POLITICO Playbook: The Dem ad campaign aimed at taking down Bernie Presented by

The Big Tent Project -- a Dem 501(c)(4) group aimed at boosting moderates -- has $1 million to spend in South Carolina and Nevada to bash Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). | Alex Wong/Getty Images

DRIVING THE DAY

G’MORNING, and happy debate day.

A NEW CHAPTER in the Democrat-on-Democrat war inside the party will be on full display tonight in Las Vegas when the entire field goes to battle with MIKE BLOOMBERG. BUT …

BREAKING … ANOTHER DEM-ON-DEM FIGHT is about to start. THE BIG TENT PROJECT -- a Dem 501(c)(4) group aimed at boosting moderates -- has $1 MILLION to spend in South Carolina and Nevada to bash Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.). The group’s executive director is JONATHAN KOTT, a former top aide to Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.). (C4s don’t have to disclose donors, so we won’t know who is behind this.)

THEY ARE RUNNING TWO ADS, as of now, spending $200,000. But the group views this effort as a test run, both in the pair of states and in the broader effort to try to whack SANDERS.

ONE AD accuses SANDERS of dumping waste in Latino communities -- and making money off of it.

THE OTHER AD gets to some of the main misgivings centrist Dems have with Sanders: that his plans are too aggressive, and too expensive. It is not subtle. SCRIPT: “Socalist Bernie Sanders promises the world. But at what cost? Sixty trillion in new spending. Losing our private health care. Largest middle-class tax hike ever. The cost? Another four years of Donald Trump.”

-- KOTT told us this: “Despite over 50 years in public life, Bernie Sanders has never been fully vetted. The Big Tent Project will shed light on his record of politically toxic policy proposals starting in Nevada and South Carolina. Voters need to understand that his well-known plans to kick union employees off their health care plans and end all private insurance, raise middle-class taxes and double the size of the government, and his less well-known radical views, like his efforts to dump nuclear waste in Hispanic communities, will repel many general-election voters.

“EITHER THIS STUFF IS DEBATED NOW, when Democrats have time to consider it fully, or it will come out in the fall, in a torrent of negative ads by the Trump team that would likely prove politically fatal. Democrats deserve the facts before they choose a nominee.”

ALSO GETTING IN ON THE AD GAME … “Pro-Klobuchar super PAC pumps money into Nevada and South Carolina,” by Elena Schneider and Maggie Severns: “A super PAC supporting Amy Klobuchar is dropping a seven-figure ad buy into Nevada and South Carolina, giving the Minnesota senator a much-needed financial boost.

“The super PAC, called Kitchen Table Conversations, was formed late last week at a crucial moment in the race for Klobuchar, who has only days to build on her surprise third-place finish in New Hampshire before a slew of big-ticket Democratic presidential contests begin.

“The group plans to air TV ads on broadcast and cable stations, as well as digital platforms, in Nevada and South Carolina, starting Wednesday. The group also plans to expand into the 14 Super Tuesday states later, according to a person familiar with the ad buy.” POLITICO

STATE OF PLAY -- “NBC News/WSJ poll: Sanders opens up double-digit national lead in primary race,” by NBC’s Mark Murray

A message from Google: A jobs program to help support economic recovery. Google is launching a new suite of Google Career Certificates in Data Analytics, Project Management, and User Experience (UX) Design. Designed and taught by Google employees, these certificates can help job seekers forge paths to high-growth careers. Learn more.

DEBATE PREVIEW … NYT, News Analysis, A1, MATT FLEGENHEIMER: “Michael Bloomberg Has to Debate Without a Net”: “After a mass introduction to the Democratic electorate on his terms, powered by hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money, Mr. Bloomberg is submitting for the first time to an uncontrolled setting on a national scale. This does not necessarily play to his strengths. … Perhaps most conspicuously, the debate on Wednesday will temporarily separate Mr. Bloomberg from the most powerful asset of his campaign: his campaign. …

“Mr. Bloomberg himself has been holed up in debate preparations, joining advisers for mock sessions in a rented warehouse-style space outside Manhattan, snacking on matzo with peanut butter during breaks from his aides’ play-acted swipes at his record. …

“Given the scope of Mr. Bloomberg’s resources, a merely serviceable debate performance would probably be treated as a victory. Some candidates rely on the debates for media oxygen and fund-raising, seeking breakthroughs like Ms. Klobuchar managed in New Hampshire, where an energetic performance helped vault her to a surprise third-place finish.” NYT

