The Wall Street Journal - 11.09.2019

A4| Wednesday, September 11, 2019 PWLC101112HTGKBFAM123456789OIXX ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Candidatevisits

byprimarydate

Joe Biden Elizabeth Warren

Bernie Sanders

Pete Buttigieg

Kamala Harris

Andrew Yang

Cory Booker Beto O’Rourke

Julián Castro Amy Klobuchar

Early states (4)

Super Tuesday states (14)

March states (12)

April states (11)

Late states (11)

Home

states

Candidates’

‘visits’ to

their home

states

States with early primaries and caucuses have been popular destinations for Democratic presidential

candidates through Labor Day. The South and the Rust Belt have also had many visits.

Source: The campaigns Joshua Jamerson, Eliza Collins and Danny Dougherty/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Note: Includes official events reported by campaigns for the 10 candidates who qualified for the September debate.

Only counts visits outside of candidates’ home states, unless otherwise noted.

HittingtheTrail

Early-StateBreakdown

CaliforniaMovesUp

Nev.

(Feb. 22)

S.C.

(Feb. 29)

Calif.

(March 3)

N.H.

(Feb. 11)

Iowa

(Feb. 3)

Delegate-rich California, whose

primary advanced from June to

Super Tuesday on March 3,

attracted more visits than South

Carolina and Nevada. Mail-in

voting in the Golden State will

begin on the same day that the

Iowa caucuses are held.

SouthernSwing

Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada

and South Carolina are the first

states to vote for the Democratic

nomination, and receive some of

the heaviest attention.

Georgia’s changing

demographics have made it a

more popular campaign stop.

La.

Mich.

Pa.

Wis.

Miss. Ala. Ga.

Michigan

More than half of

the visits to Rust

Belt states, 26, have

been to Michigan.

Rust Belt states Pennsylvania,

Michigan and Wisconsin have

collectively racked up more

campaign visits than Nevada, a

pivotal early state.

BattlegroundRustBelt

StatesAreaDraw

U.S. NEWS

couldn’t “play it safe” in

choosing a nominee while for-

mer Housing and Urban Devel-

opment Secretary Julián Cas-

tro pointed to Democrats’

history of nominating a “new,

exciting face.”

The 76-year-old Mr. Biden

is seeking the presidency for

the third time and has domi-

nated Democratic polls as the

candidate viewed as the most

electable against the presi-

dent, ahead of Mr. Sanders,

78, and Ms. Warren, 70.

A Washington Post-ABC

News survey released during

the weekend found Mr. Biden

with 29% among registered

Democrats and Democratic-

leaning independents, fol-

lowed by Mr. Sanders at 19%

and Ms. Warren at 18%. The

poll found that nearly half of

the electorate viewed Mr. Bi-

den as having the best chance

of defeating Mr. Trump, an at-

tribute that the former vice

president has made a key part

of his campaign.

A senior Biden campaign

adviser said the former vice

president has maintained his

position despite being “under

relentless attack” since before

he entered the race. In Hous-

ton, Mr. Biden will seek to em-

phasize his work during his

career to accomplish “pro-

gressive change,” and high-

light a divide in the field be-

tween “those who want to

build on the Obama legacy

and those who want to attack

it.”

Mr. Biden has kept his edge

despite a series of verbal mis-

steps during the summer.

When he faced questions

after appearing to conflate de-

tails of war stories involving

soldiers in Afghanistan, Mr.

Biden said the details were

“irrelevant” and had “nothing

to do with judgment.”

And when he was asked re-

cently about his vote to autho-

rize the Iraq war in 2002, Mr.

Biden told National Public Ra-

dio that he “immediately” op-

posed the war the “moment it

started” in the spring of 2003,

even though his past public

statements suggest otherwise.

Following the invasion, Mr.

Biden often pressed President

George W. Bush to level with

the public about the potential

for a long war. But he also

said in July 2003, for example,

during a Senate Foreign Rela-

tions Committee hearing, “I

voted to go into Iraq, and I’d

vote to do it again.”

Mr. Sanders has suggested

he may revisit Mr. Biden’s Iraq

war vote in the debate. During

an appearance last week on

ABC’s “The View,” Mr. Sanders

sidestepped a question about

Mr. Biden’s recent gaffes but

added, “Our records are very

different. Joe voted for the

warinIraq,Joevotedforthe

Wall Street bailout. I did not,”

Mr. Sanders said.

In a “Bern Notice” email

distributed by the campaign,

Mr. Sanders’s adviser David

Sirota wrote that Mr. Trump

“is a president who treats de-

tails as irrelevant” and had

displayed “terrible judgment.”

“We need a Democratic

nominee with good judgment

who knows that when the de-

tails are ignored, working

people get left behind,” Mr.

