Feb. 23, 2020, 8:12 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 8:12 p.m. ET By Can South Carolina really change everything? Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina went on the Sunday talk show circuit to emphasize that the primaries are young and to caution against prematurely crowning Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee. “South Carolina has a demographic that lends itself well to Democratic voters especially, so I think that if you can win South Carolina decisively, I think you can set the stage for Super Tuesday and you will become the odds-on favorite,” Mr. Clyburn said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I remember John McCain coming into South Carolina the odds-on favorite. He left South Carolina in bad shape,” he continued, arguing that his state had a history of changing the trajectory of presidential races. “We had Barack Obama win South Carolina and be launched all the way to the presidency. Hillary Clinton won South Carolina and became the odds-on favorite, and she won the nomination.” It’s true that black voters are the core of the Democratic base and that South Carolina is the first opportunity for them to participate in significant numbers, which means it absolutely has the potential to be a game-changer. But none of the examples Mr. Clyburn cited resemble the current situation, in which one candidate (Mr. Sanders) dominated the first three primaries and the candidates counting most on South Carolina (Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Tom Steyer) came nowhere near winning any of them. In 2016, a blowout victory in South Carolina gave Mrs. Clinton a big boost going into Super Tuesday, especially after Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire — but Mrs. Clinton had already won Iowa (albeit narrowly) and Nevada, and was already the favorite. In 2008, South Carolina did cement Mr. Obama as the front-runner, but he had already won an upset in Iowa and earned the most delegates in Nevada. As for John McCain, he ran in both 2000 and 2008. While Mr. Clyburn did not specify what year he was referring to, we can safely assume it wasn’t 2008, given that Mr. McCain didn’t leave South Carolina “in bad shape” that year; he won it. But in 2000, while Mr. McCain won New Hampshire, George W. Bush won the other early contests. Read more

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Feb. 23, 2020, 7:57 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 7:57 p.m. ET By Sanders says not to ‘overstate’ his campaign’s ‘political revolution’ Even Senator Bernie Sanders can’t quite believe he is leading the Democratic primary for president. “That is a bit shocking,” Mr. Sanders said wryly during an interview with “60 Minutes” on Sunday, after the anchor Anderson Cooper noted that the Vermont senator was currently the front-runner in the race. The interview, taped before Mr. Sanders’s victory in the Nevada caucuses, covered topics like the senator’s age and physical health and the anxiety among some Democrats about his plan to radically overhaul the nation’s health care system. “Is everybody really wanting a revolution like that?” Mr. Cooper asked. “You know, let’s go easy on the word ‘political revolution,’” Mr. Sanders replied, prompting Mr. Cooper to interrupt: “You’re the one who’s using the word!” “Well, but I don’t want people, you know, to overstate that,” Mr. Sanders said, adding: “Only millions of people standing up for justice can bring about the kind of change that this country requires, and I believe that has got to happen.” Mr. Sanders’s appearance on the CBS News program is likely to be one of the most-watched of his campaign: “60 Minutes” is seen by an average of 10 million viewers per episode, a bigger audience than many Democratic debates. Asking the senator about his commitment to democratic socialism, Mr. Cooper played a clip of a much-younger Mr. Sanders praising some of Fidel Castro’s policies as the leader of Cuba. The present-day senator responded: “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba. But you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?” Dressed in a dark suit and gingham tie, Mr. Sanders seemed in good spirits, though he became frustrated when Mr. Cooper quoted former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s claim that Mr. Sanders “never got anything done” in the Senate. “Are you getting mad?” Mr. Cooper asked, after Mr. Sanders loudly exhaled. “I’m not mad,” the senator said. “I’m just silently hissing, that’s all.” Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 7:02 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 7:02 p.m. ET By Biden campaign expects Clyburn’s endorsement. A Democratic official close to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid revealing internal planning, said the campaign expected to receive an endorsement from Representative James E. Clyburn, the longtime lawmaker and highest-ranking African-American in Congress. In an interview, Mr. Clyburn confirmed he would endorse on Wednesday, the day after the next Democratic debate. He cited his “longtime friendship with Joe,” but otherwise declined to reveal his preference. In a later interview with the Post and Courier in Charleston published Sunday evening, Mr. Clyburn said he was still deciding between three Democratic candidates — Mr. Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Amy Klobuchar — and he pushed back on a Politico report that said his mind was made up. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 6:41 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 6:41 p.m. ET By Marianne Williamson endorses Bernie Sanders in Austin. Image Marianne Williamson leaves the stage after endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders at his rally in Austin Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times AUSTIN, Tex. — Marianne Williamson, the self-help author and spiritual adviser who ended her own presidential campaign last month, endorsed Bernie Sanders on Sunday at a rally here, saying it was “time for us to take a stand with Bernie.” Comparing the doubts surrounding Mr. Sanders’s ability to win to the doubts that confronted abolitionists, suffragists and civil rights workers, Ms. Williamson said people should take cues from them and not accept limitations. Mr. Sanders, she said, had in fact already shown victory was possible. “It already happened — he won Iowa,” she said. “It already happened — he won New Hampshire. It already happened — he won Nevada. And by doing all those things, Bernie Sanders has taken a stand, and Bernie Sanders has been taking a stand for a very long time.” Ms. Williamson’s endorsement was kept tightly under wraps, and even a Sanders aide told the press only minutes before she was due on stage. As her speech built to a crescendo, Ms. Williamson told the audience they had been “trained in America over the last few decades to expect too little, to say pretty please about things that should be the right of every American.” “Today, we’re tired of saying pretty please,” she said. “We’re going to stand up, we’re going to show up because we woke up, and we’re going to say with grace, we’re going to say with style, we’re going to say to all those who say liberty and justice cannot be done, sure as hell can be, because we’re here and we’re with Bernie!” Mr. Sanders, appearing at the last rally of a Texas swing that took him to El Paso, San Antonio and Houston, thanked Ms. Williamson at the beginning of his remarks and echoed her words. “The major problems we face are the limitations of our imagination and what we believe as a nation we can become,” he said. Read more

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Feb. 23, 2020, 6:27 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 6:27 p.m. ET By Elizabeth Warren’s ‘big diff’ with Bernie Sanders? The filibuster. Image Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke to a crowd of about 4,000 in Denver on Sunday. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times DENVER — On her last night campaigning in Nevada, Senator Elizabeth Warren mentioned Senator Bernie Sanders by name, in a gentle yet relatively rare highlight of a difference she has with the Democratic front-runner: she called out his opposition to rolling back the filibuster. She returned to the topic of Senate parliamentary procedure on Sunday in Denver. “Here’s the big diff,” Ms. Warren told an auditorium full of about 4,000 people. “Bernie supports the filibuster. I want to get rid of the filibuster,” she said, arguing that the current 60-vote threshold would prevent major legislation, including on guns and climate change, from becoming law. “I won’t let the N.R.A. and the gun industry have a veto,” she said. Mr. Sanders has opposed eliminating the filibuster, but he has endorsed passing major legislation with 50 votes through a process known as budget reconciliation. Ms. Warren ended her riff on the filibuster with this, echoing a comment she made Saturday night in Nevada: “I want to go to Washington not just to talk,” she said. “I want to go to Washington to make big structural change.” Later, she repeated one other distinction she has made throughout the campaign, noting: “I’m not a democratic socialist. I believe in markets.” Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 6:13 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 6:13 p.m. ET By Speaking in a South Carolina church, Steyer calls for environmental justice. YEMASSEE, S.C. — Tom Steyer, emphasizing his status as a Washington outsider at a packed church here, spoke about how black voters in the state had been the victims of injustice. “We have unbearable injustice. It’s economic. It’s racial and it’s environmental,” Mr. Steyer said, speaking to a mostly black audience. “And we’re sitting in a church close to every single one of those injustices at a very deep level. It’s hard to know which one to start on.” But Mr. Steyer chose to begin with environmental justice. “We have seen, coming to South Carolina and traveling here, I have seen water you can’t drink that makes people sick in Denmark,” he said, referring to a city about an hour north of here. “Rural South Carolina overwhelmingly black communities can’t drink the water, get sick and die.” He went on: “The places where you can’t breathe without getting asthma. The places where you can’t drink the tap water are black and brown. I’ve been to Flint, Michigan. I know who lives in Flint, Michigan. It’s not a coincidence.” Reacting to a man who pleaded with Mr. Steyer to help Jasper County, one of the state’s poorest, even if he loses the election, Mr. Steyer promised that he would not abandon South Carolina. “Win, lose or draw, I’m not leaving South Carolina,” Mr. Steyer said to the cheering crowd of about 150. As for Jasper County, Mr. Steyer said he was proposing a massive infrastructure project to rebuild America that would bring jobs to rural counties across the country. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 5:53 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 5:53 p.m. ET By Elizabeth Warren draws more than 4,000 in Denver. Image People lined up to see Senator Elizabeth Warren speak at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver. Credit... Ruth Fremson/The New York Times DENVER — Senator Elizabeth Warren filled the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver to capacity and addressed an overflow crowd outside, one day after what appears to have been a fourth-place finish in the Nevada caucuses. “I am so glad to see you, Denver!” she declared. Ms. Warren made no reference to the results in Nevada. But she did invoke last week’s debate. “So, you may have noticed we had a little debate on Wednesday night,” she said to raucous cheers. Some in the crowd of supporters had some nerves about the state of the race after three consecutive contests in which Ms. Warren has not yet finished above third. “I wish she had been doing better, but it’s not over,” said Lauren Hess, a massage therapist who lives in Georgetown, Colo. She has volunteered for the Warren campaign, making calls to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire on Ms. Warren’s behalf. The number one concern she said had come up? “I know people are really scared about electability,” she said. Read more

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Feb. 23, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ET By At Virginia rally, Buttigieg repeats claim that nominating Sanders is too risky. Image Pete Buttigieg spoke at a campaign event in Arlington, Va., on Sunday. Credit... Pete Marovich for The New York Times ARLINGTON, Va. — A day after apparently finishing third in the Nevada caucuses, Pete Buttigieg cast Bernie Sanders, the Democratic front-runner, as too risky a nominee, arguing that the Vermont senator would alienate the moderate voters Democrats will need to win back the White House. “I respect my friend Senator Sanders. I believe the ideals he talks about are ideals we all share,” he told several thousand voters gathered on a Northern Virginia football field. “But I also believe the way we will build the movement to defeat Donald Trump is to call people into our tent not to call them names online.” Mr. Buttigieg described his campaign as a unifying force for the party, attacking the rhetoric Mr. Sanders’s campaign has embraced. “The point is not to fight,” he said. “The point is what lies on the other side of the fight.” He expanded his argument to include the need for Democrats to win not only the White House but majorities in Congress — an implicit critique of Mr. Sanders. The former mayor of South Bend, Ind., frequently cites his appeal to “future former Republicans.” “We’ve got to make sure we have an nominee at the top of the ticket who can not just take back the White House but keep the House in the right hands and send Mitch McConnell packing,” said Mr. Buttigieg. “The next president is going to need that.” Battleground-state Democrats have grown increasingly vocal with fears that policies championed by Mr. Sanders, like Medicare for All, could cost the party down-ballot seats in states like Arizona, Michigan and Georgia. His rally came as his campaign claimed inconsistencies in the reported results in Nevada, part of their effort to claw to second place in yesterday’s caucuses. They’ve called on the state party to hold off on releasing final numbers until they have recalculated some precincts — a request quickly rebuffed by the party. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 5:29 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 5:29 p.m. ET By Harry Reid says ‘all caucuses should be a thing of the past.’ LAS VEGAS — Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who remains the functional head of Nevada Democrats, said Sunday that caucuses should no longer be used to nominate candidates for president of the United States. “Our Democratic Party did a good job,” Mr. Reid said. “All caucuses should be a thing of the past. They don’t work for a multitude of reasons.” Mr. Reid’s call to end caucuses adds to growing momentum around the push for Democrats to shift their presidential nominating contests from caucuses to primaries. It follows the fiasco earlier this month in Iowa, when Iowa Democratic Party officials failed to report any results until 22 hours after caucuses began, and the slow-going Nevada count, which has seen just 60 percent of precincts report results in the more than 24 hours since most caucuses closed. After 2016, when Senator Bernie Sanders and his allies claimed he was cheated out of a caucus victory in Iowa because of irregularities in the reporting process, the Democratic National Committee incentivized caucus states to shift to primaries. Only Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming, along with three territories, are holding caucuses in 2020. Still, Mr. Reid’s call to end caucuses is a remarkable statement from the man who is single-handedly responsible for Nevada’s caucuses occupying the third slot on the Democrats’ presidential nominating calendar. He engineered Nevada’s shift to earlier in the calendar, just behind Iowa and Hampshire, for the 2008 presidential cycle. Nevada has since become ensconced, with those two states and South Carolina, at the beginning of both parties’ nominating processes. The Nevada Democrats have been slow to count and report caucus results partly thanks to new D.N.C. rules that require caucus states to report not just the number of delegates won by each candidate, but also the raw number of supporters for each candidate. Pete Buttigieg’s campaign on Sunday cited “irregularities” in the results that have been reported by Nevada Democrats and called on the state party to release a raft of new data. Nevada Democrats have in the past sought to shift from a presidential caucus to a primary, but Republicans in control of state government have refused to fund presidential primary elections. Democrats now control every lever of state government here, after Gov. Steve Sisolak won the governor’s mansion in the 2018 midterm elections. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 4:57 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 4:57 p.m. ET By Sanders takes on Trump at Houston rally. Image People cheered as they awaited Senator Bernie Sanders at a rally in Houston on Sunday. Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times HOUSTON — Bernie Sanders turned his attention to the general election on Sunday, positioning himself as the strongest candidate against President Trump as he rallied thousands at the University of Houston. Taking aim at the “corporate media” who doubt his ability to defeat Mr. Trump in November, Mr. Sanders began the rally by rattling off recent polls showing him doing just that. “Some of the folks in the corporate media are getting a little bit nervous, and they say, ‘Bernie can’t beat Trump,’ so let’s look at some of the polls out today,” he said, before citing numbers that showed him beating Mr. Trump in the general election and in battleground states. He then fired salvos directly at Mr. Trump, calling him a liar and a “fraud.” “We have a president who is undermining democracy, who calls ‘the media enemies of the people,’” he said. “And no matter what your political view may be, we do not want a president who disrespects American democracy.” He went on to say Mr. Trump had “lied” about promises he made in 2016 to working people, including that he would not cut social security. He also joked that the economy was indeed booming, as Mr. Trump boasts, but only for his “for his billionaire friends.” And he took a swipe at Michael R. Bloomberg, the multibillionaire former mayor of New York. “Michael Bloomberg, like anybody else in America, has the right to run for president, but he does not have the right to buy the presidency,” Mr. Sanders said. But rather than railing against the Democratic Party, as he sometimes does, Mr. Sanders urged unity, though subtly, even as he vowed to “take on the whole, damn 1 percent.” “We are going to defeat Donald Trump because whatever your political view may be, the people are sick and tired of lies, corruption and fraud.” And in America, he said, there must be “an understanding that my family has got to care about your family, your family has got to care about my family and that as human beings, we share a common humanity that we are in this together.” Read more