-- NEW: BLOOMBERG’S campaign has released a video of people who switched candidates to support the former NYC mayor. These videos were taken by the campaign’s organizing staff. 1:15 video … A list of local officials who have switched their affiliation to back Bloomberg

BUT STILL NO SENATE DEM BACKERS, via Marianne LeVine: “Senate Dems embrace Bloomberg’s anti-Trump machine, but not his candidacy”

INTERESTING … CNBC’S @kaylatausche: “Bloomberg previously said on Iowa radio that he'd sell the company if he *ran* for president. Three Wall Street sources in touch w/ Bloomberg advisers abt this say Bloomberg would want to sell to a big tech company - and worries Pres. Trump's DOJ or FTC could block the deal.”

NEW … L.A. TIMES: “Bernie Sanders takes wide lead in California primary, new poll finds,” by Michael Finnegan: “The survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found Sanders favored by 32% of likely voters in the March 3 primary, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden, 14%, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 13%, and two former mayors, Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., both at 12%.

“The findings were particularly grim for Biden and Warren; each dropped by 10 percentage points from their standings in the institute’s poll in January. Sanders has been especially successful at consolidating support among Latinos and voters under 45 years old; a majority of both groups favored the Vermont senator, the poll found. … Under party rules, candidates must win at least 15% of the vote statewide or in a congressional district to capture any of California’s delegates. The survey’s margin of sampling error was 5.7%. It was conducted Feb. 7 to 17.” LAT

PETE BUTTIGIEG on Tuesday night at a CNN town hall in Las Vegas: “One thing about my marriage is it’s never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse. … So they wanna debate family values, let’s debate family values. I’m ready.”

WHERE THEY ARE TODAY …

-- BUTTIGIEG is joining the picket line with Culinary Workers Union Local 226 today outside the Palms Casino.

-- KLOBUCHAR is also joining the picket line with Culinary Workers Union Local 226.

SIREN -- “Barr has told those close to Trump he is considering quitting over the president’s tweets about Justice Dept. investigations,” by WaPo’s Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, John Wagner and Rachel Weiner: “Attorney General William P. Barr has told people close to President Trump -- both inside and outside the White House -- that he is considering quitting over Trump’s tweets about Justice Department investigations, three administration officials said, foreshadowing a possible confrontation between the president and his attorney general over the independence of the Justice Department.

“So far, Trump has defied Barr’s requests, both public and private, to keep quiet on matters of federal law enforcement. It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether Barr had made his posture known directly to Trump. The administration officials said Barr seemed to be sharing his position with advisers in hopes the president would get the message that he should stop weighing in publicly on the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigations.

“‘He has his limits,’ said one person familiar with Barr’s thinking, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others, to discuss internal deliberations.” WaPo

-- NYT goes softer: “Explicitly rebuffed, Mr. Barr was left by the end of the day to consider his own future. He expressed dissatisfaction to associates and his irritation soon fed news reports that he was considering resignation if the president continued to publicly weigh in on individual prosecutions of his own associates. But it was unclear whether that would persuade Mr. Trump to back off or only get his back up.”

Good Wednesday morning.

Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

BREAKING … NYT: “China Targets 3 Wall Street Journal Reporters as Media Relations Sour,” by Alexandra Stevenson in Hong Kong: “China on Wednesday said it would revoke the press credentials of three Wall Street Journal reporters working in mainland China, in a significant escalation of Beijing’s pressure on the foreign news media. … The Journal identified the reporters as Josh Chin, its deputy bureau chief in Beijing and an American national; Chao Deng, an American; and Philip Wen, an Australian national.” NYT

TRUMPWORLD … ALEX ISENSTADT: “President Donald Trump’s campaign is bringing on an alum of the controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica, a move likely to raise alarms among Trump critics and data privacy advocates who worry the president will push the technological envelope to get reelected in 2020.

“Matt Oczkowski, who served as head of product at Cambridge before it went bankrupt and shut down in 2018, is helping oversee the Trump campaign’s data program, according to two people familiar with the hire. Cambridge gained notoriety for its work on psychological voter profiling and because it allegedly improperly obtained the personal information of tens of millions of Facebook users.” POLITICO

NEW: HOUSE MAJORITY FORWARD and LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS are launching a $1 million ad campaign across eight congressional districts focused on thanking Democrats for their work on environmental issues. The initial campaign will run for two weeks focused on Reps. Kathy Castor (Fla.), Joe Cunningham (S.C.), Antonio Delgado (N.Y.), Andy Kim (N.J.), Elaine Luria (Va.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Abigail Spanberger (Va.) and Xochitl Torres Small (N.M.). Example ad

BATTLE FOR THE SENATE -- “‘Ground Zero’: Trump’s reelection, GOP Senate at stake out west,” by James Arkin and Gabby Orr with a Phoenix dateline: “President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies over the next two weeks are taking him straight into the heart of the Senate battleground map.

“Trump’s recent and upcoming rallies are counter-programming the Democratic presidential primaries in early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. But in the next two weeks he’s also hitting Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina, a trio of states that feature vulnerable Republican senators and hold the key to the GOP maintaining control of the chamber. …

“The upcoming Trump rallies aren't explicitly about the Senate map, but they do underscore the significant overlap between Trump’s path to a second term and Republicans’ Senate strategy. The GOP senators up for reelection have embraced the president, relying on his performance atop the ticket in their states.” POLITICO

A message from Google: Google recently announced new Career Certificates in Data Analytics, Project Management, and UX Design, funding 100,000 need-based scholarships for individuals enrolled. Learn more.

TRUMP’S WEDNESDAY -- The president will leave Las Vegas at 10:05 a.m. PST en route to Rancho Mirage, Calif. He will arrive at Porcupine Creek Golf Course at 10:25 a.m. and participate in a supporter roundtable followed by a joint fundraising committee lunch. Trump will depart at 12:25 p.m. and will travel to Bakersfield, Calif., the hometown of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has been traveling with the president.

HE WILL ARRIVE at the JACO Hangar at 2:05 p.m. and deliver remarks on California water accessibility. Afterward, he will travel to Phoenix. Trump will arrive at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at 6:15 p.m. MST and speak at a political rally at 7 p.m. Afterward, he will travel to Las Vegas for the evening.

PLAYBOOK READS

PHOTO DU JOUR: Buses and taxis wait to transport roughly 500 passengers finally being allowed to disembark from a Japanese cruise ship Wednesday after testing negative for the coronavirus. | Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

HOW THE PARDONS ARE PLAYING … NYT BANNER HOMEPAGE THIS MORNING: “Trump Grants Clemency to Prominent White Collar Criminals.” Subhed: “Efforts Help a Who’s Who of Political and Corporate Convicts.” The full list

-- WSJ leads with Trump’s pardon of junk bond king Michael Milken, and notes this: “Mr. Milken has cultivated a rapport with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a personal friend who flew on Mr. Milken’s private plane from Washington to California in January 2019, according to Mr. Milken.”

-- AND THIS: “Typically, the Justice Department makes recommendations on whether to issue a pardon, though the power belongs to the president alone. Mr. Trump has previously circumvented the Justice Department entirely when issuing pardons and granting clemency, relying instead on his own connections. The Justice Department declined to say whether it had issued advice.

“A person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said that many of the pardons had been pending for months, and that he had directed that everything be ready so that he could act. Mr. Trump finalized the timing of the announcement last week, the person said.”

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

NATASHA KORECKI: “I Covered Blago’s Trial From Start To Finish. Trump’s Commutation Isn’t Crazy.”

-- BLAGO IS HOME, per AP: “‘I’m profoundly grateful to President Trump and it’s a profound and everlasting gratitude,’ Blagojevich said. ‘He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president and I was a Democratic governor. I’ll have a lot more to say tomorrow.’”

-- HAPPENING TODAY … PATTI BLAGOJEVICH (@pblagojevich): “Rod Blagojevich Homecoming Press Conference: Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020 at the Blagojevich Family Residence. 11:00 am (CST).”

A message from Google: Learn about the Google IT Support Professional Certificate in a free, on-demand session. Watch now.

AFGHANISTAN. WHAT. A. MESS. -- “Ghani Named Afghan Election Winner. His Opponent Claims Victory, Too,” by NYT’s Mujib Mashal, Najim Rahim and Fatima Faizi in Kabul: “President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday was declared the winner of Afghanistan’s presidential vote after five months of delayed results and bitter dispute. But the announcement threatened to tip the country into a full-blown political crisis on the cusp of a U.S. peace deal with the Taliban.

“Just hours after the announcement, Mr. Ghani’s leading challenger, Abdullah Abdullah — who accuses Afghanistan’s election commission of favoring the incumbent — also declared himself the winner and said he would form a government of his own.” NYT

-- Mujib Mashal (@MujMash): “In a sign of how complicated Afghan elections was going to be in larger scheme of things, about 15 hrs later still no initial reaction - let alone congrat messages to President Ghani - even from allies. Nothing from US, UN, or anyone else that I've seen.”

