the resurgence on Super Tuesday.

Instead, he was thrust back into front-runner contention by a series of weighty endorsements, starting with US Rep. Jim Clyburn in South Carolina and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and swiftly followed by three former primary rivals: Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke. It was the sign that undecided and skittish Democratic voters clearly had been looking for.

The big endorsements for Biden kept coming after Tuesday night’s showing. He was anointed by another force that Sanders supporters loathe when former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday threw his backing behind the former vice president — an embrace that could mean millions of dollars continue to be spent on ensuring that Sanders is not the Democratic nominee.

Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm also backed the former vice president, giving him a boost in a key state that will vote next Tuesday, along with former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

In an echo of 2016, the undertone of suspicion among Sanders supporters resurfaced Wednesday on social media with posts carrying the hashtag #RiggedPrimary and #RiggedDNC. In recent interviews at Sanders rallies, his supporters have openly expressed their fear that Democratic Party leaders will “steal” the nomination from him.

Sanders himself outlined an us-vs.-them construct for the campaign at a news conference Wednesday in Burlington, Vermont, where he listed the forces stacked against him, including Wall Street and “the entire corporate establishment.”

“There has been never a campaign in recent history which has taken on the entire political establishment, and that is an establishment which is working frantically to try to defeat us,” he said.

“There has not been a campaign that is trying to deal with the kind of venom that we’re seeing from some in the corporate media,” Sanders added. “This campaign has been compared to the coronavirus on television. We have been described as the Nazi army marching across France, etc., etc. As we come into the last several months of this campaign, what I hope very much is that what we can focus on is an issue-oriented campaign, which deals with the concerns of the American people.”

When asked about Bloomberg, Sanders said he had “no animus” toward the former mayor, “but this just confirms exactly what I said. It’s what the media has been talking about for months. How do we stop Bernie Sanders? How do we stop a movement of working people and low-income people? How do we stop a multi-generational, multi-racial movement, which is standing up for justice?”

Biden’s aides, in turn, were sharply critical of what they view as divisive tactics by the Sanders team in upcoming states, including a new ad critiquing the former vice president’s advocacy for freezing Social Security spending in 1995 (an argument the then-senator from Delaware made when supporting a balanced budget amendment).

“We’ve seen, unfortunately, what kind of campaigns Bernie Sanders runs. We saw the impact that it had in 2016,” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield told reporters.

US Rep. Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, also took issue with Sanders’ characterization of Biden’s victories Tuesday night, pointing to his huge margins among black voters.

“I just did not know that African Americans in the South were considered part of the establishment,” the Louisiana Democrat said.

In a quest for unity, Democratic leaders like Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have studiously stayed out of the fight. But Clinton, whose disdain for Sanders has continued to draw headlines, was blunt about where her preferences stand in a new Hulu documentary series, “Hillary,” that premiered at Sundance.

“Nobody likes him,” she said of Sanders. “Nobody wants to work with him.”

Among Democrats more broadly, Jen Psaki, a former Obama adviser who’s now a CNN contributor, pointed out that since Clinton’s defeat in 2016, there has been a much greater recognition of the power and importance of Sanders’ coalition, which is why Biden has labored to strike a tone of inclusivity.

“There wasn’t the same fear of (Trump) going into the White House that exists now, and that will be a big motivator that it was not four years ago,” Psaki said. “There was a lack of understanding of the power of Bernie Sanders’ support and the loyalty of his support. And there probably wasn’t enough seriousness taken — the need to reach out to people who felt disaffected, who didn’t feel heard, who felt that their movement wasn’t taken seriously and was undervalued when it shouldn’t have been.”

“On the flip side, the lesson has not been learned on Bernie Sanders side, in my view. This is about addition, not subtraction,” Psaki said. “And you’re not going to win by alienating large swaths of Democrats out there — people who don’t feel like they want to be part of Bernie Sanders’ movement, they just want to defeat Donald Trump and they want their health care protected.”