BLOOMBERG’S EXIT FROM RACE GIVES MAJOR BOOST TO BIDEN
Democratic presidential contest being redefined at breakneck speed
PRIMARY ELECTION
Mike Bloomberg dropped out of the presidential race and backed Joe Biden on Wednesday, throwing the financial might of the Democratic Party’s biggest benefactor behind the former vice president’s campaign as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed to wage a long battle for the nomination.
Sanders, regarded a week ago as having a clear upper hand over Biden, sounded chagrined as he faced reporters after losses in states from Maine to Texas where he was hoping for huge turnout of Democrats — yet where a surge in voter participation lifted Biden instead. Sanders now faces pressure to show he can expand his political base well beyond what he has achieved so far: He acknowledged that he had not yet managed to transform the electorate in his favor by bringing a great wave of young people to the polls.
The sudden shift in political momentum favoring Biden has redefined the Democratic race at breakneck speed. Since Saturday, when Biden won South Carolina in a landslide, much of the Democratic establishment has aligned behind him: Two top rivals, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, dropped out and endorsed Biden on Sunday and Monday; he won 10 states
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Tuesday, including Texas and North Carolina; and Bloomberg backed him Wednesday.
Only Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts remains as the other major candidate in the race. Her campaign said Wednesday that she was assessing her path forward in view of another night of dispiriting election returns, including a thirdplace finish in her home state, that left Warren without a single victory after a month of primaries and caucuses.
Sanders said Wednesday that he had spoken with Warren, who for months had been his most formidable rival from the populist wing of the Democratic Party. But Sanders said he applied no public pressure on her to stand down and shared no knowledge of her private intentions, if he had any.
Some supporters have urged Warren to take her time while others are pressing her to capitalize on what leverage she has now by dropping out and endorsing Biden, according to Democrats who have spoken to her. But Warren made it clear to one supporter Wednesday that she was not going to act hastily and that it may be at least another day before she makes up her mind.
In a further boon to Biden, Bloomberg, a multibillionaire, signaled in his concession speech that he intended to keep wielding his personal fortune against President Donald Trump. The former New York City mayor had previously pledged to keep deploying large sums of money to help Democrats in the general election, even if Bloomberg did not become the nominee, though recently the Sanders campaign said it would not welcome that kind of help.
Both of the Democratic front-runners were in something of a regrouping phase Wednesday, as Biden’s campaign raced to harness his new momentum and Sanders sought to refocus his rattled political operation for a newly grueling fight. The Biden campaign has told allies that it is seeking to rapidly hire new campaign staff to fill out its presence in states across the map, where the former vice president has built little or no organized infrastructure because of his financial difficulties for so much of the race.
Sanders’ team is hoping that his more developed campaign apparatus might give him a chance to slow Biden’s rise in the half-dozen states that vote next week, most significantly in the large swing state of Michigan. Addressing reporters in Burlington, Vt., on Wednesday afternoon, Sanders described the upcoming Michigan primary as “enormously important” and said he had high hopes to win.
Repeating a litany of criticism he leveled at Biden in his election-night speech Tuesday, Sanders indicated he would focus over the next week on attacking Biden’s record of supporting what he described as “disastrous trade agreements” that had been particularly damaging to Midwestern states like Michigan. In a refrain calling out Biden, Sanders several times said “Joe is going to have to explain” various other parts of his record, including his support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2008 bailout of the financial industry.
Biden has not faced a sustained challenge from any other candidate in weeks, having been largely written off by his rivals after his embarrassing fifth-place finish in New Hampshire. It remains to be seen whether Biden will be able to fully extend the explosive energy that has propelled his campaign over the past few days, and how deftly he might be able to grapple with a determined opponent like Sanders on the campaign trail and in future debates.
But Sanders also acknowledged that he was disappointed by the results from contests this week in 15 states and territories, of which Biden captured 10. And in a striking and uncharacteristic admission, Sanders conceded that his campaign had not managed to generate the soaring turnout among young people that he had been counting on to secure the nomination.
“Have we been as successful as I would hope, in bringing young people in? And the answer is no,” Sanders said. “We’re making some progress.”
Campaigning in West Beverly Hills on Wednesday, Biden brandished the breadth and diversity of his support to reject Sanders’ rhetoric casting him as an instrument of the political establishment.
“The establishment are all those hardworking, middleclass people, those African Americans, those single women,” Biden said, referring to voters who turned out in force for him this week.
Biden and Sanders supporters will be looking for wins Tuesday in primaries and caucuses in Michigan, Missouri and four other states. Bloomberg’s exit, and his immediate move to back Biden, had the potential to anger supporters of Sanders, who have long regarded Bloomberg as a malignant force in the 2020 campaign, and stoke resentment among progressives that party power brokers were again taking exceptionally aggressive steps to thwart Sanders’ candidacy.
But Bloomberg’s decision to leave the race came primarily from an unsparing assessment of his own feeble prospects, according to people briefed on his deliberations.