Ocasio-Cortez Is Still Team Sanders But Promises to Back Nominee
Ocasio-Cortez Is Still Team Sanders But Promises to Back Nominee
(Bloomberg) -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is all in for Bernie Sanders, but she’s not going to tear the Democratic party apart over it.
Some of Sanders’s progressive supporters on Capitol Hill sounded a gentler tone than the candidate himself on Wednesday after Joe Biden’s robust comeback in the Super Tuesday primary contests.
Even as liberal Democrats insist that offering a bold vision is the best way to build a coalition, they are leaving room to join moderate Democrats if that’s what it takes to defeat President Donald Trump.
“I am supporting Bernie Sanders until the end,” said Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and a top Sanders surrogate. “But at the same time, I also am committed to supporting the nominee, whoever that might be.”
That stance offers more of an olive branch to the mainstream Democratic Party than Sanders has thus far. The Vermont senator, who is independent but caucuses with Democrats, said Wednesday that his campaign is taking on the “entire political establishment, and that is an establishment which is working frantically to try and defeat us.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a 10-term New York congressman in a 2018 primary, said she prefers to challenge Trump with a “message of going forward” with ambitious policies, rather than returning to the status quo. But ultimately, she said, she hopes that a clear nominee emerges before July so the party can unify behind one candidate.
”I think a brokered convention is obviously more difficult for whoever the eventual nominee is,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that ideally “we will get to a nominee before the convention, and I think that’s what we hope for.”
Biden Momentum
The primary elections on Super Tuesday were the first test of the newly consolidated moderate wing of the party, and Biden outperformed expectations. Strong support in the South helped the former vice president carry states like Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia, but he also claimed surprise victories in delegate-rich Texas, predominantly white Minnesota and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.
Much of Biden’s Tuesday momentum came from a strong finish in South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary last Saturday. He also got key endorsements from Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, after they dropped out of the race and warned of the risks of a far-left nominee like Sanders.
Sanders won four states, including California and Colorado, but Tuesday’s results exposed weaknesses in his outreach to some demographics, according to Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington State. Jayapal, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that can still be corrected, with most of the delegates still up for grabs.
“For Bernie Sanders, of course he’s going to have to figure out how to reach out to older voters and black voters and build the kind of coalition that’s now required in a two-person race,” Jayapal said. “It’s a very different race.”
Sanders supporters warn that it’s risky to tack to the center after that didn’t work in 2016 when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost to Trump. Jayapal and Ocasio-Cortez both said exit polls on Tuesday showed that most Democratic voters embrace Sanders’s proposal for a single-payer health care system that doesn’t have private insurance.
Two-Man Race
With the field now narrowed from half a dozen viable candidates to essentially a two-man race, Democrats backing Sanders said the contest would be dramatically reshaped as it focuses on specific differences between Biden and Sanders. The two candidates have differed sharply on issues including trade agreements, the Iraq War and the best approach to revamp the health care system.
Sanders emphasized those distinctions Wednesday, saying that he looks forward to discussing the “very significant differences” between himself and Biden.
“Joe and I have a very different voting record,” Sanders said. “Joe and I have a very different vision for the future of this country. And Joe and I are running very different campaigns.”
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat and a Sanders campaign co-chair, said polls suggest Sanders could win several other primary states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“Those are states that are definitely winnable, and I think that would change the narrative of the race,” Khanna said.
Missouri, which Sanders narrowly lost to Clinton in 2016, also is in play, Khanna said. And he added that Sanders could win Florida’s primary by convincing older voters of his commitment to improving Social Security’s solvency and to providing long-term care benefits as part of Medicare for All.
Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan said there was a “huge attractiveness to Senator Sanders” in her state -- “that he hasn’t sold out, that he doesn’t take corporate dollars. It’s a phenomenon and people are inspired by it.”
Other Democrats, however, are becoming increasingly outspoken about the broader risks of a Sanders nomination. In the Senate, Democrats are seeking to pick up the three or four seats needed to take control of the chamber, and moderate House Democrats are trying to hold the districts they won from Republicans in 2018.
‘Shared Goal’
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democratic leader, said Wednesday the party could do better without a progressive at the top of the ticket.
“I’m more optimistic with a centrist or moderate candidate when it comes to our marginal races,” said Durbin, who is still neutral in the primary but said he could endorse soon.
When it comes to defeating Trump, Delaware Senator Chris Coons pointed to Clinton’s narrow loss in 2016 as a real example of what could happen when Democrats fail to vote if their candidate isn’t the nominee.
“What I hope the focus is for all of the folks who are currently considering different nominees for the Democratic party, is just how historically bad President Trump is, for our values, for our nation, for our future,” Coons said. “I’m hopeful that as this moves forward, we will focus on our shared goal.”
That concern will be front and center in the Democratic National Convention in July, especially if neither Biden nor Sanders has won a clear majority of delegates. Congressional Democrats who support Sanders say they agree with him that whoever has a plurality of delegates should be recognized as the nominee. Sanders in a February debate was the only candidate who took that position.
Following the Rules
Trump has needled Sanders voters by playing up claims that the process is rigged against the Vermont senator. “The Democratic establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders AGAIN!!” Trump tweeted on Tuesday.
Coons, however, pointed out that Sanders in 2016 played a big role in shaping the rules by which the 2020 race is being conducted.
“He is getting a fair shake in that the Democratic Party is going to great lengths to make sure that all of our caucuses and primary elections are free, fair and open and follow the rules that he and his supporters -- along with many others -- had a hand in revising,” Coons said Wednesday. “We’re playing by the rules that he helped write.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;Daniel Flatley in Washington at dflatley1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton, John Harney
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