Democrats hurl barbs to counter Bloomberg’s rise
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidates hoping to revive their flagging campaigns are increasingly taking aim at Mike Bloomberg, blasting their billionaire rival for trying to buy his way into the White House and raising questions about his commitment to racial equality.
Struggling to recover from poor showings in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden took the lead in attacking Bloomberg. Biden, the former vice president, said on ABC’s “The View” that “I don’t think you can buy an election,” while Warren took Bloomberg to task for his 2008 comments that ending redlining, a discriminatory housing practice, helped trigger the economic meltdown.
Biden and billionaire Tom Steyer also joined forces in slamming Bernie Sanders after the Vermont senator and selfdescribed democratic socialist won New Hampshire and essentially tied for the lead in Iowa with Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind.
The sniping reflects the remarkably fluid state of the Democratic race even after two states that typically winnow presidential fields have already voted. The White House hopefuls are trying to blunt Bloomberg, who gained attention by flooding the national airwaves with hundreds of millions of dollars in advertisements and is on the verge of being admitted into next week’s presidential debate. And the lagging candidates are trying to prove that they still have the mettle to stay in the race, even if their path is becoming increasingly difficult.
Biden has long argued that he’s the most electable, in part because his centrist approach has broad appeal and could make it easier for Democrats to defeat President Trump in the fall. That’s at risk of being undermined by his middling finish in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s now staking his campaign on success in the Feb. 29 South Carolina primary, which is the first race in a state with a significant black population.
But before then, candidates will face voters in Nevada, which holds its Democratic caucuses on Feb. 22. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose moderate presidential campaign surpassed expectations in New Hampshire this week, raced to Nevada after a Senate vote Thursday to try to keep momentum going.
“The political landscape is littered with people who raised more money than Amy Klobuchar,” said Tom Nides, a former deputy secretary of state and Democratic donor who served as an intern on Capitol Hill with Klobuchar when they were in college. “Her whole campaign strategy has been based on the fact that she’s scrappy. She just grinds it out.”