The former vice president’s third big night in as many weeks came amid tremendous uncertainty as the Democratic contest collides with efforts to slow the spread of the virus that has shut down large swaths of American life. Polls were shuttered in Ohio, and although balloting went ahead as scheduled in the three other states, election workers and voters reported problems.

Still, Biden’s quest for his party’s nomination now seems well within reach. His trio of wins doubled his delegate haul over Sanders, giving the former vice president a nearly insurmountable lead. Top Democratic leaders and donors have also increasingly lined up behind Biden as the best option to square off against US President Donald Trump in November.

Using a live stream to address supporters from his home state of Delaware, Biden seemed ready to move past the primary. He paid tribute to the Vermont senator for advancing key issues like affordable health care and combating climate change.

“Sen. Sanders and his supporters have brought a remarkable passion and tenacity to all of these issues. Together they have shifted the fundamental conversation in this country,” Biden said. “So let me say, especially to the young voters who have been inspired by Sen. Sanders, I hear you. I know what’s at stake. I know what we have to do.”

With the exception of North Dakota and the Northern Mariana Islands, Sanders hasn’t scored a victory since Super Tuesday on March 3. He made no immediate move on Tuesday to contact Biden, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the candidates. During remarks early in the night, Sanders said little about the future of the race and instead focused on the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump, meanwhile, formally clinched the Republican presidential nomination after facing minimal opposition.

But much of the action was on the Democratic side, where higher vote totals in some key states suggested enthusiasm that even the coronavirus couldn’t contain. Turnout in Florida’s Democratic primary surpassed the 1.7 million who cast ballots four years ago.

Sanders’ path to the nomination is quickly narrowing, and some Democrats are now calling on him to drop out in the name of party unity. Top advisers have said he’s considering whether the political landscape could look different as the virus continues to reshape life across the country.

Still, the race increasingly favors Biden. He maintained strength on Tuesday with African Americans and older voters who have been the hallmark of his campaign. He also appeared to chip away at Sanders’ previous advantage with Hispanics that helped him win Nevada and California early in the race.

In Florida, Latinos made up roughly 20% of Democratic primary voters, and they largely sided with Biden. The former vice president received the support of 62% of Puerto Rican voters and 57% of Cubans, according to AP VoteCast, a broad survey of primary voters.

The public health and economic havoc wreaked by the coronavirus will nonetheless influence how the presidential contest unfolds. Rallies and other big events have been canceled. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez urged states with upcoming primaries to expand vote-by-mail and absentee balloting, as well as polling station hours — trying to ensure the primary isn’t further hampered going forward.

“The right to vote is the foundation of our democracy, and we must do everything we can to protect and expand that right instead of bringing our democratic process to a halt,” Perez said in a statement.

But the damage may have already happened.

Four states — Louisiana, Georgia, Kentucky, and Maryland — have joined Ohio is moving to push back their upcoming primaries, and others may yet do so. That has left the Democratic primary calendar empty until March 29, when Puerto Rico is scheduled to go to the polls. But island leaders are working to reschedule balloting there, too.

That means there is nowhere for Sanders to gain ground on Biden anytime soon, even if he could find a way to mount a sudden surge.

At least one of Sanders’ top advisers chided party officials for going forward with voting on Tuesday.

“The Democratic Party rightly berates the GOP for ignoring scientists’ warnings about climate change,” David Sirota tweeted. “The same Dem Party just ignored scientists’ warnings & pushed to continue in-person elections during a lethal pandemic, rather than delaying until there is a vote by mail.”

There were problems across the country on Tuesday. In Illinois, for instance, there was a push to relocate about 50 Chicago-area polling places after locations canceled at the last minute.

Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, said the board asked Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker last week to cancel in-person voting, but the governor refused. Pritzker countered that state law doesn’t give him the authority to make the sweeping changes that elections officials wanted.

“Let me tell you this: It is exactly in times like these when the constitutional boundaries of our democracy should be respected above all else. And if people want to criticize me for that, well, go ahead,” the governor said.

There weren’t problems, everywhere, though. Mel Dockens, a 49-year-old small-business owner, voted in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale and said it was a tough choice. But he went for Biden because he thought Sanders’ progressive views might turn off some Democratic voters.

“It’s all about electability,” Dockens said. “It’s not that I don’t trust Bernie Sanders, but I trust (Biden) a little more.”

