For them, it is over. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg suspended their campaigns, packed their things late Monday, and prepared to end their feud. The also-ran candidates’ bickering stopped in Dallas where they endorsed fellow moderate Joe Biden for president. And that hasty peace is the latest evidence of an emerging binary choice in the Democratic primary: Bernie Sanders is the man to beat while Joe Biden is quickly becoming the establishment horse to back as voters in 14 states cast their Super Tuesday votes. Buttigieg went first. “I’m delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden,” the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., told a small crowd at an appearance outside a Dallas restaurant Monday evening. “He is somebody of such extraordinary grace and kindness and empathy.” Klobuchar went next. "He can bring our country together and build that coalition of that fired-up Democratic base as well as independents as well as moderate Republicans. Because we do not, in our party, want to eke by with a victory. We want to win big," the Minnesota senator said at a Biden rally Monday night. The two failed contenders didn’t share the same stage, but together they stirred up a whole lot of emotions -- some more positive than others. Biden and his supporters were already ecstatic after dominating the South Carolina primary. The endorsements, then, were icing on the cake. “The consolidation is clearly happening,” Matt Bennett, president of the centrist group Third Way, told RealClearPolitics. “It'll be complete on Wednesday, one way or the other.” After Super Tuesday, he predicted that either Mike Bloomberg or Biden will emerge as the moderate foil to the extremism of Sanders: “There will only be one.” Things could be over as soon as they begin for the former New York City mayor, who skipped the four early contests to spend time and money blitzing Super Tuesday states. For a while, that looked like a wise bet as Biden imploded in Iowa and New Hampshire. After South Carolina, not so much. “The plan was to win big tomorrow,” a senior Bloomberg aide told RCP on Monday. “If that happens, then it’s going according to plan. If not...” Looking from the outside in, Republican operatives were having flashbacks to 2016. A populist named Donald Trump was running for president, and rather than take him seriously, the  establishment candidates crowded each other out until it was too late. “It’s not apple to apples,” Tim Miller said in comparing the 2020 Democratic primary to the previous Republican one. He was the spokesman for Jeb Bush last time around, the once mighty Florida governor and presumed establishment champion. But Bush dropped out after a disappointing showing in South Carolina and the other candidates, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, refused to make peace to oppose the upstart front-runner Trump. Klobuchar and Buttigieg are not so hard-headed. Miller said that by walking away before Super Tuesday, the two moderates have given Biden “a realistic path toward the nomination.” He added, however, that these endorsements “were necessary, but not sufficient, for stopping Sanders.” It is possible, the former GOP flack said, “that a consolidation might not matter because, in the end, voters might be for Sanders.” But consolidation does have two immediate and undeniable effects, observers from across the spectrum say. First, it gave Biden the spotlight 24 hours before voters cast their ballots. Second, and perhaps more critically, it signals to donors that that there is no longer an embargo on Joe, that they can give freely and generously to his campaign. And the former vice president needs the money if he wants to survive over the long haul. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that he had raised $18 million in February, $5 million “during the victory in South Carolina.” It was an impressive total, but one dwarfed by Sanders, who raised $46.5 million in the same period. This is why Biden needs the checkbooks of Buttigieg and Klobuchar donors. The Sanders camp knows as much, and these new developments aren’t going over well. “A brokered convention is a gift to Donald Trump,” Nomiki Konst, a national Sanders surrogate, told RCP. By staying in the contest, she asserted, Biden is needlessly extending the race to sabotage the insurgent front-runner. “Joe Biden, right now, is a mercenary for Donald Trump,” Konst said. And that makes Buttigieg and Klobuchar “Biden mercenaries.” “Maybe we should be asking why the Democratic Party is allowing this to happen,” Konst added, “and if their intention is really to win the election.” Those in the establishment wing insist it’s not just about unseating the president. It’s also about keeping the party from going off the deep end philosophically and politically. “On the meta-level, there's a choice between Democrats who believe in capitalism and then the democratic socialist who doesn't. That's a very fundamental question,” Bennett said. Sanders has been so eager to push the policy envelope that he risks losing large swaths of voters, he continued. “Are we going to propose to people that we spend $33 trillion, take away health care coverage of 180 million people, and upend the system?” he asked. “Or are we going to propose that we perfect the thing that we started with the ACA? That's the choice.” The left and the center-left and the right seem to agree on one thing: their opposition to Bloomberg. The Sanders campaign has long attacked him over his billions, while the Biden campaign seems annoyed that someone else would present himself as yet another establishment alternative. “Mike Bloomberg,” Miller argued, was essentially “running Bernie Sanders’ super PAC.” Every vote and each delegate that Bloomberg wins, he continued, is a voter or delegate out of reach for Biden. “He is just helping Bernie Sanders get closer to the plurality that he needs to be the nominee,” Miller added. “I think it's very strange to spend three-quarters of a billion dollars to help democratic socialism take over your party.”Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- One night after a dinner noted for its decorum and Southern civility, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates eagerly savaged one another, seeking advantage just four days before the pivotal South Carolina primary. All of the candidates on the debate stage Tuesday night hold positions at least as progressive as the last Democratic president’s. The overarching narrative, then, tumbled into arguments about electability and effectiveness. CBS moderators asked Bernie Sanders, the current front-runner, how he planned to pay for $50 trillion in proposed new spending, including an estimated $30 trillion for “Medicare for All.” Could he do the math on stage? “How many hours do you have?” he shot back. “That’s the problem,” Joe Biden interrupted. Annoyed by the former vice president’s snarky aside, the self-described democratic socialist asserted that people’s overall health care outlays would go down as government spending goes up. “What we need to do,” Sanders said, “is to do what every other major country on Earth does: guarantee health care to all people, not have thousands of separate insurance plans." He barely got this answer out before Amy Klobuchar interrupted. Not only would his spending dwarf the American economy, the Minnesota senator complained, Sanders was out of step with what voters want. All of it, she continued, would amount to “a bunch of broken promises that sound good on bumper stickers.” Sanders tried shouting a rebuttal as Pete Buttigieg started talking over him. When the moderators finally quieted the cross-talk, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor had calculated the political cost to Democrats: “It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, and the inability to get the Senate into Democratic hands.” Sanders was hardly the innocent victim of this sort of exchange. He got the first question: How could he convince voters to turn away from President Trump when the economy is doing so well? The Vermont senator turned his answer into an attack on the former mayor of New York, a deep-pocketed latecomer to the race: “Well, you're right. The economy is doing really great for people like Mr. Bloomberg and other billionaires.” Bloomberg responded in kind, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Trump to remain in the White House, which is “why Russia is helping you get elected, so you will lose to him.” It was a reference to unsubstantiated reports that Russia is backing the new front-runner with a disinformation campaign, and Sanders countered by citing Bloomberg’s past praise of the leader of communist China: “I'm not a good friend of President Xi of China. I think President Xi is an authoritarian leader.” The dueling references to foreign tyrants was unusual at a debate that was supposed to focus on kitchen table issues. Biden holds an eight-percentage-point lead in South Carolina and has long insisted that he would succeed in a more diverse state that better reflects the makeup of the country. But he was left sputtering as moderators failed to stifle all the shouting. “I guess the only way to do this is to jump in and speak twice as long as you should,” he said with exasperation when other candidates kept talking over the allotted 90-second limit. “I know you cut me off all the time, but I’m not going to be quiet anymore, OK?” he complained when a moderator tried to cut another answer short. "Why am I stopping? No one else stops," he later sighed. Biden has the most to lose in South Carolina after finishing fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and second in Nevada. He has built a last-ditch firewall in the Southern state. To preserve it, he invoked the name of his old boss to attack Sanders, noting how Sanders had mulled a 2012 primary challenge against Barack Obama. Being a true progressive doesn’t mean passing purity tests, he said. “Progressive is getting things done,” Biden argued, “and that's what we got done. We got a lot done.” Critiques such as this one weren’t uttered only by moderates. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders share a similar policy portfolio, she noted, “but I think I would make a better president than Bernie” because “getting a progressive agenda enacted is going to be really hard, and it's going to take someone who digs into the details to make it happen.” No one accused Bloomberg of not getting things done. It was what the former mayor has done that drew his competitors’ criticism. They accused him of enforcing racist stop-and-frisk policies as mayor and of forcing female former employees to sign non-disclosure agreements in settling complaints about inappropriate comments he allegedly made. When Warren leveled that last charge, the billionaire objected. He had already released three women from those contracts, and besides she was just “relitigating” an old issue. At this, Buttigieg jumped in: “And if you get nominated, we'll be re-litigating this all year.” The barbs and counter-barbs and counter-counter-barbs went on and on. Should Sanders become the nominee, Trump will use the standard-bearer’s far-left ideology as a cudgel against him, billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer said. He previewed the president’s attack, starting politely enough by  praising the front-runner for identifying many of the problems facing the country. “The difference is,” Steyer continued, “I don't like his solutions. I don't believe that a government takeover of large parts of the economy makes any sense for working people or for families.” This criticism was tamely expressed compared to the attacks Sanders received over his recent comments about Cuba, in particular his praise of Fidel Castro’s “literacy programs.” Yes, Sanders replied, he had trumpeted such social initiatives advanced by the late dictator. No, the senator continued, he had not endorsed the authoritarianism