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Feb. 23, 2020, 4:46 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 4:46 p.m. ET By Steyer highlights poll results in South Carolina appearance. Image Tom Steyer is introduced by State Representative Shedron Williams at a campaign event in Hampton, S.C. Credit... Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters HAMPTON, S.C. — Fresh from a major setback in Nevada, businessman Tom Steyer highlighted a poll released Sunday in his first appearance of the week here in rural South Carolina. “We got a poll today from CBS News that puts this campaign at 18 percent and in third place,” Mr. Steyer told about 50 voters gathered at a community center here, adding that he was working hard this week to win the state. Continuing his emphasis on racial issues as he reaches out to black voters here, who make up 60 percent of the Democratic electorate in the state, Mr. Steyer told the group: “Look, I believe there is a racial component to virtually every major policy in the United States,” once again promising reparations. He also hit hard on corruption. “The president is cruel, corrupt and incompetent,” Mr. Steyer said. “And crazy,” someone in the audience yelled. “Yes,” Mr. Steyer laughed. “The four Cs.” Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 4:42 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 4:42 p.m. ET By Biden questions Sanders’s defense of his supporters. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. expressed skepticism on Sunday about Senator Bernie Sanders’s implication, during last week’s debate, that Russians might be behind online harassment by self-described Sanders supporters. “The people that occupied my office, maybe they were Russians — I don’t know, but they said they were Bernie supporters,” Mr. Biden said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” apparently referring to about two dozen people who entered his Des Moines campaign office last month and refused to leave until the police arrived. “The people who occupied other offices and the people who did these terrible things to the culinary workers and the women who run that operation — I guess anything’s possible, but they’re identified as Bernie supporters.” It sounded like he was saying he didn’t buy Mr. Sanders’s theory, the host, Margaret Brennan, said. “I don’t know,” Mr. Biden said. “I’ll let you make that judgment.” Earlier this month, Mr. Sanders said in response to reports about self-identified supporters’ online behavior: “Anybody making personal attacks against anybody else in my name is not part of our movement. We don’t want them. And I’m not so sure, to be honest with you, that they are necessarily part of our movement.” But it was not until last week’s debate that he brought Russia into his response. “All of us remember 2016, and what we remember is efforts by Russians and others to try to interfere in our elections and divide us up,” he said. “I’m not saying that’s happening, but it would not shock me.” Reports two days later indicated that Russia had been trying to intervene in the primaries on Mr. Sanders’s behalf. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 4:35 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 4:35 p.m. ET By Warren’s new cannabis plan seeks to help those affected by the war on drugs. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a plan on Sunday to create a cannabis industry whose economic benefits go largely to the communities most affected by the so-called war on drugs. Ms. Warren has previously expressed support for legalizing marijuana and expunging past convictions for possession, but her new plan describes the would-be industry in greater detail and emphasizes the racial aspects of the current system. “We cannot allow affluent and predominantly white hedge-funders and capital investors to hoard the profits from the same behavior that led to the incarceration of generations of black and Latino youth,” she wrote. Her plan would tax marijuana sellers and use the revenue to support small cannabis businesses owned by women and people of color; ensure that immigrants were not deported or barred from citizenship for nonviolent drug offenses; and provide federal funding for research on medicinal uses of marijuana. It would also give Native American tribes the authority to set their own marijuana policies. Ms. Warren also said that if Congress refused to legalize marijuana, she would use executive authority to, for instance, direct the Drug Enforcement Administration to delist it as a controlled substance “via the federal rule-making process.” Read more