The post Biden vs. Sanders as Primaries Goes on appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Buttigieg threw his support to Biden at an emotional appearance at a Dallas restaurant, while Klobuchar delivered a barnstorm of a speech at a rally, reminiscent of the types politicians give at their party conventions when anointing their presidential nominees.

“Joe Biden has dedicated his life to fighting for people,” Klobuchar said, before introducing Biden at the rally in Dallas on Monday night.

“Not for the rich and powerful, but for the mom, for the farmer, for the dreamer, for the veteran. He can bring our country together.”

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and the first openly gay presidential candidate said earlier in Dallas that he was “delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden.”

“He is somebody of such extraordinary grace and kindness and empathy.”

Biden, 77, in turn, told reporters that Buttigieg, 38, “reminds me of my son Beau,” who died in 2015, adding: “To me, it is the highest compliment you can give any man or woman.”

Former US Representative Beto O’Rourke, another former candidate for the Democratic nomination, also endorsed Biden, appearing to cheers as a surprise guest at the rally in Dallas.

Biden is fresh off a resounding victory in Saturday’s South Carolina primary and is aiming for a strong showing on Super Tuesday against Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, who many centrist Democrats fear cannot win against Republican President Donald Trump in November.

But Biden still faces a challenge from billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg among voters hoping the party will nominate a moderate to face Trump.

Bloomberg, a late entrant to the race, will make his ballot-box debut when 14 states vote on Super Tuesday.

He is betting the $500 million of his own money he has poured into his campaign will allow him to make up for not competing in the first nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.

He said on Monday the most likely scenario was that no Democratic candidate would win a majority of delegates and that picking the nominee could come down to “horse-trading” at the Democratic convention in Milwaukee in July.

Asked at a Fox News town hall if a contested convention lay in his path to the nomination, Bloomberg said: “That is the way that it would work I would guess.”

The Super Tuesday contests offer the biggest one-day haul of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the party’s nomination at its national convention in July, with about 1,357 delegates, or nearly one-third of the total number, up for grabs.

Fourteen states – California, Texas, Virginia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Vermont, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, and Maine – as well as American Samoa and Democrats living abroad cast ballots on Tuesday. (The primary for expatriate Americans is scheduled to run through March 10.)

Five candidates – Biden, Bloomberg, Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and US Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii – remain in the running for the Democratic nomination, down from more than 20 earlier in the campaign.

Bloomberg and Biden have emerged as the main contenders for the votes of moderate Democrats, while Sanders, a senator from Vermont, is the progressive front-runner nationally, eclipsing Warren.

At a rally on Klobuchar’s home turf in Minnesota on Monday night, he was gracious to his former rivals who endorsed Biden, praising Klobuchar as a hard worker and calling Buttigieg’s candidacy historic.

“Tonight I want to open the door to Amy’s supporters, to Pete’s supporters,” Sanders said. “I know there are political differences but I also know that virtually all of Amy’s supporters and Pete’s supporters understand that we have got to move towards a government that believes in justice and not greed.” Biden’s high-stakes triumph in South Carolina, where his campaign had said his popularity with black voters would propel him to victory after early disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire helped winnow the field.

Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer also gave up his campaign on Saturday after a third-place finish in the Southern state in which he had invested most heavily.

Sanders’ momentum might not be easily slowed. On Monday, his campaign played down the efforts by moderates to present a united front.

“The establishment is nervous, not because we can’t beat Trump, but because we will,” said Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir.

“And when we do, the Democratic Party will again be a party of the working class.”

It was not immediately clear who would immediately benefit from the departures of Buttigieg and Klobuchar. A Morning Consult poll taken Feb. 23 to 27, for example, before Buttigieg exited the race, showed that 21% of his supporters named Sanders as their second choice, 19% picked Biden, another 19% chose Warren and 17% favored Bloomberg.

Biden still lags his rivals in spending and organization in Super Tuesday states and beyond, but his campaign said on Sunday it had raised more than $10 million over the preceding two days.

Endorsements of the former vice president from elected officials and community leaders poured in on Monday.

Backing from Ohio Democrats including Representative Marcia Fudge and former Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory added to endorsements from Senator Tim Kaine and state House of Delegates Majority Leader Charniele Herring of Virginia.

In Colorado, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has backed Biden.

In California, Representative Gil Cisneros is supporting the former vice president.

The post Buttigieg, Klobuchar endorse Biden appeared first on Iran News Daily.

