Sanders pulls off big Nevada win
LAS VEGAS — Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed a major victory in the Nevada caucuses Saturday that demonstrated his broad appeal in the first racially diverse state in the presidential primary race and established him as the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
In a show of force, Sanders, a liberal from Vermont, had a large lead over his nearest rivals in early tallies, and The Associated Press named him the winner on Saturday evening.
His triumph in Nevada, after strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, will propel him into next Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, and the Super Tuesday contests immediately thereafter, with a burst of momentum that may make it difficult for the still-fractured moderate wing of the party to slow his march.
Sanders, speaking to jubilant supporters in San Antonio, trumpeted what early results suggested would be a landslide victory.
“We have just put together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition, which is not only going to win in Nevada it’s going to sweep the country,” he said, predicting another victory in Texas next month.
While Sanders boasted that “no campaign has a grassroots movement like we do,” and was bathed in “Bernie, Bernie!” chants, he otherwise ignored his Democratic opponents.
Sanders’ success, and the continued uncertainty over who is his strongest wouldbe rival, makes it less clear than ever how centrist forces in the party can organize themselves for a potentially monthslong nomination fight. The moderate wing is still grappling with an unusually crowded field for this late in the race, the lack of an obvious single alternative to Sanders and no sign that any of those vying for that role will soon drop out to hasten a coalescence.
As results were being counted Saturday night, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, billionaire investor Tom Steyer and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota were all competing for what would clearly be a distant second-place finish.
With the full order of finish still in doubt, Buttigieg used his caucus-night speech to deliver a stern warning about the implications of nominating Sanders, urging Democrats not to “rush” into anointing him as their candidate. In his most pointed critique to date, Buttigieg said Sanders’ agenda lacked broad support and asserted that the senator did not give “a damn” about the swing-state Democrats in Congress who are scared of running with him on the same ticket.
“Sen. Sanders believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans,” Buttigieg said, adding that Sanders wanted to “reorder the economy in ways most Democrats, not to mention most Americans, don’t support.”
Biden appeared at a Las Vegas union hall while most votes were still uncounted to claim a comeback and vowed victory in South Carolina. “Y’all did it for me,” he told supporters, trying out a new line aimed at his rivals. “I ain’t a socialist, I ain’t a plutocrat, I’m a Democrat.”
Biden’s campaign asserted that he would finish in second place here, a claim challenged by Buttigieg’s aides.
Scramble for delegates
The apparent scale of Sanders’ victory margin presented an immediate challenge to the rest of the candidates, many of whom have been counting on a drawnout nomination fight to give them time to catch up. But time is plainly running short, and few of Sanders’ rivals have a clear path to closing his advantage. Among them, only Biden has a realistic chance of winning South Carolina next week, the sole remaining contest before Super Tuesday on March 3.
That may leave the other Nevada runners-up scrambling to accumulate delegates but with few opportunities to win whole states. Several candidates who were counting on a wave of national momentum coming out of the early states showed no sign of achieving that: Klobuchar, who claimed a third-place finish in New Hampshire as a major breakthrough, appeared to be near the back of the pack in Nevada. Buttigieg, who nearly deadlocked Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire, did not come close to him on Saturday.
Should Biden prevail in South Carolina — an outcome that is no longer seen as a near-certainty — there could be enormous pressure on the other moderates in the race to stand down and give him a clean shot at
Sanders.
Warren, meanwhile, did not appear to have received a significant bump in Nevada after a debate Wednesday that was widely seen as her strongest of the campaign. Indeed, the impact of her dramatic confrontation with billionaire candidate Michael Bloomberg may have been muted here because so many early votes were cast before it.
The fragmentation of the vote among the other candidates, not only in Nevada but in the coming primaries, is likely to strengthen Sanders. After the split decision in Iowa, where he shared the lead with Buttigieg, and a modest victory in New Hampshire, he appeared to prove his ability to win convincingly in a more diverse state, an outcome that often eluded him in his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination.
Broader support
With its mix of Hispanic, African American and Asian American voters, Nevada offered Sanders a rejoinder to critics who claim he cannot broaden his appeal beyond his base of white liberals.
Sanders’ steady progress in the primary contest has come amid widespread grumbling and occasional howls of alarm from the Democratic establishment, which views Sanders — a 78year-old democratic socialist who has never joined the party — and his movement with a combination of fear and distrust. The anxiety deepened this weekend in the aftermath of reports that government intelligence officials believe the Russian government is aiding his candidacy, and after Sanders acknowledged that he was briefed on the Russians’ apparent intervention a month ago.
Yet his coalition in Nevada — where 35 percent of the voters were not white, according to entrance polls — bodes well for his prospects in the 15 states and territories that will vote on the most important day of the race in just over a week. The Super Tuesday contests include large, diverse states such as California, Colorado and Texas, and the delegate lode is so hefty that if Sanders performs well, it will be difficult for one of his rivals to catch up given the unflagging dedication of his supporters.
Even as many of the candidates left the state, Nevada retained the political spotlight as the caucuses appeared to run relatively smoothly after the debacle in Iowa this month.
More revealing than the caucus process was who voted — and the coalition that Sanders built in a state that derailed his then-promising candidacy four years ago.
He performed well across a range of voters, winning men and women, union members and nonunion workers, and those who attended college and those who did not, according to entrance polls.
Sanders not only won among self-described liberal voters but also made inroads with moderates for the first time. Among self-described moderate or conservative caucusgoers, Sanders was the top vote-getter, albeit narrowly: He captured 25 percent of such voters, while Biden won 23 percent, according to entrance polls.
That was in part because many black and Hispanic voters described themselves as moderates, and because Sanders outpaced the field with Hispanics, taking 53 percent, and was second only to Biden among African Americans.
He made less progress with older voters, whom he has repeatedly struggled with, but claimed new evidence that his calls for “a political revolution” were motivating new voters. He won an extraordinary 66 percent of voters under 30 and dominated among the broader universe of voters who said they were attending their first caucuses, a demographic that made up just over half of the electorate.