TRUMP VS. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, CORONAVIRUS EDITION -- Another small example of how the president often sings from a completely different hymnal than his aides. Here’s Trump talking about the coronavirus: “I think President Xi is working very hard. President Xi loves the people of China, he loves his country and he’s doing a very good job with a very, very difficult situation.”

TRUMP ADDED that the U.S. is “working with him and helping him as of the last few days.”

-- AND HERE’S his own economic adviser, LARRY KUDLOW, saying last week that the administration was “disappointed in the lack of transparency coming from the Chinese.”

MEDIAWATCH -- BOSTON GLOBE: “Washington Post editor Martin Baron to deliver Harvard commencement address”

PLAYBOOKERS

Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at [email protected].

SPOTTED at a party for Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng’s new book, “Sinking in the Swamp” ($18.60 on Amazon), at the Upper East Side home of Molly Jong-Fast: Hayes Brown, Ben Collins, Taylor Lorenz, Vicky Ward, Michael Calderone, Aidan McLaughlin, Brian Stelter, Matt Latimer, Oliver Darcy, Noah Shachtman, Wendy Wolf, Terezia Cicel, Keith Urbahn, Max Tani, Nick Gillespie, Liz Nolan Brown, Anna Massagolia and John Avlon.

ENGAGED -- Andres Franzetti, CEO and co-founder of Risk Cooperative, and Ben Becker, managing principal at Precision Strategies, got engaged over the weekend on a trip with friends to celebrate Andres’ 40th birthday in Puerto Rico, where he popped the question. Instapic

WEEKEND WEDDING -- Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Sofia Boza-Holman got married Saturday at the Convento de las Capuchinas in Antigua, Guatemala. Pic

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Justin Rouse, managing supervisor at Vox Global, is 3-0. A trend that doesn’t get enough attention: “Last month was the hottest January ever recorded on Earth and climate change is already having devastating global impacts on ecosystems, infrastructure and health. If we don’t do something about it now, it will have irreversible consequences. Already you are hearing more about ‘resiliency’ than you are ‘prevention’ or ‘reversal,’ and I fear that we are witnessing the point of no return.” Playbook Q&A

BIRTHDAYS: Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) is 74 ... Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is 72 … Julie Terrell Radford, COS for Ivanka Trump, is 37 … Alexis Covey-Brandt … Andrew Ross Sorkin … Tamara Hinton … Howard Stringer is 78 … Gary Andres, GOP staff director at Ways and Means … John Stanton … Sean Conner … Andy Abboud … Chris Faulkner of Majority Strategies … John Gentzel, VP at DCI Group … Protocol Labs’ Rachel Horn … Kevin Bishop, comms director for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is 49 … Judy Kurtz of The Hill … Tucker Warren … Brandon VerVelde, comms director for Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), is 32 … POLITICO’s Jen Plesniak … Sandeep Hulsandra … Melody Miller … Katharine Zaleski … John J. Miller … Peter Van Buren … Cat Blakely … Joshua Schank … Nick Solheim …

… Sarah Stillman, staff writer at The New Yorker, is 36 … Samantha Zalaznick … Ben Khouri, program manager at Potomac Communications Group, is 29 … Joe Vidulich, senior manager of government and policy affairs at Capital One, is 34 … William Thompson … Sara Misselhorn … Lane Mullin … Chase Kroll ... Jason Bertsch, EVP at AEI ... Kaitlyn Martin, government relations adviser at Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies ... Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association ... Molly Weaver ... Jim Green ... Evan Feinman ... Olga Ramirez Kornacki, director of the House-Radio TV Gallery ... Ken Shepherd ... Daniel Blum ... Alicia Rose ... Sam van Buren … Ginny Neel … Jill Lawrence ... Fox News’ Louis Tartaglia ... Gidi Mark … Jon Fishman is 55 … VOA journalist Daria Dieguts

A message from Google: Helping job seekers kickstart a successful career in IT. Yves Cooper wanted to pursue a career in technology, but didn't have a college degree. He enrolled in the IT Certificate program from Google, which includes interview coaching and connections to top employers. After receiving the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, he was hired as an IT Helpdesk Technician with a higher salary than his previous job. Learn more.

Follow us on Twitter Anna Palmer @apalmerdc



Jake Sherman @JakeSherman