Biden, Sanders face challenges against Trump
WASHINGTON — If there is one thing essential for Democrats as they look toward taking on President Donald Trump in November, it is a nominee who can drive strong, perhaps historic, turnout, either by reassembling the coalition that twice elected Barack Obama or by mobilizing masses of new voters.
Yet the party is now barreling toward its nominating convention with the race mostly whittled down to two candidates in their late 70s who both have big weaknesses in reaching beyond their respective bases.
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden will face a crucial test in the remaining states in the Democratic primary, where both will have to recalibrate and — to some extent rebrand — to broaden their appeal and unify a fractured party. It is a tall order for two men who are products of an earlier generation of politics.
“To beat Trump is going to take an all-of-the-above approach, what we saw in the midterm elections: expanded youth turnout, expanded turnout among people of color and continuing to win crossover votes among better-educated independents and Republicans,” said Tom Bonier, chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic data analytics firm.
“Whoever the Democratic nominee is, they are going to have to check all those boxes,” he said.
Bonier and other party strategists are confident that challenge will prove easier to overcome than the challenges Trump faces in rebuilding his own winning coalition. But the risks are large for both Democratic candidates, and for the party.
Each of their campaigns insists it is poised to draw groups of voters who have not been enthusiastic about their politics and to craft a pitch that crosses ideological and demographic boundaries, as Obama succeeded in doing in 2008.
But Obama, a relative newcomer to the national political stage then, charged into his race free of the burdens that Sanders and Biden carry. Decades of experience helped propel the two septuagenarian politicians to the front of a huge field of candidates this cycle, but that also weighs them down as they struggle to reach new audiences.
“He’s going to talk about building a big coalition,” Sanders campaign co-chair Ro Khanna, a Silicon Valley congressman, vowed in a video interview he posted Wednesday on Twitter. “He is committed to being a unifier.”
That message reflected an insurgent campaign chastened by Super Tuesday election returns that indicated Sanders needs to adjust his approach.
But even as the Biden campaign reveled in its success Tuesday, advisers acknowledged that the former vice president, too, must expand his reach.
“This is somebody whose campaign is fundamentally about hope and optimism, but I think you’re going to hear a lot that’s from the vice president continuing about not just the experience of the past, but the vision for the future,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a co-chair of the Biden campaign, told reporters Wednesday.
Biden came out of Super Tuesday with several accomplishments to boast of. Turnout hit record levels in some states he carried, notably Virginia. Biden did extremely well in suburban areas among the sorts of moderate voters — many of them former Republicans — who helped carry the Democrats to victory in the 2018 midterm election.
But his limited reach with voters younger than 45, whom Obama was so successful at energizing, is not encouraging for a Democratic Party eager to attract new blood.
All of the memes of Biden in his aviator glasses and his campaign trail talk about student debt and sexual violence can’t mask some tough numbers. He drew just 17% of voters under 45 on Super Tuesday, according to exit polls.
Biden events routinely feature far more gray heads than nose rings. His oldschool political style, his dated references to dead politicians like South Carolina Sen. Fritz Hollings and use of archaic words like “malarkey” all send a generational message that leaves many young voters scratching their heads. Many young Democrats believe the political and economic system isn’t working for them and want candidates who will shake things up, as many polls have shown.
“There is a pretty steep burden of proof for Joe Biden, first, to show young voters that he gets all of that and, second, that he can and will make the kind of changes that young voters are seeking,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated with any presidential candidate. “Some of this is about policy and some is just about tone and mindset and body language.”
The former vice president’s lackluster results with Latinos compound questions about whether he can make the inroads Democrats have long sought in Sunbelt states, notably Arizona and Texas. Some see worrisome echoes of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential run in 2016, when the candidate’s dated messaging, establishment pedigree and lack of energy on the campaign trail left too many voters uninspired.