Hello. Welcome to On Politics, your information to the day in nationwide politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.Join right here to get On Politics in
Hello. Welcome to On Politics, your information to the day in nationwide politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
Join right here to get On Politics in your inbox each weekday.
Democrats are not in disarray.
This afternoon, Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden, ending days of speculation over how eagerly the party’s liberal standard-bearer would work to unify Democrats behind the former vice president before the general election.
In a different time, there would be a splashy rally or a surprise appearance at a campaign event to promote the endorsement. Alas, that’s not how we live now. So, instead, the two men turned to the great connector of our coronavirus age — the video conference.
“We need you in the White House,” Mr. Sanders said to Mr. Biden on a live stream, speaking from his slightly fuzzy side of the screen. “And I will do all that I can to make that happen.”
The split-screen campaign event wasn’t the only striking difference from four years ago, when Mr. Sanders begrudgingly backed Hillary Clinton. That endorsement happened three months later in the year, at a joint rally in July shortly before Democrats gathered for their national convention.
This time, all it seemed to take to bring about unity was the formation of six working groups on education, climate change, economy, immigration, health care and criminal justice. (After all, what epitomizes Democratic politics more than policy working groups?)
Some of the speed clearly has to do with the unique political dynamics surrounding this race: a deadly pandemic, the threat of economic collapse and an incumbent president reviled by Democrats.
But it was clear watching Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders exchange warm smiles that this was a very different relationship, lacking much of the resentment that characterized the 2016 race. They joked about boring viewers by playing chess, and exchanged greetings to wives.
“You and I are friends. We’ve been friends,” said Mr. Biden. “I appreciate your friendship and I will not let you down.”
Yet, buried amid all the comity and light comedy was a serious pivot for Mr. Biden and his campaign from their primary messaging. As Mr. Sanders campaigned across the country calling for “political revolution,” Mr. Biden had cast his candidacy as a restoration of the Obama era, promising a return to the ethos of a pre-Trump Washington.
Today, Mr. Biden shifted course, saying that the havoc wreaked by the pandemic would force a new reckoning in the country.
“When we come out of this, we can’t just go back to business as usual,” he said. “When we come out of this, our whole country will have to take a deep look and say, how can we fix what is broken?”
That’s not a shift some Sanders supporters are quite ready to believe.
Mr. Sanders’s appearance shocked progressive grass-roots leaders, who had little warning that the liberal champion they supported was going to endorse Mr. Biden so quickly after exiting the race. Some worried the speed of his public support diminished their political leverage to win more concessions from the Biden campaign.
Some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters were left in the awkward position of endorsing his policy platform however not his political choices.
The query now dealing with each Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden is: Will the motion comply with the person?
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It’s election night time, kind of
Bear in mind when Wisconsin voted final Tuesday? Properly, the outcomes are solely coming in now, because of a federal choose’s ruling that prohibited their launch whereas absentee ballots have been within the mail.
Mr. Biden has been declared the winner of the state’s Democratic presidential major. Now that Mr. Sanders is out of the race, that final result could appear moot. However the map shall be carefully scrutinized for relative pockets of Mr. Biden’s strengths and weaknesses in a state that some mission could possibly be the tipping level of your complete presidential race in November.
In the meantime, a statewide race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court docket is arguably crucial contest tonight. The stability of energy on the courtroom is at stake; the courtroom is technically nonpartisan, however a victory for the conservative incumbent would protect the courtroom’s five-to-two conservative benefit. The winner shall be ready to determine a case earlier than the courtroom that might purge greater than 200,000 individuals from the Wisconsin voter rolls.
Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.
… Severely
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