Michigan looms large for Sanders

DETROIT — Bernie Sanders is seeking to boost his bid for the Democratic nomination with a repeat of his 2016 victory in Michigan as he and front-runner Joe Biden square off in six states today.

Michigan, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington state hold presidential contests today at a critical point in the Democratic race.

Sanders is in a fight to turn things around as the primary calendar quickly shifts to other states that could favor Biden and nar

row Sanders’ path to the nomination.

“Michigan is really important,” said Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic delegate counter who worked for Sanders in 2016. “Bernie’s victory there last time was an incredible moment in the process.”

While doubling his organizing staff in the state, Sanders is running TV ads that hit Biden on trade and Social Security, and he’s expanding his outreach to voters and holding a multitude of events.

But Michigan might not have the advantages for Sanders that it did four years ago, said Devine. Then, with Michigan holding its primary without any other states competing for attention, the campaign spent three weeks focused on Michigan.

Sanders is also hoping to do well in Washington state today, but he could face hurdles in Mississippi and Missouri. Sanders’ team acknowledges he will likely struggle in next week’s Florida primary, where the senator’s past defense of Fidel Castro looms large. He also could face tough odds in Ohio and Illinois — especially if he underperforms in Michigan. Both of those states also vote March 17.

Sanders canceled a visit to Mississippi last week, all but conceding defeat in the state with the highest black population. Biden had a 48-point win over Sanders in neighboring Alabama last week.

In recent days, the senator from Vermont has sought to gain momentum and counter a parade of Democratic leaders lining up behind Biden by securing the endorsement of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and deploying Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on his behalf.

“With the exception of Native Americans, African Americans are the people who are most behind socially and economically in the United States, and our needs are not moderate,” Jackson said Sunday at a Sanders rally in Grand Rapids. “A people far behind cannot catch up choosing the most moderate path.”

Ocasio-Cortez, one of Sanders’ highest-profile supporters, struck a more conciliatory tone while addressing more than 10,000 people on the campus of the University of Michigan on Sunday night, saying, “In order for us to win, we have to grow.”

“We must be inclusive. We must bring more people into this movement,” she said, urging Sanders’ supporters to shed “cynicism and exclusion” and “turn with an embracing posture, where all people are welcome in a people’s movement.”

An outstanding question for the Democrats is whether Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who dropped out of the race last week, will endorse Biden or Sanders. So far, she’s declined to back either.

Sanders wouldn’t say whether he’s personally lobbying Warren for her endorsement.

BIDEN’S PUSH

Biden is looking to quash Sanders’ hopes and cement his own front-runner status just a week after his White House bid gained steam with a delegate victory on Super Tuesday. He played up his underdog story on Monday as he campaigned across Michigan, reflecting on his stutter as a child and the deaths of his first wife and young daughter.

And Biden wasn’t campaigning alone: The former vice president courted the state’s influential black voters alongside the two most prominent black candidates previously in the 2020 race, Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, who endorsed Biden in recent days as part of a broader consolidation of support among party leaders.

Today marks the first time voters will weigh in on the Democratic contest since it effectively narrowed to a two-person race between Sanders and Biden. It will be another test of whether Sanders can broaden his appeal among black voters. Biden, meanwhile, must show that he can keep momentum going after Super Tuesday.

“I like his chances,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has endorsed Biden, said of the former vice president in a phone interview Monday.

“He knows Michigan,” Whitmer said. “When our back was up against the wall during the auto struggles of the past, it was Barack Obama and Joe Biden who had our backs. Others were saying, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt.’”

That’s a reference to the Obama administration overseeing federal bailouts that helped the auto industry — the lifeblood of Michigan’s economy — weather the 2009 financial crisis. Sanders counters that he, too, voted to save the auto industry. He also says that, unlike Biden, he opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he said prompted thousands of Michigan jobs to move to Mexico after the pact effect in 1994.

Appearing Monday with Booker at a campaign stop in Flint, Mich., a community that has seen auto industry jobs disappear, Biden ticked off the names of six former presidential rivals who have endorsed him just in the past week. “They’ve all come out and endorsed at one time … the candidate that they think can win,” Biden said.

“I want to say to all of them and their supporters, I know how hard this is, but the message is simple: We want you, we need you, there’s a place in our campaign for you,” he said.

Economic challenges emerged on Monday as fears about the spread of the new coronavirus shook financial markets, slicing 7.8% from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Sanders held a roundtable with health experts in Detroit, and Biden said he would defer to health experts about whether campaign events could continue, given concerns about the spread of the virus.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, stopped short of calling on candidates to put a pause on political rallies. Instead, he said he wouldn’t criticize someone seeking office for putting a pause on big gatherings.

“If you’re talking about a campaign rally tomorrow in a place where there is no community spread, I think the judgment to have it might be a good judgment,” Fauci said Monday at a White House briefing. “If you want to talk about large gatherings in a place where you have community spread, I think that’s a judgment call.”

SANDERS’ PATH

Sanders would have to win 63% of the delegates available today to catch up with Biden’s 91-delegate lead. Failing that, the math only gets tougher with each round of primaries, as fewer delegates are available and rank-and-file party voters tend to rally around the front-runner.

The intricate arithmetic of how delegates are won makes it possible today for a winning candidate to reap a bigger haul of delegates with a smaller margin of victory than on any other night. This gives Biden an opportunity to greatly increase his lead over Sanders or for Sanders to close the gap.

Delegates are awarded proportionally, mostly in congressional districts. And nearly two-thirds of the districts up for grabs today have odd amounts of delegates.