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Feb. 23, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET By Steyer touts support for reparations and raising the minimum wage in appeal to black voters. In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” the hedge fund billionaire, Tom Steyer — who is banking on a top-three finish in South Carolina — defended his support for reparations and a $22 minimum wage. Mr. Steyer finished seventh in Iowa and sixth in New Hampshire, and he was sixth in Nevada with 60 percent of precincts reporting. But polls show him trending higher in South Carolina, the first state where black voters will participate in large numbers. While other candidates, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., attribute his increase in popularity to his heavy spending in the state, Mr. Steyer attributed it to his willingness “to talk about race.” “I believe that there is a substantial racial subtext in virtually every policy area in the United States,” he said. For instance, he added, on climate policy, “I’ve always started in the communities where it’s unsafe to breathe, because you’ll get asthma, and unsafe to drink the tap water, because you’ll get sick, and those tend to be overwhelmingly black and brown communities.” Mr. Steyer also brought up his support for reparations — a point on which the host, Chris Wallace, pressed him, asking if he believed that “more than 150 years after emancipation, that is a good use of taxpayer money.” “I don’t think that the discrimination and the legalized injustice stopped in 1865,” Mr. Steyer said. On the minimum wage, where he has gone further than most — support for a $15 minimum wage is standard among the Democratic candidates, but $22 is unusual — Mr. Steyer said he had simply taken the minimum wage from 1980 and adjusted it for inflation and increased productivity. “It’s derived just by looking and seeing what American workers deserve from 1980,” he said. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 4:01 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 4:01 p.m. ET By Biden hits Sanders for reportedly considering primary challenge to Obama. NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Sunday jabbed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for reportedly considering a primary challenge to President Barack Obama in 2012, something the Sanders campaign denies. Speaking to reporters after attending church services in North Charleston, Mr. Biden noted that he and Mr. Sanders had “real disagreements on support for Barack.” “I’ve had his back the whole time,” Mr. Biden said. “Bernie wanted to primary him.” Mr. Biden added, “The idea that all of a sudden everybody’s real good buddies and real supportive of our agenda when we were president and vice president is kind of being exposed.” The Atlantic reported last week that Mr. Sanders had discussed mounting a primary challenge against Mr. Obama in the 2012 election, and that Harry Reid, who at the time was the Senate majority leader, had intervened to discourage him. A Sanders aide told The Atlantic, “It never crossed his mind to challenge Obama.” On Sunday, Mr. Biden also played down the threat he faces in South Carolina from the billionaire Tom Steyer. When asked how much support he thought Mr. Steyer would take from him in Saturday’s primary, Mr. Biden responded, “I think the same amount he took in Nevada: nothing.” Mr. Biden proceeded to take a shot at Mr. Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, over the subject of private prisons. “I’m not saying Tom Steyer’s a bad guy, but Tom Steyer was one of the largest investors in private prisons in the United States of America while I was trying to get rid of private prisons and Barack was trying to get rid of private prisons,” Mr. Biden said. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 3:42 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 3:42 p.m. ET By Ad campaigns are already looking to Super Tuesday. MINNEAPOLIS — With just four days between South Carolina’s primary and Super Tuesday, candidates are already beginning to plot out a national ad campaign in the 14 states that will vote on March 3, and looking at where the candidates who are not self-funding billionaires are spending their money gives a window into their strategies. Of course, ads from one of those billionaires, Michael R. Bloomberg, are the most prevalent. Mr. Bloomberg, who has already spent $150 million on local broadcast television in the Super Tuesday states, has $12.5 million in ad reservations for the next week, according to Advertising Analytics. And it’s a figure that will likely continue to grow. But amid his blanket ad spending, Mr. Bloomberg is ramping up his advertisements in Virginia, spending nearly $900,000 next week, with roughly $3 million spent in the state so far. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the best-funded candidate who isn’t pouring his own money into the effort, is also the only candidate with enough resources to advertise in the expensive markets of California and Texas. Next week, Mr. Sanders will air $2.1 million worth of ads in California and $1.2 million in Texas. He has ad reservations in 10 of the 14 Super Tuesday states. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, flush with $21 million after a standout debate performance in Nevada, had no ad reservations in Super Tuesday states until a few days ago, when her campaign began buying in Colorado and Maine. She currently has roughly $150,000 in reservations for the next week in Colorado, and $110,000 in Maine. