Politico

“Sanders has real followers, whether you like them or not,” the president said.

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

02/11/2020 06:29 PM EST

Updated: 02/11/2020 06:59 PM EST

President Donald Trump on Tuesday insisted that he’d rather run against Mike Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders in the general election this November, amplifying complaints from Democrats that the billionaire former mayor of New York was buying his way into contention in the primary field.

During a screed about Bloomberg in the Oval Office, the president ripped his recent apology about New York’s stop-and-frisk policy as “disingenuous” and called the former mayor a “lightweight.”

Despite salivating at the chance to run against a democratic socialist in the general, Trump on Tuesday expressed some sense of worry about Sanders’ devoted following, suggesting that Bloomberg’s rising support would not be as unwavering.

“Frankly, I would rather run against Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders,” he told reporters, “because Sanders has real followers, whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not — I happen to think it’s terrible what [Sanders] says.”

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The York Dispatch

Ally Marotti, Chicago Tribune Published 2:32 p.m. ET Feb. 11, 2020

CHICAGO — With boxes of Thin Mints and Samoas stacked above their heads, a group of Girl Scouts set up shop outside Dispensary 33 on Sunday, selling cookies to passersby and customers of the recreational marijuana store.

The girls – or their parents – weren’t the first to sell cookies to people buying weed. Girl Scouts in California have set up outside dispensaries and Colorado’s Girl Scouts recently lifted a ban on selling in front of marijuana shops.

But the timing of Girl Scout Cookie season worked in the young entrepreneurs’ favor this year in Chicago. Legal weed went on sale in Illinois Jan. 1, and long lines continue to form outside weed shops.

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Mediaite

By Ken Meyer Feb 11th, 2020, 8:03 am

Mike Bloomberg is facing political blowback after audio emerged of himself giving a full-throated defense of his stop and frisk policy as former New York City mayor.

Progressive podcast host Benjamin Dixon uncovered audio of a speech Bloomberg gave to the Aspen Institute five years ago, which he blocked from public release at the time. In the address, Bloomberg spoke unapologetically in favor of stop and frisk while saying that cities need to “put a lot of cops in the streets,” particularly in “minority neighborhoods.”

“Ninety-five percent of murders — murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city…And that’s where the real crime is.”

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Politico

The ex-veep says the first Southern primary — and its majority black electorate — is the real test of a Democrat’s strength.

By MARC CAPUTO

02/10/2020 07:13 PM EST

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Joe Biden’s campaign has one answer to questions about whether his candidacy is collapsing: A noun, a verb and South Carolina.

The state was always the Biden campaign’s firewall, but now it’s a final hope, his rhetorical device to change the narrative of back-to-back losses and still plausibly argue his electability. The first Southern primary is now the rallying point where he dispatched a top adviser Monday, and where his campaign’s co-chairman will hold a “launch party” Tuesday, when the campaign is bracing for a blowout defeat in New Hampshire’s primary.

In the Biden campaign’s telling, South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary and its majority black electorate is the real test of a Democrat’s strength because no presidential candidate has won the party’s nomination without the strong support of African American voters, who are concentrated in the Southeastern states that begin voting March 3.

As part of that argument, the campaign’s South Carolina surrogates are spreading the word that New Hampshire voters shouldn’t vote for Pete Buttigieg because of his anemic black support.

“Whatever happens on Tuesday, Vice President Biden will still be in this race,” Symone Sanders, the Biden adviser he dispatched to Columbia, S.C., said repeatedly Tuesday on national and local television. “This race very much runs through Nevada, South Carolina and Super Tuesday.”

Privately, Biden’s campaign advisers sound gloomier notes.

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Politico

A close-up view of why Bernie is on the brink of victory in New Hampshire — and Biden has all but conceded defeat.

By MARC CAPUTO, CHARLIE MAHTESIAN and HOLLY OTTERBEIN

02/10/2020 11:38 AM EST

HAMPTON, N.H. — The former Democratic front-runner, Joe Biden, gave two public speeches Sunday, and at both events he told the moving story of a supporter, Gene, who’s dying of Stage 4 prostate cancer. He also spoke lovingly about his son, Beau, who died of brain cancer, and gave a hint of the pain surrounding the deaths of his wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash.

At one point, before a hushed crowd that consisted largely of older voters, the former vice president nearly cried into the microphone recalling his son’s diagnosis.

The current front-runner, Bernie Sanders, had a very different day.

He held twice as many events, before energized crowds of mostly younger voters. At an evening rally at Keene State College, nearly 2,000 people attended, with lines snaking around the campus. Students danced as they awaited the event speakers. Even prior to Sanders’ appearance, his supporters stamped their feet so hard it thundered throughout the gym.

The split screen offered a revealing look at the on-the-ground dynamics that have brought Biden to the brink of defeat here in New Hampshire — where he has practically conceded he won’t win — and Sanders to the brink of victory.

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Politico

The ultimate outsider took over a splintered party from within. Sound familiar?

