Bernie
Sanders said he would lay off hundreds from his staff. Credit Aaron P.
Bernstein/Reuters. Reeling from their losses in Tuesday's Democratic and
Republican primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Ted
Cruz of Texas a
After Losses, Ted Cruz Picks Carly Fiorina as Running Mate and Bernie Sanders Retrenches
Photo
Bernie Sanders said he would lay off hundreds from his staff.Credit
Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters
Reeling from their losses in Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Ted Cruz
of Texas abruptly reordered their campaigns on Wednesday, aiming to
preserve some small hope that the race might yet turn in their favor.
Mr. Cruz named a running mate, Carly Fiorina,
to help bring down Donald J. Trump, the Republican favorite, and both
spoke of Mr. Trump in the language of relentless opposition, casting him
as a sinister figure who must not be allowed to become president.
On
the Democratic side, Mr. Sanders said he would scale back his upstart
bid for the White House and lay off hundreds of campaign workers, a
measure seemingly intended to extend the life of his candidacy but not
to prepare for a general election.
In an interview, Mr. Sanders acknowledged in the strongest terms yet that Hillary Clinton’s
delegate lead might have closed off his path to the nomination, and he
was less combative toward his party’s front-runner in his moment of
apparent defeat, taking a tone of cold realism, if not quite
resignation.
Stymied
in his efforts this week to challenge Mrs. Clinton’s dominance in the
urban Northeast, Mr. Sanders said he would now refocus his efforts
chiefly on the June 7 primary in California, a state laden with both
delegates and political symbolism. By winning there, he said, he hoped
to strengthen his hand ahead of the Democratic convention in
Philadelphia, where he would push his core priorities into the party
platform.
“If
we can win the largest state in this country, that will send a real
message to the American people,” Mr. Sanders said, “and to the delegates
that this is a campaign that is moving in the direction it should.”
The
Sanders campaign said late Wednesday that it would continue to maintain
a staff of more than 300 as the race moved toward California. The
campaign had roughly 1,000 workers during the initial nominating
contests.
Mr.
Sanders did not rule out a comeback before the end of primary voting in
June. But he has appeared to tone down his antagonism of Mrs. Clinton
in recent days, abandoning his brief attacks on her qualifications for
the presidency and instead focusing on her policy stances and ties to
Wall Street.
Video
Ted Cruz Picks Carly Fiorina for Ticket
Senator Ted Cruz announced that if he
is the Republican presidential candidate, his running mate would be
Carly Fiorina, a former candidate herself.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date April 27, 2016.
Photo by Michael Conroy/Associated Press.
Watch in Times Video »
If
Mr. Sanders seemed on Wednesday to bow to political reality on the
Democratic side — and to Mrs. Clinton’s apparent inevitability as the
party’s nominee — Mr. Cruz took a far more defiant line in the
Republican race.
Walloped
by Mr. Trump in the last six primaries and lagging behind him in polls
before next week’s contest in Indiana, Mr. Cruz made a daring but
somewhat desperate announcement: that in the event of his nomination,
Mrs. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard executive, would be his
vice-presidential running mate.
Appearing
alongside Mrs. Fiorina in Indianapolis, Mr. Cruz delivered a stemwinder
of a speech, castigating Mr. Trump as an untrustworthy narcissist. He
and Mrs. Fiorina jointly criticized the news media for rushing to treat
Mr. Trump’s victory in the nomination fight as a foregone conclusion.
The Republican race, Mrs. Fiorina said, was a struggle “for the soul of our party and the future of our nation.”
By
rushing out a vice-presidential pick before the Indiana vote, which is
becoming make-or-break for his candidacy, Mr. Cruz opted to tear open
his party’s divisions even more widely, rather than to stand down in
view of Mr. Trump’s growing strength.
Mr.
Cruz’s criteria for a pick, in his telling, seemed to be aimed squarely
at Mr. Trump. “Do they think through decisions in a rash and impulsive
way?” he asked. “Do they pop off the handle at whatever strikes them at
any given moment?” He held up Mrs. Fiorina as someone who knows “where
jobs come from.”
Mr.
Cruz’s selection of Mrs. Fiorina may present a perilous challenge for
Mr. Trump, who is grappling with mounting criticism of his derisive
remarks about women, including his repeated claims that Mrs. Clinton’s
sole political asset is “the woman’s card.”
