10 week in photos 0313
CNN  — 

Joe Biden faces a new test as he tries to win the Democratic primary and pivot toward the general election: defeating Bernie Sanders without completely alienating the Vermont senators’ devoted followers.

The rise of coronavirus has effectively put a pause on the Democratic primary, all but halting day-to-day campaigning. But Biden and Sanders will still debate on Sunday, in their first one-on-one matchup that Democrats see as a contest that will test Biden’s strategy of unifying the party and provide insight on how Sanders is balancing pushing his progressive platform with not damaging the former vice president for a possible general election fight.

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This moment has echoes of 2016, when Sanders fought Hillary Clinton for months after his path towards the nomination largely closed. But Biden’s team sees the Vermont senator’s position in this race – as evidenced by his public comments this week – as markedly different than his approach in 2016, and are urging supporters to be respectful to Sanders’ team and not forcefully push the liberal leader out of the ravce.

The challenge now facing Biden is one that proved difficult for Clinton. Sanders, after substantial losses in March and April of that year, pressed on with his campaign until June, a move that the former secretary of state has said hurt her eventual run against Trump.

“We are getting very close to the time where it is clear Bernie simply cannot win this and then it is up to Bernie to decide whether he is going to be as supportive as possible or not,” said a former senior aide to Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Sanders’ aides have said that they view the campaign as a “week-to-week” endeavor, noting that there still is a second half of the nomination fight that has yet to begin.

Those comments and Sanders’ history have top Democrats on edge, anxious over how Sanders and Biden manage the next few days and weeks, beginning with Sunday’s debate, even if the campaign is largely out of the headlines for the foreseeable future.

Biden has yet to win the nomination, but he ends the week in a commanding position with another round of voting scheduled for Tuesday in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio. Biden now is effectively running a two-track race: Against Trump and against Sanders.

‘We share a common goal’

The former vice president’s outreach to Sanders’ supporters began in earnest Tuesday night after Biden increased his delegate lead with a dominant showing in the second round of Super Tuesday states.

“I want to thank Bernie Sanders and his supporters for their tireless passion,” Biden said. “We share a common goal, and together we’ll defeat Donald Trump.”

Sanders made clear the following day that he had no intention of immediately getting out of the race.

“Last night obviously was not a good night for our campaign from a delegate point of view,” Sanders said.

But the Vermont senator also did something he did not do this early four years earlier: Admit he was losing.

“While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability,” Sanders said.

That admission, in the eyes of Biden aides, amounted to Sanders putting the onus of winning over his supporters on the former vice president. And Biden’s campaign has responded in kind: Kate Bedingfield, Biden deputy campaign manager, lambasted Sanders’ campaign last week, but since then, Biden’s campaign has responded to Sanders’ less hostile rhetoric by calming their own word.

And Sanders supporters are paying close attention.

“If there is a hint of bull rushing Bernie out of the race when many folks are skeptical of Biden and want to see more of the one-on-one healthy, respectful ‘Joe is my friend but we disagree’ debate, then, if Biden is the nominee, unity at the end will be that much more difficult,” said Jonathan Tasini, a vocal Sanders supporter.

Some Democrats, in an acknowledgment of those concerns, have been eager not to appear to be pushing Sanders out of the race.

“I don’t think Bernie Sanders should get out of the race,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday. “I know the enthusiasm of supporters for candidates and they want to see it play out for the ideas, the causes that the candidate advances for the opportunity for people to show their support.”

But Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement of Biden helped the former vice president begin his comeback in South Carolina, bucked this messaging this week when he told NPR that because of Biden’s delegate lead, “it is time for us to shut this primary down, it is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates.”

But a source close to Clyburn cast the senator’s comments as freelancing, rather than following the lead of Biden’s campaign.

“Clyburn’s going to do what Clyburn wants to do,” the source said of Biden’s campaign taking a less aggressive approach.

Sunday’s debate – which will now be held in Washington, DC, and not Arizona because of coronavirus concerns – is now a pivotal point in the campaign that will signal the tenor of the rest of the campaign.

2016 looms

Hanging over all of this is the role Sanders and his team played four years ago.

Sanders’ path toward the nomination in 2016 began to close in mid-March, when Clinton swept contests in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Even some Sanders aides acknowledged at the time that Sanders’ campaign effectively ended when Clinton won the New York primary in mid-April.

But Sanders kept on fighting throughout May and into June, hoping that the California primary could save his bid. Sanders’ attacks throughout the time were not solely policy focused, too, and instead homed in on Clinton’s connections to Wall Street and other more personal topics.

The Vermont senator used his leverage with Clinton to have a significant hand in writing the Democratic platform and party rules. Democrats believe that Sanders and his team will expect the same influence this year, regardless of the delegate math.

“Today, I say to the Democratic establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country and you must speak to the issues of concern to them,” Sanders said Wednesday.

The tone and text of Sanders’ speech suggest he does not intend go after Biden at the debate as directly as he has over the last few months. The specifics in Sanders’ remarks – and their focus on policy over any familiar attack on the former vice president – didn’t go unmissed at Biden’s Philadelphia headquarters.

“For the last 10 days, they have waged a relentlessly negative campaign,” a Biden adviser said on Wednesday night. “You had their campaign manager lifting RNC tweets and they went so far as to engage in gross smears about the VP’s health.”

But in his Wednesday speech, Biden aides noted, Sanders did not reup attacks he has leveled against the former vice president on social security and his support for the Iraq War. Instead, Sanders listed conversations he hoped to have with Biden, including medical debt, climate change and economic inequality.

“Calling for a substantive discussion about our housing plans,” the Biden adviser said, “absolutely pales in comparison” to 2016.

And even Sanders supports, including those who backed Clinton in 2016, saw the Vermont senator’s stance throughout the week as significantly different to how he approached the race against the former secretary of state.

“I do feel that Sanders made it crystal clear that his primary objective, apart from all his policies, is to defeat Trump,” said Pete Daou, a Sanders supporter who backed Clinton four years ago. “I am hearing a lot of unifying language from team Sanders about how they are going to approach this. Is it different than 2016? Yes.”