Sanders sharpens attacks for N.Y. showdown that may dash Clinton’s unity hopes
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) speaks to supporters during a March 14 rally in Youngstown, Ohio. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton looks on during the CNN Democratic Presidential Primary Debate at the Whiting Auditorium at the Cultural Center Campus on March 6, 2016 in Flint, Michigan. (Scott Olson / Getty Images) [ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-sanders-clinton-new-york-primary-20160326-story.html (same article; no comments yet)]
By Philip Rucker March 26, 2016
In a mathematical squeeze to make up ground in the Democratic presidential race, Bernie Sanders is preparing to ratchet up his attacks on Hillary Clinton ahead of a New York showdown that could establish how easily the party can pull itself back together for the general election.
The Empire State’s April 19 primary looms as potentially determinative: A win by Clinton, who is favored, would further narrow Sanders’s path, while a loss in the state she represented as a senator would embarrass her and hand Sanders a rationale to continue campaigning until the final votes are cast in June.
Clinton had enjoyed a lead of roughly 300 in pledged delegates, but Sanders narrowed the gap Saturday with victories in at least two of three Western caucuses. In one of the most successful days of his campaign, the senator from Vermont easily won in Alaska and Washington state and was well positioned to carry Hawaii.
To capitalize on his fresh momentum, Sanders plans an aggressive push in New York, modeled after his come-from-behind victory a few weeks ago in Michigan. He intends to barnstorm the state as if he were running for governor. His advisers, spoiling for a brawl, have commissioned polls to show which contrasts with Clinton — from Wall Street to fracking — could do the most damage to her at home.
“We’ll be the underdog, but being the underdog in New York is not the worst situation in politics,” said Tad Devine, the chief strategist for Sanders. “We’re going to make a real run for it.”
The intensified and scrappy approach by Sanders comes as Clinton is eager to pivot to the general election. Clinton keenly understands the imperative to unite Democrats for the fall campaign and, thinking that the nomination is nearly locked up, wants to spend the spring building bridges to the Sanders wing.
[Here comes the opposition book: Clinton and her allies prepare for Trump]
A potentially ugly primary in New York threatens to derail those efforts. Clinton’s advisers are all but urging Sanders to lay off his attacks.
“We’re going to run to win delegates and run to win the primary,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said in an interview Friday. “We intend to win this thing with a majority of pledged delegates. Senator Sanders is going to have to make up his mind about what he wants to do and what kind of campaign he wants to run.”
Podesta noted that Sanders took a more negative turn in the Midwestern states that voted on March 15 — Illinois, Ohio and Missouri — and lost all three. “It didn’t work,” he said.
Clinton, her aides and her allies in recent weeks have avoided sharply attacking Sanders, wary of saying or doing anything that would make it more difficult to engineer an eventual coming together.
In particular, the Clinton forces have been careful not to be seen as pushing Sanders to quit the race. A group of pro-Clinton senators recently considered writing an open letter to Sanders saying the time had come for him to end his campaign. But when two Clinton allies, Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Barbara A. Mikulski (Md.), caught wind of the idea, they persuaded their colleagues to nix it, according to two people familiar with the letter.
Assuming that Clinton stays on course to secure the nomination, her team sees wooing the Sanders coalition as a pressing mission, especially young people and independents, to ensure that they don’t sit out the November election altogether. Key would be whether and how soon Clinton wins Sanders’s endorsement — and how enthusiastic he is in giving it. Clinton’s vocal support for then-Sen. Barack Obama following their divisive 2008 primary helped unite Democrats.
Two popular Democrats currently on the sidelines — President Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) — could help bring the two sides together. David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, pointed to a third unifying figure: Donald Trump. He noted that Warren last week fired off a flurry of tweets attacking Trump, which he read as an important signal.
“She was sending a message to Democrats that there are bigger things at stake here,” Axelrod said, adding: “There probably is going to be a very vivid choice in the general election and one that very much unifies Democrats.”
With that in mind, the Clinton team has been trying to foster trust with the Sanders base. Long lines at Arizona polling places last Tuesday led Sanders supporters to speculate online that the Clinton campaign was in cahoots with the Democratic National Committee in creating obstacles for them to vote.
“What happened in Arizona is bad for BOTH Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton, and supporters of both campaigns should come together to make sure this is addressed before November,” Elias wrote. “By the way, if you’re wondering, Secretary Clinton’s got a plan to address this, but I’m really not here to plug my boss!”
Clinton supporter Jay Jacobs likened the courtship of Sanders backers to making Thanksgiving dinner. “You can’t cook a turkey too fast by turning up the heat,” he said. “You’ve got to cook it at the right temperature for the right amount of time, and it’ll come out fine — but you’ve got to do a lot of basting along the way.”
Sanders, meanwhile, is hoping for another win in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on April?5. Sanders won two of Wisconsin’s neighboring states — Michigan to the east and Minnesota to the west — and the state’s overwhelmingly white electorate and the progressive, reformist roots of Democrats there should give him an advantage.
