Sanders Cancels Mississippi Rally, Shifting Focus to Michigan

After holding a rally in Phoenix on Thursday night, Sanders had been scheduled to travel to Jackson on Friday for a rally focused on racial justice.

The change in plans suggests that Sanders will not challenge Biden for the support of black voters in the South — a vital base in the Democratic Party — and is instead going all-in on the Midwest as he tries to compete with Biden for working-class voters there. Black voters in the South have overwhelmingly backed Biden to this point, and on Super Tuesday their support lifted him in states like Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.

In Alabama, Sanders won only 9% of black voters, compared with 72% for Biden, according to exit polls. Biden outperformed Sanders among black voters in Virginia by more than 50 points, and by 40 points or more in Texas and North Carolina. In several states, Sanders came in third among black voters, behind not only Biden but also Michael Bloomberg.

The dramatic shift in his schedule was also an acknowledgment that he had not improved his standing among black voters in the South four years after his first run for president. In 2016, he faced criticism for his inability to organize support from African-Americans, a weakness that contributed to his loss to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

Speaking to reporters in Burlington on Thursday, Sanders acknowledged the scheduling change but said his campaign was sending staff members to Mississippi.

“If possible, I will try to get to Mississippi,” he said. “You can’t go everywhere.”

“Every state is important,” he continued, adding, “Michigan is very, very important.”

But he did not call Michigan a must-win state for his campaign.

Sanders aides are confident that Sanders lines up favorably against Biden in the industrial Midwest, and they have already laid out plans to highlight Biden’s record on trade, which includes voting for the North American Free Trade Agreement. While many blue-collar voters say they feel a connection to Biden, many have also grown increasingly suspicious of free trade in the Trump era.

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In an interview, Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Sanders, said the campaign was considering running an ad in Midwestern states like Michigan and Ohio that will emphasize Biden’s record on trade, and Sanders has already added blistering remarks about Biden into his stump speech.

“I will be talking in Michigan about the fact that Joe supported disastrous trade agreements,” Sanders said Thursday.

A crucial part of Sanders’ argument has been the idea that he is the most electable candidate, able to defeat President Donald Trump in a general election by appealing to the same white working-class voters who helped hand Trump his victory in 2016. But among aides and advisers, there has been a growing recognition that his claim hinges on his ability to demonstrate this strength in Midwestern states during the primary.

Sanders’ disappointing performance on Super Tuesday — he won only four states to Biden’s 10 — has only increased the sense of urgency inside his campaign.

During his news conference Wednesday, Sanders said he was “disappointed” in the results Tuesday. And in an extraordinary concession, he admitted that his campaign had not managed to generate the soaring turnout among young people that he had banked on to secure the nomination.

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While Sanders has managed to draw support in high numbers among other demographic groups, including Latino voters, his deficit with black voters in the South was central to his losses on Super Tuesday.

Rather than cite his own shortcomings, however, Sanders has pointed to his opponents’ strong connections with African-American voters. In an interview Wednesday night with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, he suggested that Biden was benefiting from his relationship with former President Barack Obama — and used a parallel argument to explain his deficit in 2016 as well.

“We’re running against somebody who has touted his relationship with Barack Obama for eight years,” Sanders said. “Barack Obama is enormously popular in this country in general and the African-American community. Running against Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton was enormously popular.”

“It’s not that I’m not popular,” he added. “Biden is running with his ties to Obama, and that’s working well.”

He also said he was generally doing well among voters of color, including Latinos, and with younger black voters.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .