Super Tuesday Live Results And Analysis : NPR – NPR
The flood of Joe Biden endorsements from all the vanquished primary opponents hadn’t yet begun when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders held a press conference Monday morning.
But Sanders’ answers — and his tone — would hold fresh throughout the day as fallen candidate after fallen candidate backed the former vice president, and the long-awaited Stop Sanders movement came together in public on the eve of the most important day on the primary calendar.
“I am shocked by that,” Sanders said, in response to a question about former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s withdrawal from the race, and the fact it seemed to have a whole lot to do with blocking Sanders from building an unstoppable delegate lead.
“It is no secret — the Washington Post has 16 articles a day on this — that there is a massive effort trying to stop Bernie Sanders,” Sanders said. “That is not a secret to anyone in this room. The corporate establishment is coming together. The political establishment is coming together. And they will do anything — they’re really getting nervous that working people are standing up.”
“We’re not going to win the endorsement fight. The establishment will rally around the establishment candidates. That’s the simple reality,” he said.
As Sanders made his way from the Salt Lake City hotel where he met with reporters to the site of an outdoor rally in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains, word came that Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar had dropped out, and would endorse Biden.
Sanders made no mention of Buttigieg’s exit or Klobuchar’s endorsement during the speech.
He then boarded a plane to fly to Klobuchar’s home state, where, upon landing, Buttigieg had formalized his endorsement of Biden.
A little bit after that, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, out of the race for months, had joined the Biden bandwagon, too.
What did Sanders think? “It is no surprise they do not want me to become president,” Sanders told CNN in an interview from St. Paul.
As rumors shot around online that more Biden endorsements might come — maybe California Sen. Kamala Harris? — Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar took the stage.
“I am a little tired of the political establishment and the political pundits constantly dismissing what people here in the heartland are fighting for. And I am sick and tired of them calling our progressive bold ideas radical,” said Omar, who over the weekend had called out the media for its “lies” and “disinformation.”
Even as the Biden endorsement onslaught provided a sharp illustration of the shadowy “establishment” opposition Sanders and his allies constantly warn against, many of those very “pundits” Omar cited have theorized the rhetoric coming out of Sanders’ camp could alienate voters he needs to win, if not the nomination then certainly in November.
In an interview with NPR Sunday — like the Sanders press conference, coming after the Buttigieg withdrawal but before the onslaught of Biden endorsements — campaign manager Faiz Shakir sought to define the “establishment” Sanders is blasting.
“It’s not the individual people,” he explained. “It’s the collective influence of money that plays a large role in the structure of things and politics.”
“Voters out in the world don’t see themselves as quote unquote establishment voters,” Shakir said. “They know the establishment means the power of money over the political process.”
Taking the stage before thousands of screaming supporters in St. Paul Monday night, Sanders abruptly shifted the tone he had stuck to all day, and made that exact distinction Shakir had tried to clarify.
“I want to open the door to Amy’s supporters, to Pete’s supporters,” Sanders said at the beginning of his speech. “I know there are political differences. But I also know that virtually all of Amy’s supporters and Pete’s supporters understand that we’ve got to move toward a government that believes in justice, not greed,” Sanders said.
“So to all of Amy and Pete’s political supporters, the door is open. Come on in!”
Tuesday’s results will tell us whether they took Sanders up on his offer, or instead followed their candidates’ leads to Biden’s camp.
— Scott Detrow, NPR Political Correspondent