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who also benefited from a notable debate performance in New Hampshire and quickly pulled in $12 million, has been spreading her money around to multiple Super Tuesday states. Ms. Klobuchar is not advertising in her home state, obviously confident in her homefield advantage. But she has $1.3 million in advertisements booked for next week. Her three biggest investments are in North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, but the candidate is following up a Sunday campaign swing in Arkansas and Oklahoma with $210,000 combined in both states. But former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., the two candidates who as of Saturday night were both claiming second place finishes despite a lack of definitive results, do not have any reservations in any Super Tuesday state. Read more

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Feb. 23, 2020, 3:31 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 3:31 p.m. ET By Biden ‘needs to win South Carolina,’ a prominent S.C. supporter says. Image Mr. Biden at a service at Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston. Credit... Hilary Swift for The New York Times Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Sunday sought to play down the importance of a victory in South Carolina, a day after declaring that he would win the state, even as he declined to define what doing well there meant in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But if Mr. Biden wouldn’t say it, his campaign and his allies were very clear: He needs a victory in South Carolina. “Here we are, the fourth primary,” said former Gov. Jim Hodges, Democrat of South Carolina, who is supporting Mr. Biden. “The narrative of the Biden campaign has been, ‘he’s going to compete in the first three, but South Carolina is the most important to me in terms of my long-term success in the race.’ So yes, he needs to win South Carolina.” At his watch party in Nevada on Saturday, Mr. Biden said that he would win South Carolina. And on a private call with supporters recently, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Greg Schultz, made clear that victory in the southern state was the linchpin of Mr. Biden’s path to the nomination. Read more

Feb. 23, 2020, 3:16 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2020, 3:16 p.m. ET By ‘This is a campaign that believes in underdogs,’ Klobuchar says in Fargo. FARGO, N.D. — Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota painted a dire future for other Democrats on the ballot should Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont become the nominee, recalling her response during the New Hampshire debate when she noted that the party could suffer with a socialist leading the ticket. “I want someone heading up the ticket who is going to lead our party so we win not just the presidency, but the House of Representatives as well as the U.S. Senate,” Ms. Klobuchar said, inferring that a Sanders nomination would hurt Democratic nominees for Congress. In her first event since a disappointing fifth-place finish in the Nevada caucuses, Ms. Klobuchar framed her stump speech at times as a near point-by-point rebuttal to Mr. Sanders, and occasionally to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “There are two clear paths when we look at who do we want as president,” Ms. Klobuchar said. On health care, “It’s a big contrast actually, with my friends, Senator Warren and Senator Sanders, because they just keep trying to relitigate the Affordable Care Act,” she said. “I think we should build on it.” On education, she continued, “they are arguing for free college for all, which I know sounds good, and I know we’re at a great college,” but “let’s sit back and look at our economy.” Ms. Klobuchar is taking in three states on Sunday, all largely conservative, all with open primaries and all which vote in the first 10 days of March. After a rally in Fargo, she will travel to Arkansas and Oklahoma, both Super Tuesday states. North Dakota votes on March 10 and awards 14 delegates. Though Ms. Klobuchar will spend much of the week in South Carolina, with debates, town halls and state party events, her campaign is clearly looking at Super Tuesday as a chance to make up some ground lost in Nevada. Her campaign had hoped to build on a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. She has one of the most aggressive ad campaigns of a non-self-funded-billionaire in Super Tuesday states, with $1.3 million spread across 10 states over the next week. The spending includes multiple states with open primaries, including $220,000 in Virginia, $232,000 in Tennessee, $129,000 in Oklahoma and $81,000 in Arkansas. “This is a campaign that believes in underdogs,” Ms. Klobuchar said, responding to a shout from the crowd that the Minnesota Vikings would one day win the Super Bowl. “I was just looking at Bill Clinton’s by the way. How many primaries it took before he won one. It was a lot.” Mr. Clinton’s first primary state victory was in Georgia, on Super Tuesday. Read more