Bridging the enthusiasm gap

SPRINGFIELD, Va.—On a wind-whipped 36-degree Saturday, young people turned out in droves for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign rally in northern Virginia. Dozens of 20-somethings wearing nametags designating them as “Bernie volunteers” helped check in 6,000 attendees at the St. James Sports, Wellness, and Entertainment Complex. With two hours to go before their candidate arrived, attendees chatted excitedly, heads and blue-and-white Bernie signs bobbing along to the music playing over the loudspeaker. They cheered as each new group of people trickled in from outside. Occasionally, someone stirred up chants of “Feel the Bern.”

Tom Bowman, a longtime Sanders supporter and one of few elderly people at the rally, said he thinks young voters hold the key to Sanders’ success.

“There are a lot of young people—I say new voters right up until mid-40s or maybe a bit older,” the 80-year-old noted. “I think there are going to be people from everywhere in the voting environment who are looking for change.”

But only three days later, on Super Tuesday, any such enthusiasm for Sanders failed to drive young voters to the polls in significant numbers. Instead, former Vice President Joe Biden defeated Sanders in 10 of the 14 states holding presidential contests and took the lead in the race for Democratic delegates.

“Just about the only places [Biden] didn’t win were heavily Latino or progressive activist hotbeds like college towns,” Dave Wasserman, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, tweeted on Wednesday.

In Texas, almost two-thirds of voters were 45 or older. Nowhere did people under the age of 30 make up more than 20 percent of the vote, according to exit polls in the state. While young people tended to vote for Sanders in overwhelming margins, Biden easily overcame that by winning over older voters and African Americans.

Sanders acknowledged his disappointment at a news conference on Wednesday in Burlington, Vt.

“Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in? The answer is no,” he acknowledged. “Everybody knows that young people do not vote in the kind of numbers that older people vote. I think that will change in the general election.”

But it appears many Democratic voters have less confidence in Sanders’ electability against President Donald Trump.

“The Democrats are really caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Chaples Lipson, a professor emeritus at The University of Chicago. “Bernie has a lot of enthusiasm, but his strongest enthusiasm comes from a demographic of younger voters who tend not to show up in large numbers. … Biden, on the other hand, has a bit of a Hillary Clinton problem, which is the basic argument for him is, let’s settle for him. Rather than, boy, he really stirs the juices. He doesn’t.”

At a rally in a gymnasium in South Carolina last week, Biden gave sprawling answers to audience questions as small groups of onlookers drifted out the door. Halfway through an especially prolonged monologue, the former vice president told the crowd, “Look, I know this is boring, but it’s important.”

Despite lacking the energy of Sanders’ campaign, Biden defeated the independent senator from Vermont by almost 30 percentage points in South Carolina, giving him a crucial boost ahead of Super Tuesday. He received a further jolt when former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota dropped out of the race and threw their support behind him.

Biden’s Super Tuesday success does not mean he’s knocked Sanders out of the running. But it does mean that Sanders will need to do well in the Midwest to prevent Biden from building an insurmountable delegate lead, Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman noted in the political analysis newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Meanwhile, Trump is “not having any problem filling arenas,” Lipson said. The president also is not having trouble driving his supporters to the polls: Without a strong GOP challenger, he racked up hundreds of thousands of votes in Super Tuesday states, including nearly 1.5 million in California.

Down-ballot battles

While the Democratic presidential race grabbed most of the headlines on Super Tuesday, a few states also held congressional primaries. Voters in Alabama, California, and Texas made their picks for competitive races come November.

In Texas, longtime Republican Rep. Kay Granger fended off a primary challenger in the state’s 12th District, perhaps thanks to an endorsement from President Donald Trump. In southern Texas, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar survived a challenge from the left in the 28th District, defeating Jessica Cisneros, his former intern. Cisneros, an immigration lawyer, had the backing of Justice Democrats, the organization that helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseat 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in New York in 2018. The pro-abortion group EMILY’s List spent more than $1 million seeking to oust Cuellar, one of Congress’ few remaining pro-life Democrats.

In California, a special election to replace U.S. Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned following a scandal involving an extramarital affair, may go to a runoff. Democratic state Assemblywoman Christy Smith had a growing lead over Republican defense contractor Mike Garcia in what is one of the state’s most competitive congressional districts. The winner will fill Hill’s seat for the rest of 2020, with another election in November for the next two-year term.

In Alabama, former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville are headed for a runoff on March 31. The two Republicans are vying to take on Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in the general election. Though he has not endorsed Tuberville, Trump took a shot at Sessions on Wednesday: “This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt.” —H.P.

Unlawful appointment?

A federal judge ruled Sunday that President Donald Trump unlawfully appointed Ken Cuccinelli to lead U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington said the appointment violated a law governing who may lead federal agencies in an acting capacity. The law prevents the administration from filling senior government positions without Senate approval.

Since Cuccinelli cannot legally serve as acting USCIS director, Moss said, he lacked authority to make changes to asylum law, including one limiting the time asylum-seekers have to prepare for screening interviews.

Cuccinelli told Fox News the Trump administration would appeal the decision. Until then, he said Joe Edlow, deputy director for policy at USCIS, would be “there at the helm.”

Trump named Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general, to the new position of “principal deputy director” in June. That immediately made him acting director because the previous director had just resigned. —H.P.

Emailgate revived

A federal judge ordered former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to appear for a sworn deposition about her use of a private email server during her time at the U.S. State Department. The conservative group Judicial Watch, is seeking information about the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in a lawsuit.

Clinton has never given a live deposition under oath about the email scandal. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote that further discovery in the case should focus on whether Clinton used a private server to evade the Freedom of Information Act and what she understood about the State Department’s records management obligations. —H.P.