a4 eZ M2 the washington post.wednesday, march 11 , 2020
election 2020
Biden. “Tonight the voices of
Democratic voters are loud and
clear: They want Joe Biden to be
our standard-bearer,” said Brad-
ley Beychok, the president of
American Bridge.
rep. James E. Clyburn
(D-S.C.), a top Biden ally, called
on the Democratic National
Committee to halt further p rima-
ries and any additional debates if
Sanders failed to carry any states
on Tuesday.
“If the night ends the way it
has begun, I think it is time f or us
to shut this primary down, it is
time for us to cancel the rest of
these debates,” he told NPr.
“because you don’t do anything
but get yourself in trouble if you
continue in this contest when it’s
obvious that the numbers will
not shake out for you.”
There remains significant
Democratic concern about
Biden’s ability to rapidly scale up
his campaign in the coming
months to face Trump.
on Tuesday morning, Biden
let out an expletive when chal-
lenged by a member of the Inter-
national Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers union over his gun
control plans.
The man told Biden that he
was trying to “end our Second
Amendment rights.”
After cursing, Biden added:
“I’m not taking your gun away. I
did not say that.”
As Biden and the man went
back and forth, union members
and campaign staffers tried to
intervene, saying there were oth-
er people trying to greet the
former vice president.
When Sanders campaign m an-
ager faiz Shakir shared a repub-
lican video of the encounter,
other Democrats pounced, sug-
gesting that the Sanders cam-
paign was simply parroting GoP
talking points.
Shakir later deleted the tweet.
[email protected]
[email protected]Patrick Moynihan and Dan Keating
contributed to this report.held last week in American Sa-
moa, and did not qualify for the
debate. Entering the contests
Tuesday, Biden enjoyed a lead in
the delegate race.
Biden has been boosted in
recent weeks by the Democratic
Party closing ranks behind his
candidacy. He has received en-
dorsements of many of his major
opponents in the primary fight,
including Sen. Amy Klobuchar
(D-minn.), rep. Beto o’rourke
(D-Tex.), Sen. Cory Booker
(D-N.J.), Sen. Kamala D. Harris
(D-Calif.), former New York may-
or mike Bloomberg and former
South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete
Buttigieg.
Another former rival, busi-
nessman Andrew Yang, who sup-
ported Sanders in 2016, endorsed
Biden on Tuesday after the early
results.
“The math shows Joe is our
prohibitive nominee,” Yang said
on CNN. “We need to bring the
party together. We need to start
working on defeating Donald
Trump in the fall.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-
mass.), who dropped out last
week, has not endorsed either
Biden or Sanders.
In a sign of further consolida-
tion, Priorities USA, the largest
Democratic super PAC focused
on the presidential race, an-
nounced Tuesday that it would
prepare advertising to defend
Biden against republican at-
tacks o ver the c oming months, as
his campaign continues to com-
pete in the primaries. The group
said the support was a result of
his standing in the race and not
an endorsement of his campaign.
“I think there is a recognition
that we cannot win the election
in the next few months, but we
can lose it,” Priorities Chairman
Guy Cecil said in an interview
Tuesday. “We are not going to
hold back just because the pri-
mary is ongoing.”
American Bridge, another
group working to defeat Trump,
also promised on Tuesday night
to shift its efforts to supportlary Clinton won 68 percent of
black voters.
In one sign that most of the
party is prepared to unify behind
whichever candidate emerges,
about 9 in 10 of Biden’s support-
ers said they would support the
party’s nominee, according to
early exit polls in michigan, mis-
souri and Washington. Across
those three states, at least 8 in 10
Sanders voters said they would
vote for the Democratic nominee
in the general election.
Black voters in mississippi
made up almost two-thirds o f the
electorate, with more than 8 in 10
going for Biden, similar to the 9
out of 10 that Clinton won in- fueling Biden further was
two-thirds support among white
voters, a group more typically
aligned with Sanders.
In missouri, Biden won 3 out
of 4 black voters, and voters who
made up their mind in the past
few days or earlier in march
voted almost 2 to 1 in favor of
Biden. roughly two-thirds of
missouri Democratic primary
voters said they attend religious
services at least occasionally, ac-
cording to preliminary exit polls.
Biden won roughly 7 in 10 of
those voters.
There are few game-changing
opportunities left for Sanders.
The candidates are scheduled to
face off in a two-hour debate on
Sunday night in Phoenix, per-
haps the last chance for a shift.
Next Tuesday, four more states
will vote: delegate-rich florida,
Illinois, ohio and Arizona.
A spokeswoman for the Demo-
cratic National Committee said
Tuesday there were no plans to
cancel the Arizona debate,
though organizers continue to
speak daily with local health
officials. The DNC did alter the
format, however, by banning the
live audience that has attended
each of the previous debates.
The only candidate remaining
aside from Sanders and Biden is
rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii).
She has collected delegates in
only one contest, the caucuses
cause it provides an important
barometer for how t hey would do
in one of the typically Democrat-
ic, industrial midwestern states
that Trump won. The state’s
voting coalition, with large blocs
of students, working-class
whites, union-affiliated African
Americans and a major muslim
population, was cited by Sanders
advisers as a potential showcase
for the coalition he hoped to
build.
over the weekend, Sanders
canceled events outside of michi-
gan and rushed his campaign
team into the state, staging an
all-out blitz for voters while
Biden campaigned across a span
of Tuesday-voting states. But ear-
lier on Tuesday, Sanders stopped
short o f predicting a repeat v icto-
ry in the state.
“Let’s not say what you have to
win,” Sanders told reporters out-
side a voting location in Dear-
born Heights, mich. “We’ve got a
whole lot of delegates to go.”
