Bernie Sanders scrapes to victory in New Hampshire primary... but this is no one-horse race

With Mayor Pete hot on his heels, a billionaire waiting to unleash his power and Amy Klobuchar a surprise contender, the race to take on Donald Trump for the presidency is far from over
Philip Delves Broughton12 February 2020

The fight for the right to challenge US President Donald Trump later this year came into clearer focus last night, as Senator Bernie Sanders won the Democratic Party’s New Hampshire primary and former vice-president Joe Biden limped in a distant fifth.

While an ebullient Sanders celebrated, Biden slunk off early to South Carolina, which holds its primary at the end of this month. Biden is hoping his eight years serving under president Barack Obama will earn him victory in a state with a large percentage of black voters.

If he loses in South Carolina, his campaign is all but finished. This is Biden’s third campaign for the presidency and he is still yet to win a primary election.

Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, came second to Sanders last night. Buttigieg won 24 per cent of the vote behind 26 per cent for the Vermont senator, and well ahead of Biden’s eight per cent.

Feel the Bern: Sanders in New Hampshire last night
AP

After scoring a virtual tie with Sanders in last week’s Iowa caucus, Buttigieg has been the surprise of the two first legs of this long primary season. He has established himself as the centrist candidate versus the socialist Sanders.

In his various presidential runs, Sanders has always done best in these early races. New Hampshire neighbours his home state of Vermont. Young and lower-income voters in the state have been drawn to his crotchety tirades against the economic elites, and his plans to end tuition at public colleges and universities and introduce NHS-style free healthcare.

However, the dynamics and demographics of the campaign will now change rapidly, and Sanders will be at less of an advantage.

Nevada, which is nearly a third Hispanic, comes next on February 22, followed by South Carolina a week later and then on March 3, Super Tuesday when voters in 13 states, including big ones such as Texas and California, go to the polls. The rapid scaling up of the elections should favour candidates with strong establishment networks, union support and money.

Pete Buttigieg
AP

Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has bypassed the early primaries to focus on Super Tuesday, flooding those states with advertising in the hope that he can burst through as a viable centrist alternative. Bloomberg will have been encouraged by the collapse of Biden, previously the great hope of the Democratic establishment. But will have been unnerved by the growing swagger of the Buttigieg campaign.

Bloomberg has deep pockets and a sterling record as an entrepreneur, philanthropist and three-term mayor. But he will turn 78 on Friday. Buttigieg is inexperienced but young, and is clogging up the centrist path Bloomberg was hoping would clear out for him once Biden had faltered.

The evolution of these primaries has rattled many Democrats who want, above all, a candidate who can beat Trump. What they now fear is a choice between Sanders, a socialist, who for all his popularity with parts of swathes of the Democratic base stands little chance of winning a national election; and Bloomberg, a former Republican who is not considered a real Democrat.

Mike Bloomberg
AFP via Getty Images

Rahm Emanuel, the ex-mayor of Chicago and Obama’s former chief of staff, said on Sunday that “one of the threats to the party right now is a rupture in the core”. To win nationwide, the party needed a candidate “who moves those swing moderate voters”. Voters who for now, at least, are enjoying the fruits of a long economic boom under Trump.

Handing the nomination to Bloomberg would, many Democrats fear, feel like outsourcing the most important job the party has to offer. Even if he represented the best hope of beating Trump, he would feel like a compromise choice.

Sanders alluded to Bloomberg in his victory speech in New Hampshire, saying that as the campaign progressed: “We are taking on billionaires and we are taking on candidates funded by billionaires.”

The biggest surprise last night was Amy Klobuchar, a senator from Minnesota, who came in a strong third with 19 per cent after what she called her “happy, scrappy campaign”.

Her supporters hope she will build on this result to become an alternative for the centrist voters being sought by Bloomberg, Buttigieg and Biden.

Amy Klobuchar
AP

While most of the candidates stayed in New Hampshire until the results were in, so they could thank their supporters, Biden beamed in for just three minutes via video from South Carolina.

“We’re going on and we’re going to win in Nevada and in South Carolina,” he said. He also told a crowd in South Carolina that the overwhelmingly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire were just the “opening bell” of the campaign.

Many Democrats think that handing the nomination to Mike Bloomberg feels like a compromise

He said: “You cannot win the Democratic nomination for president, and you shouldn’t be able to win it, without black and brown supporters.”

Sadly for Biden, the latest polls show his support among those “black and brown supporters” is crashing as Bloomberg’s popularity has surged. Last night’s losers included Senator Elizabeth Warren, who came fourth and will struggle to stay in the race.

The results also prompted two candidates to drop out: Andrew Yang, a tech entrepreneur who talked about future automation in work; and Colorado senator Michael Bennet, another moderate who failed to gain traction.

Trump held a rally in New Hampshire on Monday evening, as he did shortly before the Iowa caucus, demonstrating his political muscle and hoping to intimidate his rivals. His large, boisterous crowd contrasts with the thin attendance at Democratic events.

Yesterday morning, however, he focused on Bloomberg, whom he has known for many years in New York. Linking to an audio clip in which Bloomberg discussed the aggressive policing tactics he had approved as mayor, Trump wrote: “Wow, Bloomberg is a total racist.” Later in the day, his tweet was removed.

However, he may be right to worry that Bloomberg could snap up the nomination. The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman articulated the thinking of many Democrats yesterday.

He wrote: “So who is the right Democratic candidate? I will tell you who it is not. It is not Bernie Sanders.” Sanders would be too easily caricatured as an extremist “Che Guevara” by the Trump campaign. Bloomberg, by contrast “has the right stuff — a moderate progressive with a heart of gold but the toughness of a rattlesnake — for what is going to be an incredibly big, brutal task: making Donald Trump a one-term president.”

@delvesbroughton

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