By MICHAEL KRUSE

02/10/2020 05:25 AM EST

MILFORD, N.H. — They were waiting for Bernie Sanders, this crowd of better than a thousand people, spanning three indoor tennis courts at an athletic club, wearing their Bernie hats, their Bernie shirts, their Bernie socks.

“He’s what a politician is supposed to be,” Donald McCullough, 55, a long-haired restaurant staffer and graphic designer, told me over the sounds of an all-woman rock band called Bad Larrys—this evening’s opening act of Sanders’ increasingly concertlike rallies. “Politicians are supposed to be working for us.”

“A candidate who will fight for the working class,” said Mike Bizier, 27. “A candidate who has been consistent for 50 years.”

“I never really paid attention to politics,” said Cara Ciminello, 24, with her fiancé, Peter Sughrue, 25, “and then we heard Bernie, and we were, like, ‘He’s actually giving us a voice. He’s actually saying what we want to hear,’ so then we got behind him—and now we won’t stop till he’s in the White House.”

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The Daily Beast

The former VP has lost the plot, voters say. And they’re wondering if he will ever get it back.

By Sam Stein

Updated Feb. 09, 2020 7:29AM ET / Published Feb. 08, 2020 10:13PM ET

Forty-five minutes after Joe Biden’s first campaign event was supposed to start on Saturday, his crowd had grown restless. The former vice president wasn’t at the Rex Theatre in downtown Manchester and those crammed inside were wondering just how much longer they’d have to suck in the heated air before they get to see him speak.

In the rafters, a chant broke out.

“We Want Joe!” the voices said, overpowering the soundtrack of classic rock and commercial motown that had been playing on blast to keep the crowd from completely dozing off.
But no one picked it up. Instead, after two renditions, the men simply stopped. And those who’d bothered to consider joining in the chorus did what they’d been doing since it became clear that the event would not start on time: they dumped their faces back into their cellphones.

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Politico

"It’s fratricide at the moment," said one Democrat.

By HOLLY OTTERBEIN and STEPHANIE MURRAY

02/09/2020 06:46 PM EST

PLYMOUTH, New Hampshire — Bernie Sanders was battered in Iowa with more than $800,000 in TV attack ads that labeled him a socialist and argued he couldn’t beat President Trump.

Here in New Hampshire, the opposite has happened: The airwaves are free of anti-Sanders spots in the days before the first-in-the-nation-primary, and he’s watching the moderates shank each other.

Tom Steyer is largely training his advertising firepower onto Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. The former vice president is mocking Buttigieg’s experience and targeting him in a digital spot. Fighting back against Biden, the ex-mayor says he’s tired of being a punchline.

The strength of the Vermont senator — who is polling first in the state with Buttigieg closely behind him — and the sudden lack of resistance to him on the airwaves is sparking anxiety among some moderate Democratic leaders.

“It’s fratricide at the moment,” said a prominent moderate in Washington. “It’s super bad. Too many mods against Bernie and a fading Warren. Very, very scary.”

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Politico

The announcement came after a weekend review of disputed precinct totals from last Monday's caucuses.

By ZACH MONTELLARO and HOLLY OTTERBEIN

02/09/2020 06:38 PM EST

Updated: 02/09/2020 07:45 PM EST

Pete Buttigieg has narrowly edged out Bernie Sanders for delegates from last week's Iowa caucuses, according to an announcement late Sunday by the state Democratic Party.

Updated results from the party show Buttigieg with 26.2 percent of state delegate equivalents, compared to 26.1 percent for Sanders. Elizabeth Warren (18 percent) was third, and Joe Biden (15.8 percent) was fourth.

According to the state Democratic Party, Buttigieg is projected to win 14 delegates to the national convention this summer in Milwaukee, while Sanders will get 12 delegates. Warren will receive eight delegates, Joe Biden will get six, and Amy Klobuchar will receive a single delegate.

Sanders did have the support of more caucus-goers, both on the first and final alignments. But because of the caucus rules, he will receive slightly fewer delegates.

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Politico

There’s room for two or, at most, three at the top as the race reaches a critical phase.

By JOHN F. HARRIS

02/08/2020 01:31 AM EST

he latest Democratic presidential debate Friday night in New Hampshire put the fundamental dynamic at work in this nominating contest under a very bright light.

There is one candidate only, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who by every indication is staying put. His lines were familiar, his performance as spirited as ever. But the jabs and jostling of debate nights — this was the eighth since June, and the direct confrontations were fairly muted — don’t matter so much for him.

That’s because he’s got a corps of people devoted to him and his ideology who don’t need to hear new arguments, as they did for two-and-a-half hours, about health care or racial justice or who is most likely to beat Donald Trump: They long ago reached an answer. Sanders is going nowhere anytime soon from his position at or near the top of this contest.

Every other candidate is going somewhere very soon. For all but one, or at most two of those candidates that somewhere is down. In a sense, the encounter at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, aired nationally by ABC News, had only one question: This is a race between Sanders and BLANK.

All six others on the stage had some very effective moments; all six also came out of the debate with questions about their durability still hovering.

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