Sanders, Biden up attacks in head-to-head race
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.”
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 said, “means uniting America, not sowing more division and anger.”
Sanders argues that no Democrat will win the presidency “with the same-old, same-old politics of yesteryear.” That’s ironic given that the 78-year-old Sanders is actually a year older than Biden. But the avowed democratic socialist, who has served in Congress since 1991, says he’s bucked the establishment of both parties with decades with unpopular stands that now give him the credibility to lead a political revolution “from the bottom up.”
Sanders is pledging to increase Democratic turnout by drawing younger voters, minorities and working class people to the polls even though they tend to vote in lower concentrations than many other Americans. Strong support among Hispanics lifted Sanders to victories in Nevada and California, but Biden trounced him in South Carolina and throughout much of the Deep South that voted during last week’s Super Tuesday. Biden especially ran up the score with African Americans.
Top advisers expect Sanders to finish strong in Washington. But he canceled a trip to Mississippi, to focus on Michigan, Tuesday’s largest prize. He has three more Michigan events scheduled this weekend while Biden campaigns in Missouri and Mississippi.
Sanders said if he’s not the nominee, he will support Biden against Trump but “in the remaining months, I intend to make it clear what my views are and what Joe Biden’s are.”
Sanders has used many of his Michigan stops to hammer Biden’s past support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that it moved high-paying U.S. jobs to Mexico and China while devastating manufacturing in a state dominated by the auto industry. He’s focused on Biden’s years in the Senate, when Biden backed not only trade agreements and the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but also a ban on using federal funds to pay for abortions. Biden announced this summer that he was reversing his position on that, but Sanders said that wasn’t enough.
“I think we need a candidate that can be trusted on this issue. I am proud to tell you that I am 100 percent pro choice,” Sanders said Friday night in Detroit.