“If we’re going to have a serious shot at the nomination, we’re going to have to defeat her in Wisconsin,” Devine said.
Sanders then hopes to slingshot into New York, which will award a whopping 247 delegates — second only to California.
In New York, a diverse and pulsating center of Democratic power which has not hosted a truly competitive presidential primary since the 1980s, Democrats are buzzing with anticipation over the showdown.
“Everybody thinks it’ll be big,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based strategist and former Clinton adviser. “If the turnout by African Americans is large, Secretary Clinton will win well. If the turnout is not large, she will not win. Is the opportunity with her? Yes. But this is a test. .?.?. If it’s tight, it means the left is still aggravated against her.”
The Clinton team is readying for a competitive race and is not taking New York for granted.
“If [Sanders] sneaks up on her, then shame on the Clinton campaign,” Axelrod said. “The city is a bastion of progressivism and there should be pockets of Sanders supporters. .?.?. But I have to believe that the relationships she’s forged there in the last 15 years mean something.”
Sanders was born and raised in Brooklyn and plans to highlight his “New York values,” Devine said, and the campaign’s ads would have “a good feel for the state.” Sanders also is likely to go after Clinton over her ties to Wall Street, an issue he has raised for several months now, and Devine said the team is testing attacks on other issues, including fracking.
Sanders wants to ban fracking, the practice of pumping water containing chemicals deep underground at high pressures to release oil and natural gas. Clinton, who has ties to the fossil-fuel industry [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-bundlers-fossil-fuel_us_55a8335ee4b04740a3df86c5 ], says she does not support fracking where it is causing environmental damage, though she has stopped short of opposing the practice outright.
“The basic frame of his whole campaign — the economy’s rigged, the campaign finance system is corrupt — will continue, but there are other issues, as well,” Devine said. “Fracking is something New York state has outlawed, and there’s a big difference between Hillary and Bernie.”
The Clinton team is preemptively crying foul.
“We fully expect him to continue waging a spirited campaign, but it’s disappointing he is preparing a fresh round of attacks to use against Hillary Clinton in her own back yard, rather than focusing on how to stand up against the dangerous rhetoric and ideas coming from the Republican candidates,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in an email.
Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), a Clinton backer, sounded a similar note in an email: “Bernie has every right to stay in the race and bring his campaign to New York and fight hard here. But New Yorkers do not want to see him go on the attack against Hillary when Democrats should be focused on the big threat we face from Donald Trump.”
The New York primary, by definition, should draw considerable media attention, but Sanders wants to raise the stakes even higher. His campaign is lobbying the DNC to organize a debate in New York the week before the primary. “We don’t mind being the away team in the Hillary home game in New York,” Devine said.
The Clinton campaign has objected to having a debate in the state, according to Devine. Fallon declined to comment on debate negotiations.
For now, at least, Clinton’s backers are confident that any damage caused by Sanders will not be lasting. “I think this primary is going to make our Democratic nominee even stronger heading into the general election, and I believe Democrats will come together in November,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) said in an e-mail.
Asked about bridge building, Devine suggested that such outreach was a ways off.
“I’m not great at reading the tea leaves,” he said. But he added, “I know Podesta has my number, because he’s called it before — and it wasn’t to build bridges, in case you’re wondering.”
Podesta would not characterize his recent conversation with Devine.
“We’re in a contest,” the Clinton chairman said. “We both understand it.”
Anne Gearan and Abby Phillip contributed to this report.
No, Karl Rove’s super PAC and other conservative groups haven’t suddenly embraced a $15 minimum wage. But they’re running ads that help him in an effort to weaken Hillary Clinton.
American Crossroads—founded by former Bush adviser Karl Rove—and several other conservative-backed super PACs have spent the last month intentionally fueling the Bern, but their zeal has more to do with an effort to weaken Hillary Clinton, whom they still see as the likely Democratic nominee and harder to defeat in the general election.
“American Crossroads and Bernie Sanders helped Nevada caucus-goers see right through Hillary Clinton’s manufactured zeal on immigration reform after spewing virulent Trump-like rhetoric—and that one-two punch shaved Clinton’s 50-point lead a year ago to a slim, single digit win,” Steven Law, Crossroads CEO and president, said in a statement.
Crossroads is one of several groups that has released ads that have been aimed at branding Sanders as the only true progressive in the race—a strategy the Vermont senator’s campaign also embraces.
“If it helps push the needle so that she loses a state, and she comes out a weakened candidate, then fantastic,” said Ian Prior, communications director for Crossroads.
On Monday, Future 45, a super PAC reportedly backed .. https://theintercept.com/2016/02/17/hedge-fund-billionaires-fund-super-pac-ad-against-bernie-sanders-and-minimum-wage-hike/ .. by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, launched the latest in its own series of ads that seem to defend Sanders. The new spot, titled “Living History”—no doubt a play on the title of Clinton’s 2003 autobiography—accuses the former secretary of state of using similar tactics to tear down Sanders as were used in 2008 against then-Sen. Barack Obama.