Mindful
of the gender gap often evident in Mr. Trump’s polling, Cruz allies
hope that Mrs. Fiorina will prove a capable foil to him, as she did
while besting him in a series of debate exchanges during her own
candidacy. Since endorsing Mr. Cruz last month, Mrs. Fiorina has proved
to be an eager surrogate, attacking Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton with
zeal.
Mr.
Trump, viewed unfavorably by most women in general election polls, has
clashed savagely with Mrs. Fiorina in the past. He has mocked her
business record, her voice and even her looks. “Look at that face,” Mr.
Trump said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine last summer.
“Would anyone vote for that?”
Another
slashing comment directed at Mrs. Fiorina’s appearance or gender could
have grave consequences for Mr. Trump, especially with female voters he
would need to win over to compete in the fall.
Mr.
Trump responded to the surprise announcement with a degree of
restraint. Referring to the “new relationship” between “Cruz and Carly,”
Mr. Trump shook his head and raised his eyebrows as he dismissed the
move.
“He
has set a record,” Mr. Trump said of his opponent. “He is the first
presidential candidate in the history of this country who’s
mathematically eliminated from becoming president who chose a
vice-presidential candidate.”
Mr.
Cruz’s gambit was received chiefly as an act of beleaguered
improvisation — the political equivalent of a student pulling a fire
alarm to avoid an exam.
In
the short term, Mr. Cruz may have succeeded in shifting the focus away
from Mr. Trump’s success in the last two rounds of voting, and from his
own wheezing alliance with Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who agreed to clear
out of Indiana if Mr. Cruz withdrew from competition in Oregon and New
Mexico.
Yet
his partnership with Mrs. Fiorina may prove of limited value if Mr.
Trump clobbers them both in Indiana, where 57 delegates are at stake.
Mr. Trump already leads Mr. Cruz by more than 400 delegates, and has
gathered more than three-quarters of the delegates he needs to clinch
the Republican nomination.
Mr.
Cruz acknowledged in his speech on Wednesday that he no longer had a
chance of winning the 1,237 delegates required to become the nominee,
but said he still planned to challenge Mr. Trump in an open convention.
Subscribe for updates on the 2016 presidential race, the White House and Congress, delivered to your inbox Monday - Friday.
With
his announcement, Mr. Cruz becomes the first candidate in 40 years —
since Ronald Reagan in 1976 — to name a running mate before capturing
his party’s nomination.
Far
more conventional is Mr. Sanders’s shift toward a strategy of dogged
and benign persistence, rather than aggressive confrontation with Mrs.
Clinton. Candidates for president routinely scale back their campaigns
but forge ahead because they hope to advance a specific policy agenda,
or out of a sense of obligation to their supporters.
Mrs.
Clinton, for one, insisted on fighting the 2008 Democratic race all the
way through the last day of primary voting, even after Barack Obama had
gained a permanent upper hand in the competition for delegates.
Yet
few losing candidates in recent memory have generated the kind of
electric energy within the Democratic base that Mr. Sanders has in the
2016 election. Democratic leaders are especially sensitive to his
following among young people, who have voted for him by staggering
margins, and whose support Mrs. Clinton may rely on against Mr. Trump in
the November election.
Even
if Mr. Sanders shies away from direct conflict with Mrs. Clinton, he
could still be an irksome presence in the race. He is likely to win
several primaries in May, and a large-scale effort in California could
pressure Mrs. Clinton to spend time and money there to forestall an
embarrassing upset.
But
unlike Mr. Trump, who appears determined to batter Mr. Cruz and Mr.
Kasich into submission, Mrs. Clinton and her allies have taken a
gingerly approach to Mr. Sanders in what seem to be the waning days of
his campaign.
They
have urged Mr. Sanders to sand down the sharpest edges of his arguments
against Mrs. Clinton and begin to prepare the party for a moment of
coming together in Philadelphia.
Gov.
Jack Markell of Delaware, a Clinton supporter, said Democrats hoped for
“a somewhat rapid conclusion” to the primaries, but viewed withdrawing
from the presidential race as a “personal decision” for Mr. Sanders.
“Obviously,
as you get to this point, you want to see all Democrats focused on the
Republicans and not focused on each other,” Mr. Markell said. Mr.
Sanders, he added, “certainly believes that electing one of these
Republicans as president would be a real nightmare for the country.”
Matt Flegenheimer and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment