Sanders, Biden move on to next batch of Tuesday primaries

Dearborn, Mich. — The Democratic presidential primary is down to two major candidates, and it shows.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are spending their first weekend as their party’s last top White House contenders increasingly taking aim at one another. Each wants to show he’s the best choice before six more states — Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington — vote on Tuesday.

It reflects the new contours of a race that once featured 20-plus Democrats. An increasingly bitter matchup could endure for months as Biden and Sanders compete for the right to face President Donald Trump in November.

“We have a two-person race,” Sanders said Saturday in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with one of the nation’s largest Arab American populations. “And all over this country, people are asking themselves which candidate can best defeat Trump. I have zero doubt in my mind that, together, we are the campaign that can beat Trump.”

Campaigning in St. Louis, Biden said he was the one to unite the party and the country, and he would do that by promoting an upbeat message.

“If you want a nominee who’ll bring the party together, who will run on a positive progressive vision for the future, not turn this primary into a campaign of negative attacks — because that will only reelect Donald Trump if we go that route — if you want that, join us,’’ Biden said.

Winning, he added, ‘‘means uniting America, not sowing more division and anger.’’

But Biden also gently knocked Sanders’ weeks of suggestions that he is the candidate who can prompt record voter turnout in November and defeat Trump, saying that actually “we’re the the campaign that’s going to do that.”