On Politics This Week: Loathing in Las Vegas

February 22, 2020

By matt stevens and maggie astor

Welcome to On Politics on this Saturday morning.

We are still not done counting votes in Iowa, but on we go anyway: It’s time for more caucuses. Let’s hope they go more smoothly.

In the meantime, we’ll get you caught up on what happened this week in Nevada and elsewhere on the campaign trail.

What will happen in Nevada?

Senator Elizabeth Warren held an event in Las Vegas on Thursday, the night after the Democratic debate. Ms. Warren needs to translate her strong debate performance into a strong finish in Nevada.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Today is the day! Nevadans will be headed to their caucus locations in a matter of hours, and if all goes according to plan — and yes, we know that’s a big if — we will soon get some results.

Nevada Democratic officials are not taking anything for granted and have provided incredibly detailed instructions on how to, for example, turn on an iPad.

The candidates face their own challenges.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign is banking on second place or better. The largest labor union in Nevada opposes “Medicare for all,” Senator Bernie Sanders’s signature policy. Senator Elizabeth Warren needs to translate her strong debate performance into a strong finish. Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., need to show they can be viable in states that are more racially diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire.

Our colleague Isabella Grullón Paz reported on the push to turn out Latino voters in Nevada.
Here is a fun look at how the Nevada caucuses are supposed to work.
Could Nevada caucus first in 2024? Harry Reid hopes so.

The gloves (finally) come off at the debate

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

As our colleagues Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin put it in their recap: “The Democratic presidential candidates turned on one another in scorching and personal terms in a debate on Wednesday night.”

Continue reading the main story

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York took repeated fire from pretty much everyone, but especially Ms. Warren, who went after him on nondisclosure agreements, his support for stop-and-frisk and his past sexist comments.

Ms. Warren, looking to revitalize her campaign, was more forceful than we have typically seen her and got good reviews for her performance. It seems she also got results: Mr. Bloomberg announced on Friday that his company had identified three nondisclosure agreements involving allegations of inappropriate comments by Mr. Bloomberg, and that the women involved could contact the company to be released from those agreements.

Mr. Sanders, meanwhile, faced questions about his medical history and the behavior of his supporters, and Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg clashed several times in exchanges both withering and personal.

“I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete,” Ms. Klobuchar said at one point.

“I’m used to senators telling mayors that senators are more important than mayors,” he responded. “You don’t have to be in Washington to matter.”

Continue reading the main story

Some other notes:

As usual, we compiled six takeaways, fact-checked the candidates, tracked speaking time and took a look at who the experts thought won.
Mr. Bloomberg’s team attempted to prepare him for the attacks they knew would come. Still, his performance left some of his aides rattled.
Women in politics, acutely aware of double standards, don’t usually show their anger — but Ms. Warren did. “I’ve never seen anything like that on a presidential stage from a woman,” Rebecca Traister, a writer for New York magazine who wrote the book on women’s anger, told us afterward.
Where was Tom Steyer? Some voters missed him.
The same six candidates in Wednesday’s debate have qualified for next week’s debate in South Carolina.

Bloomberg has united the field against him

Michael R. Bloomberg spoke at a rally in Salt Lake City on Thursday. His rivals targeted Mr. Bloomberg’s history of insensitive remarks.Kim Raff for The New York Times

Mr. Bloomberg is not competing in Nevada, but he has gotten considerable attention nonetheless as he has continued to spend copious amounts of money and rise in national polls. His gains — and his history of insensitive remarks — put a huge target on his back this week in Nevada, where candidate after candidate took aim at him.

Mr. Sanders has been particularly direct with his criticism, and he and Ms. Warren have accused Mr. Bloomberg of trying to buy the election. This week, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign punched back, comparing Mr. Sanders’s campaign tactics unfavorably to those used by President Trump.

Continue reading the main story

Our colleagues did a deep dive into how Mr. Bloomberg’s spending over the years has built his influence far and wide — often subtly and behind the scenes.
New campaign finance reports show that as of the end of January, Mr. Bloomberg had spent $409 million on his presidential campaign.
We also put together a timeline of how Mr. Bloomberg defended stop-and-frisk, the tactic in which police officers searched millions of New Yorkers, the vast majority of whom were black or Hispanic and had not committed a crime.

Bloomberg on Wall Street, and more

Mr. Bloomberg, seeking to catch up to candidates who have been releasing plans for months, announced five this week, including one to restore Obama-era financial regulations and rein in the same industry where he made his tens of billions.

His Wall Street plan would impose a 0.1 percent tax on stock sales and other financial transactions — a proposal also supported by Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left, in a very rare alignment for Mr. Bloomberg. (Mr. Buttigieg also supports such a tax.)

It would also reverse much of the Trump administration’s deregulation and establish a team within the Justice Department to push prosecutors “to pursue individuals, not only corporations, for infractions.”

You can read more about the plan from our colleagues in the Business section.

In other policy news:

Mr. Buttigieg released a plan to protect public lands, proposing to ban new fossil fuel leases, increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and set a target of “protecting and restoring at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and oceans by 2030.”
Ms. Warren announced an agenda for small businesses. Among many other things, it would create a $7 billion equity fund for people of color to start businesses, support small businesses and entrepreneurs with federal contracts, and establish a grant program to encourage states and cities “to cut unnecessary regulatory requirements and to help small business owners navigate necessary ones.”
In addition to his Wall Street proposal, Mr. Bloomberg released a criminal justice reform plan. That’s a big one for his campaign given how much of a liability his record on stop-and-frisk and other policing issues are. The plan — parts of which he announced in December — calls for a higher standard for using force, an end to cash bail and mandatory minimums, and $100 million a year in funding for the Obama-era My Brother’s Keeper program.
Mr. Bloomberg also released plans on labor rights, retirement and higher education. In them, he endorsed a number of proposals that he opposed as mayor but that have now become standard among Democrats, such as raising the minimum wage to $15.