“The ad is about the Clintons’ character and their pattern of deceitful actions,” said Brian O. Walsh, president of Future 45. “The fact that they’re up to the same old tricks again is just one more reminder they’ll do anything to win an election and can’t be trusted by anyone.”
If the ad helps Sanders, well, that would just be a happy byproduct.
Prior to Clinton’s win in the Silver State, Future 45 made an ad buy on Feb. 16 for a spot that “opposed” Sanders, according to Federal Election Commission.
But the ad, while critical of Sanders’s positions, is cast in a way that could appeal to Democrats.
It hit the senator for “a $15 minimum wage that hurts small businesses” and “taxes on banks and corporations that will kill jobs across the country”—two issues the progressive community has supported.
Another group, Ending Spending Action Fund, backed by Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, has spent about $774,321 on ads opposing Sanders, according to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation.
But these too seem to have a double meaning.
In Iowa, the group’s “Too Liberal ..
” spot goes through Sanders’s promises of free college, universal health care, and other left-wing dreams, but aside from the “concerned lady” narrator voice, it’s not clear whether the ad is negative until the very end.
The Sanders campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on the Republican generosity—but that doesn’t mean it is complicit.
Still, the Clinton campaign has cried foul, noting that Sanders’s supporters have been echoing Republican attacks on Clinton and that he certainly has not been rejecting the ads.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, who used a similar ploy successfully, even called out Ricketts on Twitter.
In 2012, McCaskill’s campaign famously ran ads seemingly opposing Rep. Todd Akin as the most conservative candidate in the race.
Akin, who later would say in cases of “legitimate rape” women couldn’t become pregnant, was the more defeatable candidate—and McCaskill’s ads helped him win the primary.
Several gaffes later, he lost and McCaskill held on to her vulnerable Senate seat.
The success of other similar, perhaps less subtle, schemes are debatable.
In 2004, Republicans in several states helped Ralph Nader, then the Green Party candidate, in the hope that he would drive votes away from then-Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry.
In the end, Nader received 1 percent of the vote, and Kerry lost to President George W. Bush 48 to 51 percent.
President Obama on Thursday warned Democrats against adopting a “Tea Party mentality” that could lead to deep divisions within the party and harm its chances of winning national elections.
Following the rise of the Tea Party and Donald Trump, Obama said infighting within the Republican Party is much worse than it is on the Democratic side.
But he urged his party’s voters to be mindful of that danger in the midst of a heated primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“The thing Democrats have to guard against is going in the direction that the Republicans are much further along on, and that is this sense 'we are just going to get our way, and if we don’t, then we’ll cannibalize our own, kick them out and try again,' ” he said at a town-hall meeting with law students in Chicago.
In that scenario, Democrats could “stake out positions so extreme, they alienate the broad public,” Obama added. “I don’t see that being where the Democrats go, but it’s always something we have to pay attention to.”
Obama’s comments come amid a major dustup between Clinton and Sanders that has Democrats concerned about keeping their party unified.
Sanders on Wednesday accused Clinton of being not “qualified” to serve as president because of her willingness to use a super-PAC and support for the Iraq War and free trade agreements.
The president did not name Clinton or Sanders. But he offered a staunch defense of his incrementalist view of politics, which has sometimes come under fire from the Vermont senator.
"That’s how change generally happens,” he said, citing the example of his signature healthcare law.
“It’s not perfect. There is no public option, not single-payer,” he said. “If I was designing a system from scratch, it would have been more elegant. But that’s not what was possible in our democracy."
The president also sought to downplay the divisions between Clinton and Sanders.
He said the debate among Democrats is “is a little bit more about means, less about ends,” noting that both candidates broadly agree on issues like the need for universal healthcare and combating climate change.
Obama said he understood the populist sentiment that has driven Sanders’s candidacy. But he said the answer is not to abandon a compromise approach.
“The danger, whether for Democrats or Republicans, is in a closed-loop system where everybody is just listening to the people who agree with them,” he said.
“And that anybody who suggests there is another point of view ... well, then you must be a sellout or you must be corrupted or you must be on the take or what have you," he added. "That is not, I think, useful.”
Obama could be a unifying figure for Democrats in this fall's election.
His approval ratings are at 50 percent or higher in most opinion polls, making him the most popular figure in his party.
But the ongoing primary battle has kept Obama officially off the campaign trail, though he has used his bully pulpit to go after Trump and other GOP candidates.
In speaking to Democrats, the president played the role of party elder. He said has seen this type of mentality bubbling up among Democrats throughout his presidency and is well versed in home harmful it can be.
“A lot of Democrats supported me and still support me got frustrated is because a bunch of the country doesn’t agree with me or them and they have votes too. And they elect members of Congress. That’s how our democracy works," Obama said.
“If you don’t get everything you want, it’s not always because the person you elected sold you out," he continued. "It may just be because in our system, you end up taking half loaves."
Obama was speaking at an event at the University of Chicago Law School where he urged Senate Republicans to take up the nomination of his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