that accompanied them. But again, this was too much for Buttigieg: Democrats would fail, he said, if they must champion a nominee who encouraged the public to “look at the bright side of the Castro regime.” “I’m not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Trump, with nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s, and Sanders, with nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s,” he continued. There were other arguments, most of them accompanied by raised voices. It was a noisy and final debate before the last dance ahead of not just the Palmetto State’s primary but Super Tuesday. Some were surprised by the tumult, including Steyer, who told RealClearPolitics that “the debate got a little away from the moderators from time to time, for sure.” Others were more than disappointed, including a senior South Carolina Democratic official. “The staff of these candidates are performing political malpractice,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “This was an opportunity to connect with the folks of South Carolina — to share the stories and heartaches, the dreams and pains of the people they have met over the past year.” “They all failed miserably,” the official concluded. South Carolina votes on Saturday.Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

The pre-Nevada Democratic debate was a gift to Donald Trump. Instead of training their fire on the incumbent, or on the vulnerable front-runner, Bernie Sanders, the candidates tore Mike Bloomberg to shreds while saving plenty of darts for one another. That nice young man Pete Buttigieg became that supercilious egoist needling Amy Klobuchar over trifles. Elizabeth Warren the policy wonk became Elizabeth Warren the Terminator. Bottom line: A clear win for Sanders, which can be seen as an indirect win for Trump. Bloomberg had a dismal night. Coming out from behind the curtain of gauzy advertising was not kind to him. He was arrogant. Asked why he hasn't yet released his taxes he said, "I can't go to TurboTax." His apology/explanation for stop-and-frisk was stiff and unconvincing, as Elizabeth Warren and others were quick to point out. He could have framed it in terms that a Democratic audience would view sympathetically -- that the point of stop-and-frisk was to get illegal guns off the streets. He could have elaborated on his long-standing anti-gun activism (which has the advantage of being true). And then he could have said that while the program was successful in reducing crime, specifically murders and other gun crimes almost entirely in minority neighborhoods, it went too far and needed to be scaled back. Also, in one of the worst word choices of this primary season, Bloomberg explained that he wouldn't release women from nondisclosure agreements because the contracts were "consensual." Now might be a good time to reconsider the belief that money can buy the presidency. Remember Tom Steyer? I thought not. He's a billionaire who's still in the race for the Democratic nomination. He had spent, as of last month, $123,803,204.00. And what did that get him? He finished seventh in Iowa and sixth in New Hampshire. Due to low poll numbers, he didn't make the cut for the debate stage in Nevada. Sure, Bloomberg's billions make Steyer seem like a pauper, but money without message has a poor track record in American politics. Some wealthy candidates succeed. But many do not. Ask Michael Huffington or Meg Whitman. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 263 millionaire candidates contributed at least half a million dollars to their own campaigns for congress between 2002 and 2014. Eighty-four percent of them lost. Bloomberg has his virtues. He's a centrist and a good administrator with relevant experience. His passions for climate action and gun control track well with the Democratic Party. But his downsides, as we discovered at the first debate, are potential anchors: --A history of vulgar comments to and about women. --His age (78). --His lack of human warmth. If Mike Bloomberg's pure aim were to deny Donald Trump reelection, he would withdraw from the race and put his vast resources in the service of Amy Klobuchar. Among all of the Democratic candidates, she is the most likely to defeat Trump. Every other candidate, including Bloomberg, is dragging a ton of baggage. Elizabeth Warren is vulnerable for her history of misrepresenting herself as a minority and for her embrace of hard-left policies. She claims to pay for her wish list of goodies by imposing a wealth tax that 1) might be unconstitutional; 2) would not remotely cover all her spending ideas; and 3) might dampen economic growth. Pete Buttigieg has run the fourth-largest city in the 17th-most populous state in the U.S. His record was spotty. Crime increased by 70%. He is a great talker. So bright. But he is also the first openly gay man to seek a major party nomination. According to a 2020 Gallup poll, 78% would vote for a gay or lesbian candidate, which is better than the 29% who said so in 1983, but nowhere near the 96% who say they'd vote for a black candidate. Joe Biden is older than Sanders and Bloomberg. His brain seems to have different ideas from his tongue about where his sentences should go. Also, he has to answer for 50 years of bad decisions. Bernie Sanders is a festival of weakness. His proposal to ban fracking alone could lose Pennsylvania, and thus, the November election. Like a reverse magnet, he repels every suburbanite who crossed over to vote blue in 2018. Even most Democrats oppose "Medicare for All" and the rest of his dorm-incubated agenda. His past admiration of leftist dictatorships ("bread lines are good!") will haunt him. And that Gallup poll found that only 45% would vote for a socialist. Amy Klobuchar is rumored to be tough on her staff. That's it. She's a solid, midwestern senator who wins in her home state by double-digit margins. She's sane and centrist. And she's the Democratic Party's only hope. Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/