Sirota wrote.

Some Democrats have

warned that the misstate-

ments could undermine Mr.

Biden’s case that he is the one

best placed to beat Mr.

Trump.

“On the scale of what mat-

ters to primary voters, so-

called gaffes rank near the

very bottom,” said Chris Kofi-

nis, a Democratic strategist

and former adviser to West

Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.

“The problem is that the me-

dia and opponents will fixate

on it and if you’re Biden, or

any candidate, you never want

to hand others any opportu-

nity to muddy your message.”

Mr. Biden’s team has

pushed back against the cov-

erage of the gaffes, arguing

that they have little bearing

on voters’ view of him.

WASHINGTON—Joe Biden
is facing a test from Demo-
cratic primary rivals who are
trying to put him on the de-
fensive while they press for a
next-generation candidate
who could energize the party
and defeat President Trump.
Mr. Biden enters Thursday’s
third Democratic debate round
in Houston maintaining his
lead over more-liberal rivals
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth
Warren and Vermont Sen. Ber-
nie Sanders in recent polls.
But the debate—the first dur-
ing which only the top 10 can-
didates will appear on a single
stage—will follow a period in
which several of Mr. Biden’s
campaign trail miscues were
magnified.
It also comes after a New
Hampshire cattle call in which
Ms. Warren appeared before
cheering throngs of activists,
and several of Mr. Biden’s ri-
vals said the party needed to
avoid the trap of picking a
safer choice against Mr.
Trump. “We can’t ask other
people to vote for someone we
don’t believe in,” Ms. Warren
said at Saturday’s New Hamp-
shire state party convention.
Without mentioning Mr. Bi-
den by name, New Jersey Sen.
Cory Booker said the party

BYKENTHOMAS

Rivals Paint Biden as a Faulty ‘Safe’ Pick

Front-runner is too

moderate and prone to

gaffes to beat Trump,

competitors claim

Former Vice President Joe Biden is seeking the presidency for the third time and has led his Democratic opponents in the polls.

GRETCHEN ERTL/REUTERS

campaign came so close to

carrying a reliably Republican

district. “As long as there are

people who thrive off our divi-

sion, there is still work to be

done,” he said.

The GOP victory in the rare

do-over election was a boon to

Mr. Trump, who tweeted his

support repeatedly for Mr.

Bishop and campaigned for

him Monday in Fayetteville.

Mr. Trump won the district by

12 percentage points in 2016.

Tuesday’s vote was seen as

a test of how voters, particu-

larly suburbanites who make

up much of the district, view

Mr. Trump as the 2020 cam-

paign kicks into gear, people

from both political parties

said in interviews.

Mr. Trump took credit late

Tuesday for Mr. Bishop’s suc-

cess, tweeting that “Dan Bishop

was down 17 points 3 weeks

ago. He then asked me for help,

we changed his strategy to-

gether, and he ran a great race.”

The race was unusually

close for a district that has

been a Republican stronghold

for many years, with analysts

saying Mr. Trump was the rea-

son the district was in play in

the first place.

David Wasserman of the

nonpartisan Cook Political Re-

port said it was the rural areas

that guaranteed Mr. Bishop’s

win, not the suburbs, and

tweeted that Mr. Bishop’s nar-

row margin was “still bad news

for the House GOP overall.”

In the initial election last

fall, then-GOP nominee Mark

Harris beat Mr. McCready by

fewer than 1,000 votes. But

state election officials invali-

dated the results after it

emerged that a consultant for

Mr. Harris had improperly

handled absentee ballots.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Voters
in a conservative congressional
district picked President
Trump ally Republican Dan
Bishop in Tuesday’s special
election instead of a Democrat
who had promised to seek
compromise in Washington.
Mr. Bishop, a 55-year-old
state senator who campaigned
on a promise to be in lockstep
with Mr. Trump, defeated Demo-
crat Dan McCready in the Ninth
Congressional District based in
the suburbs of Charlotte.
In his victory speech, Mr.
Bishop said he would go to
Washington to protect the bor-
der, fight Democrats in the
House and support the Trump
agenda. “Under this president,
America is great again,” he said.
Mr. McCready, a 36-year-old
veteran and entrepreneur, had
campaigned as a centrist, em-
phasizing his service as a Ma-
rine in the Iraq war and pledg-
ing to put country over party.
Mr. McCready said late
Tuesday he was proud that the

BYVALERIEBAUERLEIN

Trump Supporter Wins

North Carolina Election

Republican

Dan Bishop

campaigned on

a promise to

be in lockstep

with the

president.

“A city where if

you dream big,

big things can

happen.”

• Houston Mayor
  Sylvester Turner

#HoustonIsInspired

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@The_Snazzy_Mom

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