Sanders Set for Strong Iowa Finish While Biden Sells Steadiness
Sanders Set for Strong Iowa Finish While Biden Sells Steadiness
(Bloomberg) -- As the race to win the Iowa Democratic caucuses enters the final stretch, Bernie Sanders appears to be peaking at just the right time, growing his deeply committed base into a lead.
At the same time, Joe Biden, who tried to revamp a struggling Iowa operation after losing his front-runner perch, is looking to avoid an embarrassing defeat that would undermine his electability argument.
Polls over the past eight months illustrate the shift: Biden, with an uneven campaign strategy, several verbal missteps and an air of a bygone era, conceded his Iowa lead first to Elizabeth Warren, the candidate who rose by pitching detailed policy plans; then to the unknown mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg; and now to Sanders, whose number of supporters from his 2016 campaign seemed unchanging.
If Biden loses, it will be the second time Iowans have rejected him to be the party standard-bearer, and his third attempt to win in Iowa. His first presidential campaign ended in 1987 with a scandal over plagiarism in a speech.
This time, his campaign’s urgency to win -- or to come in no worse than third -- revealed itself in a proposal Biden’s Iowa state director, Jake Braun, made to Pete Giangreco, a strategist for Amy Klobuchar’s campaign, this week. Braun floated the possibility of forming an alliance with Klobuchar’s campaign that if either Biden or Klobuchar did not have enough support in a caucus precinct to remain viable, the supporters would back the candidate who reached the 15% viability threshold.
The Klobuchar campaign rejected the offer.
The offer “was laughed off by our team,” Klobuchar campaign manager Justin Buoen told a Bloomberg News reporters roundtable in Des Moines on Thursday. “Our team has no interest in making deals with anyone because we believe we’re viable.”
Biden, who is pitching himself as the steady, experienced hand to guide the country after President Donald Trump, didn’t enter the race expecting to be offering deals to low-polling candidates. But, Democrats in Iowa say he squandered opportunities in the early months of his campaign. Many said he did not spend enough time campaigning in the state, build a robust operation or make the necessary political outreach to party chairs and Democratic activists that are crucial to caucus success.
Late this fall, the Biden campaign made significant efforts to improve the Iowa operation, moving senior staff from the Philadelphia headquarters to the state and securing big endorsements from former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and Iowa Representatives Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne. All three have now campaigned for him in the state.
Now, the Biden campaign is hoping the large number of undecided or not firmly committed voters -- a recent Monmouth Poll found 45% of likely caucus goers said they were open to changing their support -- will break for the former vice president on caucus night.
Sanders, on the other hand, stuck to his 2016 playbook, even through a heart attack sidelined the 78-year-old this fall. The Vermont senator has never wavered from supporting Medicare for All or strayed from his full-throated embrace of “democratic socialism.” The consistency has yielded high-profile endorsements, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has become a top surrogate for the senator.
In this final stretch, Sanders is honing his own electability argument, telling voters the Democratic nominee needs to expand the electorate and have historic turnout to defeat Trump. In Iowa, strategists say historic turnout levels would be a boon for the Vermont senator who has focused on turning out young and Latino voters.
“Let me submit to you why I believe that our campaign is the campaign most likely to defeat Donald Trump,” Sanders said earlier this week in Ames. “Why is that? To defeat Trump, we are going to need the largest voter turnout in American history. That’s it. I do not believe, I simply do not believe, that the same old same old politics is going to generate the excitement to create that turnout.”
The argument is a direct shot at Biden, who has framed the Trump presidency as an anomaly and that he believes once he is defeated, Republicans will have an “epiphany” and be more willing to work with Democrats. Biden’s closing argument has therefore been to urge voters to use caution.
“This is no time to take a risk,” one of Biden’s latest ads in Iowa reads.
But, by necessity, Biden’s path to the nomination has never relied on Iowa or on New Hampshire, with its primary on Feb. 11, even as the candidate and his team have insisted they’re working to win both states.
A top adviser’s post-Labor Day declaration that Biden didn’t need to win either of the first two contests made for a shocking headline.
Iowa’s predominantly white and liberal caucus-going population was never going to favor him, his aides have repeatedly said, while Sanders started the campaign with a record of having netted just under half of the state’s delegates in 2016. Biden’s team never expected him to have a dominant performance in New Hampshire given Sanders’ overwhelming win there in 2016 and the home state advantage Sanders and Warren have.
Therefore, Biden is aiming for a dignified finish in Iowa and then to move on to primaries and caucuses in states where his moderate policies and support with non-white voters will more closely align with the electorate.
“If I were to come in, like, some of the polling has shown, you know, five points behind or three points behind or seven points behind, I think I survive,” Biden told reporters traveling with him in December. “I think I do well because of the depth of the support I have in the African American, Latino community.”
(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News)
To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Des Moines, Iowa at tpager1@bloomberg.net;Jennifer Epstein in Council Bluffs, Iowa at jepstein32@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Magan Crane
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.