TEHRAN (Iran News) – US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “reactionary racist” during the party’s latest debate on Tuesday.

The post Sanders: Netanyahu a ‘reactionary racist’ appeared first on Iran News Daily.

The independent senator from Vermont claimed a decisive victory in the Democratic presidential caucuses with former vice president Joe Biden finishing second.

The win in Nevada would solidify Sanders’ frontrunner status in the competition to choose the Democratic nominee who faces Trump in November’s election.

The Republican president’s campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement, “Media reports of unstaffed caucus sites in Nevada just prove that the national Democrat Party is in chaos and incompetent.”

His message appeared to refer to a few logistical stumbles at the beginning of the caucuses as some reports showed volunteers struggling to connect to a telephone number used to record results.

Nevada scrapped plans to use the caucus process similar to the one used in Iowa Feb. 3, which dissolved into chaos when a glitchy new app developed to help count the vote failed to function.

Parscale went on to say that “there is no denying that Big Government Socialism dominated again as Bernie Sanders remained the leader of the leftist pack. We are another day closer to Election Day and another day closer to re-electing President Trump.”

Sanders, who dominated among young and middle-aged people as well as Latinos in Nevada and won several downtown Las Vegas caucus sites, is now a small step closer to becoming the nominee, although he will remain a long way off the 1,990 delegates needed.

“We won the popular vote in Iowa, we won the New Hampshire primary, and according to three networks and the AP, we have now won the Nevada caucus,” the 78-year-old told cheering supporters in San Antonio, Texas.

“We have put together a multi-generational, multiracial coalition that is going to not only win in Nevada, but it’s also going to sweep the country.”

Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg both released memos this week predicting that Sanders will probably have a delegate lead coming out of Super Tuesday if the dynamics of the race remain unchanged.

The post Trump campaign: Socialism in Nevada appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has upped attacks against Bloomberg in recent days, began the pile on by saying Bloomberg couldn’t draw the diverse voter turnout needed to beat President Donald Trump in November.

“Mr. Bloomberg had policies in New York City of stop and frisk, which went after African-American and Latino people in an outrageous way,” Sanders said. “That is not a way you’re going to grow voter turnout.”

Wednesday marked Bloomberg’s debut on the debate stage after qualifying earlier this week, setting the stage for a more contentious showdown. The former mayor stayed relatively quiet as the other candidates pounced at the opportunity to attack his record.

Elizabeth Warren jumped in next with a fiery charge, criticizing Bloomberg for his alleged comments about women.

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against,” Warren said. “A billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians, and no I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg. Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk.”

Amy Klobuchar chimed in to say she welcomed the opportunity to debate Bloomberg on the stage, and said she didn’t think he should “be hiding behind his TV ads.” She also took a jab at the Bloomberg campaign’s memo from this morning, suggesting other candidates need to “get out of the way” so that he can take on Trump.

“And I’m not going to do that because a campaign memo from Mayor Bloomberg said this morning, that the only way we get a nominee is if we step aside for him. I think we need something different than Donald Trump. I don’t think you look at Donald Trump and say, we need somebody richer in the White House,” Klobuchar said, Politico reported.

Bloomberg had the opportunity to respond to the early onset of attacks, but he took his moment to redirect the conversation to his central message that he is the one to beat Trump in November.

 “I am a New Yorker. I know how to take on an arrogant conman like Donald Trump that comes from New York. I’m a mayor, was a mayor. I know how to run a complicated, diverse city, the biggest, most diverse city in this country” Bloomberg said. “I’m a manager, I knew what to do after 9/11 and brought the city back stronger than ever. And I’m a philanthropist who didn’t inherit his money but made his money. And I’m spending that money to get rid of Donald Trump, the worst president we’ve ever had. And if I can get that done, it will be a great contribution to America and my kids.”

Joe Biden took Bloomberg’s response as an opportunity to argue that he is “better positioned to beat” the president. He took another jab at Bloomberg, saying the former mayor “didn’t get a lot done” in New York.

Pete Buttigieg was the last of the crew to weigh in, and he used his moment to draw Sanders into the fray.

