NH tests Democrats’ call for change
Sanders, Buttigieg have different ideas and voter appeal
HANOVER, N.H. — New Hampshire voters are poised Tuesday to reorder the field of Democratic presidential candidates.
But as important, they will also send a message about what kind of change they want their party to stand for to challenge President Donald Trump.
Will it be the call for revolutionary change offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a democratic socialist who wants to dramatically re-engineer the U.S. economy — or the one for generational change by Pete Buttigieg, who says his plans are rooted in realism?
The candidates are separated by 40 years — longer than Buttigieg, 38, has been alive — and their appeals are starkly different as well.
Sanders, the candidate who is too old to be a Baby Boomer, has created far more energy among younger partisans, while Buttigieg is reminding voters that when the party chose generational change, it delivered candidates like John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Tuesday’s primary will in part be a referendum on which call is more powerful as the nominating process accelerates. It is a question shaped by ideology and perceptions of electability as much as age.
The political world is looking to New Hampshire, the second contest in the Democrats’ presidential primary season, for answers in an election that hinges, above all, on change.
It’s an easy choice for Rebecca Nicol, a 19-yearold Dartmouth College sophomore. She packed into an off-campus conference hall over the weekend where hundreds of young people cheered the 78-yearold Sanders who personifies the kind of change they’re craving in 2020, even in a field that features much younger and more diverse options.
“Age isn’t a factor. It’s more what they stand for,” Nicol says. “I’m definitely voting for Bernie.”
Sanders has won the hearts of a large number of young voters like no one else in 2020.
Yet, New Hampshire voters of all ages will weigh in on Tuesday as Democrats begin to decide just how aggressively they want their presidential nominee to lead their party in the Trump era.
It’s hardly the last word. The last candidate to win the Democratic primary in the state and go on to win the nomination was John Kerry in 2004.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s promise to return to, and build on, the Obama years is not resonating.
Neither are Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s layered prescriptions to combat corruption.
The election has evolved into a two-person race pitting Sanders’ burn-downthe-house politics against t he pragmatism of Buttigieg, a fresh-faced outsider who represents dramatic change on stage but is offering a much more cautious governing style.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who had a strong debate performance Friday and has drawn enthusiastic crowds since, threatens to take votes from Biden and others, with hopes of a surprising finish that will sustain her candidacy.
“We gotta make sure we’re making promises we can keep,” Buttigieg charged at a weekend rally at Keene State College, wearing a crisp white shirt, blue tie and no jacket as a decidedly older crowd cheered.
“I do not believe we can take the risk of falling back on the familiar,” he continued, standing at a podium emblazoned with the words “Turn the page.”
“And in a divided time in our country, I also don’t think we can take the risk of excluding anybody from this effort, of saying that if you’re not either for a revolution or status quo than you don’t fit. I think we are going to defeat this president by inviting everybody to be at our side.”
Buttigieg would be the youngest president elected in U.S. history, four years younger than Kennedy while Sanders would be the oldest.
And they draw their support from dramatically different groups of voters.
In Iowa’s opening contest last week, Sanders won the support of 56% of voters under the age of 30, according to AP VoteCast. Overall, seven in 10 Sanders’ voters were under 45.
Buttigieg’s support was not as young as Sanders’ but not as old as some of his rivals’ either. About twothirds of Buttigieg backers were 45 and older, compared with about a third who were under 45.
The age disparity was easy to see at rallies over the weekend on college campuses. Sanders’ events were packed with young faces. While Buttigieg drew a few hundred people to Keene State College on Saturday, few of them college students,
Meanwhile, Biden’s team insists that his call for moderate change resonates with younger voters as well, particularly among older African American millennials and Generation X voters.
It’s those people in particular who well remember Biden’s high-profile role in the Obama administration and yearn for a return to those days, says Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders.
“Do we lose the youngest people? Yes. But we are the second choice of almost all young people,” she said, explaining that Biden’s message is focused on building on the successes of the Obama years.