DEARBORN, Mich. — The Democratic presidential primary is down to two major candidates, and it shows.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are spending their first weekend as their party’s last top White House contenders increasingly taking aim at one another. Each wants to show he’s the best choice before six more states — Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington — vote on Tuesday.
It reflects the new contours of a race that once featured 20-plus Democrats. An increasingly bitter matchup could endure for months as Biden and Sanders compete for the right to face President Donald Trump in November.
“We have a two-person race,” Sanders said Saturday in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with one of the nation’s largest Arab American populations. “And all over this country, people are asking themselves which candidate can best defeat Trump. I have zero doubt in my mind that, together, we are the campaign that can beat Trump.”
Campaigning in St. Louis, Biden took a number of veiled swipes at Sanders, even as he called on Democrats to rise above Trump’s division.
He told the crowd that if they wanted to nominate a “lifelong” and “proud” Democrat, they should pick him. Sanders has run for office as in Independent and identifies himself as a democratic socialist.
“If you want a nominee who’ll bring the party together, who will run on a positive progressive vision for the future, not turn this primary into a campaign of negative attacks — because that will only reelect Donald Trump if we go that route — if you want that, join us,” Biden said.
Winning, he added, “means uniting America, not sowing more division and anger.”
The former vice president also gently knocked Sanders’ weeks of suggestions that he is the candidate who can prompt record voter turnout in November and defeat Trump, saying that actually “we’re the campaign that’s gong to do that.”
Sanders is clearer in drawing contrasts, arguing that no Democrat will win the presidency “with the same-old, same-old politics of yesteryear.”
And in a sign of how biting the contest may become, Sanders supporters — including his campaign manager — raised questions about Biden’s stamina after he gave a seven minute speech in St. Louis. At his second stop, in Kansas City, he again gave a truncated version of his stump speech, speaking for a little over 15 minutes.
Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir issued a tweet noting Biden’s short speaking time and highlighting the fact that Sanders had three campaign events on his schedule, “each speaking engagement extending for close to an hour.”
But the focus on Biden’s age is somewhat ironic given that the 78-year-old Sanders is actually a year older than Biden. Sanders, who has served in Congress since 1991, says he’s bucked the establishment of both parties with decades with unpopular stands that now give him the credibility to lead a political revolution “from the bottom up.”
Campaigning in St. Louis, Biden said he was the one to unite the party and the country, and he would do that by promoting an upbeat message.
Sanders is pledging to increase Democratic turnout by drawing younger voters, minorities and working class people to the polls even though they tend to vote in lower concentrations than many other Americans. Strong support among Hispanics lifted Sanders to victories in Nevada and California, but Biden trounced him in South Carolina and throughout much of the Deep South that voted during last week’s Super Tuesday. Biden especially ran up the score with African Americans.
Some activists are disappointed that a once diverse field of women and minorities has dwindled to two white men in their late 70s. But in Dearborn, Sanders, who is Jewish, said he was inspired by so many Arab Americans backing him.