“We have got to wake up as a party. We could wake up two weeks from today, the day after Super Tuesday and the only candidates left standing will be Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg — the two most polarizing figures on this stage,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg continued: “And most Americans don’t see where they fit if they’ve got to choose between a socialist who thinks that capitalism is the root of all evil and a billionaire that thinks money ought to be the root of all power. Let’s put forward somebody who actually lives and works in a middle-class neighborhood, in an industrial Midwestern city. Let’s put forward somebody who’s actually a Democrat. Look, we shouldn’t have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out. We can do better.”

The post Bloomberg Attacked in Democratic debate appeared first on Iran News Daily.

During a campaign appearance in Nevada, Sanders pointed out Bloomberg’s absence from the early primary states while knocking the billionaire former mayor for spending more than any other candidate in the 2020 race on TV advertising.

“Hey guys, how do you buy the presidency? Well, you buy the presidency, at least he’s gonna try to buy the presidency, by spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on TV ads,” Sanders said. “I didn’t see Mike in Iowa…I didn’t see Mike in New Hampshire…hey you know what? I didn’t see him here in Nevada!”

“Well, I got news for Mr. Bloomberg, and that is the American people are sick and tired of billionaires buying elections,” he added to applause, The Hill reported.

Bernie Sanders directly attacked Mike Bloomberg for attempting to “buy the presidency” at a campaign rally in Nevada.

Sanders’s remarks come as Bloomberg has eclipsed the entirety of the 2020 field in TV ad spending, and according to a CNBC analysis has spent more than twice what President Trump and every one of his Democratic rivals combined have spent so far this election cycle.

The Vermont senator has consistently hammered Bloomberg since the former mayor officially entered the 2020 race, accusing him of promoting “racist” policing policies as mayor of New York and asserting that Bloomberg could not generate the excitement necessary to defeat Trump in a general election.

The post Sanders Raps Bloomberg Trying to ‘Buy the Presidency’ appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, as one f democrats, used the strongest language of any of the candidates in his criticism of Trump plan, calling it “unacceptable,” since “any acceptable peace deal must be consistent with international law and multiple UN resolutions.”

Sanders said any agreement “must end the Israeli occupation and enable Palestinian self-determination in an independent state of their own alongside a secure Israel. Trump’s so-called peace deal doesn’t come close, and will only perpetuate the conflict.”

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said “Trump’s ‘peace plan’ is a rubber stamp for annexation and offers no chance for a real Palestinian state. Releasing a plan without negotiating with Palestinians isn’t diplomacy, it’s a sham. I will oppose unilateral annexation in any form—and reverse any policy that supports it.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden also characterized the Trump plan as “a political stunt that could spark unilateral moves to annex territory and set back peace even more.”

Democratic presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg also lashed Trump for his handling of foreign affairs and censured the plan as “undermining a workable solution to the conflict.”

The former Indiana mayor said, “this president’s Mideast ‘Deal of the Century,’ like so much else he’s done in foreign policy, makes complex situations worse.”

“Peace requires both parties at the table. Not a political green light to the leader of one for unilateral annexation,” Buttigieg added.

Immediately after the Trump plan’s release on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring his plan to annex the Jordan Valley and all settlements in the West Bank, with US backing, to a vote during next week’s cabinet meeting.

Like the other democratic candidates, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg criticized the fact that Trump’s so-called peace plan was developed without any Palestinian “buy-in” and warned that “it is critical that neither side take any unilateral steps that could trigger instability and violence.”

The Democratic candidates also said Trump’s plan is “one-sided” and has opened the door to unilateral Israeli annexation of the West Bank. “Such a development would disregard international law, engender stiff opposition from US allies,” the senators said. “It will also place allies like Jordan in an untenable position.”

They warned that “the timing of Trump plan to coincide with Netanyahu’s indictment on bribery charges raises disturbing questions about an attempt by the Trump administration to interfere in the Israeli general elections on March 2.

Netanyahu was formally indicted in three separate corruption cases on Tuesday, hours before the presentation of “the peace plan” at the White House.

The post Democrats Slam Trump Plan appeared first on Iran News Daily.

TEHRAN (Iran News) – In a debate expected to produce fireworks between front-runners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, the two Democrats instead joined forces to blast the US President Donald Trump for not telling the truth on Iran.

The post Sanders, Biden slam Trump for false data on Iran appeared first on Iran News Daily.

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders followed an angry attack on Donald Trump’s ordered airstrike assassination of Iran’s top military commander with the announcement of a new bill to block funding for a war against Iran — unless Congress approves.

The post Sanders introduce bill to block funds for war appeared first on Iran News Daily.