The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Dems’ electability fight rages in Iowa, elsewhere
The urgent fight for the Democratic presidential nomination raged across Iowa on Sunday.
DES MOINES, IOWA >> The urgent fight for the Democratic presidential nomination raged across Iowa on Sunday as the party’s leading candidates scrambled to deliver closing arguments centered on the defining question of the 2020 primary: Who can beat President Donald Trump?
Former Vice President Joe Biden demonstrated the breadth of his appeal by appearing at separate events with Catholics, union members and African Americans. He told black voters with a smile that “I’ve gone to more black churches than you have, probably, because I’m older.”
At the same time, the fight for the heart of the progressive movement pitted Elizabeth Warren against Bernie Sanders with dueling rallies 200 miles apart as they raced to reach voters before being forced back to Washington when Trump’s impeachment trial resumed Monday. With Iowa’s firstin-the-nation caucuses just eight days away, it was unclear when the senators would be able to return to the state.
“We gotta win,” Warren told several hundred people in Davenport, on the eastern edge of the state. “And also, can we just address it right here? Women win. The world changed when Donald Trump got elected.”
At another rally in Cedar Rapids, a voter asked why people should caucus for Warren instead of Sanders. She replied: “I know how to fight and I know how to win.”
Sanders and a collection of high-profile surrogates made an equally aggressive case in the rural community of Perry in central Iowa, having spent much of the weekend highlighting his ability to energize what Sanders has often called “a multi-generational, multi-racial, working-class coalition.”
“The reason we are going to win here in Iowa is we have the strongest grassroots movement of any campaign,” Sanders said.
The candidates were running out of time to change the direction of the high-stakes nomination fight ahead of Iowa’s Feb. 3 caucuses, the first of four primary contests in February in which momentum is critical. Establishment-minded Democrats were increasingly concerned about Sanders’ strength, fearing that the 78-yearold self-described democratic socialist might be too radical to beat Trump this fall should he win the nomination.
Stoking those fears, Trump’s campaign teased a general election attack against Sanders. The Vermont senator had spent much of the day before campaigning alongside New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the president’s team sent out an email with the title “Socialist invasion.”
“Why is radical socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spending so much time campaigning for Bernie? Because he’s the godfather of her extreme agenda and socialist vision for America,” the email said.
Seizing on concerns about Sanders, Democratic rival Sen. Amy Klobuchar told reporters after a campaign appearance in Ames that she was more electable and would be a better candidate at the top of the ticket than the Vermont senator.
“My argument is that I will make our tent bigger, our coalition wider, and my coattails (are) longer,” Klobuchar said. “I actually have the receipts. I do not come from a state that’s as blue as Vermont.”
The youngest candidate in the race, 38-year-old Pete Buttigieg, also played up warnings about Sanders — at least in his fundraising emails. For a second consecutive day, Buttigieg’s campaign sent a message to supporters warning that the Vermont senator might become the nominee.
Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, insisted that “it is time for something new” as he courted more than 1,000 people at an elementary school in West Des Moines.
“We cannot run the risk of trying to defeat this president with the same Washington political warfare mentality that brought us to this point,” he said, declining to single out any of his rivals. “It is time for something different. It is time to turn the page.”