Amid Sanders’s silence as the
votes c ame i n, a key ally acknowl-
edged the disappointment.
“There’s n o sugarcoating it; it’s
a tough night tonight. It’s a tough
night for the movement overall,”
said rep. Alexandria ocasio-Cor-
tez, who endorsed Sanders in the
fall. She later said that while it
was “a tough night electorally,”
Sanders had done well among
younger voters.
Preliminary exit polls of mich-
igan voters casting ballots Tues-
day did show that Sanders sup-
porters were far more likely to
say they are enthusiastic about
his candidacy than Biden back-
ers. over 8 in 10 voters who
supported Sanders said they
would be enthusiastic if he wins
the nomination, compared with
less than 6 in 10 voters who
supported Biden who held a
similar view about their candi-
date.
The share of black voters was
on track to be about the same as
last cycle, making up 1 in 5
voters. In 2016, Sanders won
among white voters, while Hil-ed voting equipment a nd in some
places supplied medical-grade
disposable gloves for voters to
use with touch-screen consoles.
The outbreak also affected
candidate schedules, with Biden
and Sanders canceling their
pl anned rallies in Cleveland on
Tuesday night, forgoing a major
election night spectacle that
ca mpaigns use to communicate
with voters and make small-dol-
lar fundraising appeals. While
Biden traveled to Philadelphia,
where he gave his post-election
remarks to staffers who came
from the campaign’s nearby
headquarters, Sanders went
home to Burlington, Vt.
The rally cancellations came
after ohio Gov. mike DeWine
declared a state of emergency
and requested that indoor athlet-
ic events in the state take place
without spectators. ohio is due
to vote on march 17.
“We will continue to consult
with public health officials and
public health guidance and make
announcements about future
events i n the coming days,” Biden
deputy campaign manager Kate
Bedingfield said in a statement.
The Biden campaign an-
nounced shortly afterward that
it was canceling a Thursday
event in Ta mpa. Instead, the
campaign said, Biden will give a n
address on the coronavirus re-
sponse from his hometown of
Wilmington, Del.
In 2016, Sanders beat former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
in all but two of the states voting
Tuesday — mississippi and mis-
souri. But Idaho and Washington
held caucuses that year, with
lower turnouts that benefited
Sanders. Those contests were
converted to statewide primaries
for this year, in part at the urging
of Sanders supporters who want-
ed to increase participation.
North Dakota changed its caucus
procedures to allow Democrats
to participate throughout the
day.
The key test for both candi-
dates Tuesday was michigan be-an important constituency that
Donald Trump successfully
courted in 2016. The former vice
president even outperformed
Sanders in some of the state’s
college communities.
Democratic voters have dem-
onstrated over the past week, in
exit polls and at the ballot box,
that they want to avoid the
protracted primary battle of 2016
and quickly coalesce behind a
nominee who can begin focusing
on trying to defeat President
Trump.
A drumbeat has come from
party operatives and officials
that Biden is the putative nomi-
nee and that the fight for the
nomination is concluding.
It was unclear on Tuesday
night how fierce that fight would
be going forward, with Sanders
deciding not to make any public
remarks following his disap-
pointing finish.
In his address, Biden said his
campaign was “regenerating the
Democratic Party,” and he
reached out to Sanders support-
ers, thanking them “for their
tireless energy and their pas-
sion.”
“We share a common goal, and
together we’ll defeat Donald
Trump,” he said.
on a night when he was the
only candidate speaking, Biden
also made appeals to republi-
cans and independents.
“Tonight we are a step closer
to restoring decency, dignity and
honor to the White House,” he
said. “At this moment, there’s so
much fear in the country. There’s
so much fear across the world.
We need presidential leadership
that’s honest, trustworthy, truth-
ful and steady.”
The wins for Biden come at a
time when the presidential race
is facing major disruption from
the repercussions of the spread
of the novel coronavirus. As vot-
ers streamed to the polls Tues-
day, election workers used hand
sanitizer and regularly disinfect-
primaries from a
Biden’s Michigan win a key battleground test
February Delegates
Feb. 3 iowa 41
Feb. 11 new hampshire
Feb. 22 nevada 36
Feb. 29 south Carolina 54
march Delegates
march 3 super tuesday1,
alabama (52), arkansas (31), California (415),
Colorado (67), Maine (24), Massachusetts
(91), Minnesota (75), north Carolina (110),
oklahoma (37), te nnessee (64), te xas (228),
Utah (29), Vermont (16), Virginia (99),
american samoa (6), Democrats abroad (13)march 10 352
idaho (20), Michigan (125), Mississippi (36),
Missouri (68), north Dakota (14),
washington (89)(^) Delegates
march 14 6
northern Mariana islands
march 17 577
arizona (67), Florida (219), illinois (155),
ohio (136)
march 24 georgia 105
march 29 Puerto rico 51
april Delegates
april 4 107
alaska (15), hawaii (24), louisiana (54),
wyoming (14)
april 7 wisconsin 84
april 28 663
Connecticut (60), Delaware (21), Maryland
(96), new York (274), Pennsylvania (186),
rhode island (26)
may Delegates
may 2 46
Kansas (39), guam (7)
may 5 indiana 82
may 12 57
nebraska (29), west Virginia (28)
may 19 115
Kentucky (54), oregon (61)
June Delegates
June 2 215
D.C. (20), Montana (19), new Jersey (126),
new Mexico (34), south Dakota (16)
June 9 Virgin islands 7
democratic primaries calendar
salwan georges/the washington Post
sumer Hussein carries nephew mohamad ali Hamade as she casts her ballot in Dearborn Heights, mich. sen. Bernie sanders had canceled events outside of the state to focus his campaign there but fell short.