Sanders, Warren go separate ways in closing pitches

Politico

One progressive wants to blow up the establishment. The other wants to unite the party.

By HOLLY OTTERBEIN and ALEX THOMPSON

02/02/2020 08:51 PM EST

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Bernie Sanders’ surrogates booed Hillary Clinton, lit up members of the Democratic National Committee, and proudly noted that people were “freaking out” that he would win.

Meanwhile, at a canvass launch Saturday, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign was busy putting up placards that read “Unite the Party.”

In the final hours before Iowa’s caucuses, the two leading progressive presidential candidates are making diametrically opposed pitches to voters: Sanders’ campaign is leaning hard into their anti-establishment bonafides, while Warren is selling herself as a candidate who can bring together a fractured Democratic Party.

Warren’s message is aimed toward more traditional and mainstream Democrats who have fretted for months about the need to bring the party together; many believe President Trump won the election partly because the party was divided. Sanders’ pitch is pointed at young, infrequent and disillusioned caucus-goers who are exhausted and furious with the status quo, and who think Trump rode to victory on an anti-establishment mood throughout the nation.

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