Joe Biden’s Senior Advisor Wants to Get Trump Out by Encouraging Young Voters

Meet Symone Sanders, Joe Biden's senior advisor. She's on a mission to get Trump out of office by persuading young people to vote. "There's not a more powerful person in America this election than a young person with the ability to vote," Sanders told Quicktake.

To say it’s a big week in U.S. politics would be an understatement.

After months of campaigning that have only somewhat whittled a historically large field of Democratic presidential contenders, Monday night's Iowa caucuses kick off the formal part of the nominating process.

A late surge from Bernie Sanders has some party strategists worried about the prospect of a self-proclaimed socialist leading the ticket in November and has prompted advisers to former Vice President Joe Biden — once the clear Democratic front-runner — to temper expectations for his early-round performances.

But the outcome in Iowa is famously hard to predict and, as Gregory Korte explains, could come down to spur-of-the-moment decisions by thousands of voters.

With the Democrats likely remaining splintered for the foreseeable future, President Donald Trump has an opportunity with his annual State of the Union address tomorrow to refocus attention on his economic record and what he views as his first-term accomplishments.

The speech carries added intrigue this year. When the president steps behind the rostrum to address a joint session of Congress, he will be in the same chamber that voted seven weeks ago to impeach him. It will come on the eve of an almost certain Senate acquittal on charges he abused the power of his office and obstructed the legislature.

This may be just the formal start of the 2020 race, but the events of the next several days will undoubtedly be remembered when the history of this campaign season is written.

Top advisers to Joe Biden sought to temper expectations for his performance in Monday’s Iowa caucuses, projecting a close result and insisting that any outcome won’t doom the former vice president’s campaign.

“Joe Biden is anything but doomed,” former Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a longtime Biden friend who has endorsed his former colleague, said Sunday at a Bloomberg News reporter roundtable in Des Moines.

Biden’s team has long played down the importance of Iowa to its strategy, arguing that contests later in February in Nevada and South Carolina, followed quickly by Super Tuesday on March 3, are critical to demonstrate that a candidate is capable of defeating President Donald Trump.

“We have been taking incoming since before Vice President Biden got into this race, since before April 25, people have been writing our campaign’s obituary. Tuesday morning will be no different,” Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders said at the roundtable.

It’s in the states after Iowa that Biden’s advisers say he’ll be able to show his true electoral strength because of their higher concentrations of non-white voters and because their Democratic primary electorates are more moderate than Iowa’s.

“I think it’s important to know that we view Iowa as the beginning, not the end” of the nominating process, Sanders, the Biden adviser, said. “I think it will be a gross mistake on the part of reporters, voters or anyone else to view whatever happens on Monday – we think it’s going to be close – but view whatever happens as the end and not give credence and space for New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.”

Senator Bernie Sanders leads Biden by 3.6 percentage points in the Real Clear Politics average of Iowa caucus polls, but one key data point that typically helps set expectations in the final 48 hours before Iowans go to their caucuses is missing: The Des Moines Register/CNN poll’s Saturday night release was canceled because of problems with its questioning, leaving journalists, analysts and voters grasping for data to anticipate Monday’s results.

A central tenet of Biden’s Democratic primary argument is that he’s the candidate perceived as most electable, a contention opponents have argued would be diminished by a poor showing in Iowa. But Miller insisted that a disappointing finish for Biden in his state doesn’t change the overall picture for Biden.

“When we say he’s electable in the general election, we’re not saying he’s going to win every state in the caucus and primary system. That only happens with an incumbent president running for re-election,” Miller said. “I think that’s a false standard that he should win every state.”

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