Bernie Sanders is focusing on Hillary Clinton’s support of free trade deals as he seeks to regain his footing in the Democratic primary race by capturing votes in agricultural states and America’s former industrial heartland.
Michigan, where the two candidates will debate tomorrow before the state’s primary on Tuesday, is seen as crucial to reviving Mr Sanders’s campaign. Once the centre of car and manufacturing industries, the state has become synonymous with decay.
At a rally in East Lansing, Michigan, on Thursday, his promise to address economic injustice drew cheers.“We are listening to the people of America rather than wealthy campaign contributors,” Mr Sanders said. “We are listening to workers who are making nine or ten bucks an hour.”
Since winning a decisive victory in New Hampshire and fighting Mrs Clinton to a virtual draw in Iowa, the momentum of Mr Sanders, a Vermont senator and self-styled democratic socialist, has stalled. He took only four of 11 primary contests this week and trails the former secretary of state in the delegate count by 431 to 1,058.
In Michigan, the senator juxtaposed his positions on trade with those of his rival. Deals she has supported, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) her husband ratified as president, were “disastrous”, he said.
Advertisement
“You don’t need a PhD in economics to figure out what these trade agreements are about,” he said. “What corporate America has always wanted is . . . [to] shut down in Michigan, shut down in Vermont, go to China, go to Mexico, hire people at pennies an hour.” Nafta caused 60,000 factories in America to be shuttered since 2001, he claimed.
Yesterday, Mrs Clinton laid out proposals for bolstering manufacturing with tax incentives and better trade enforcement. Her campaign said that Mr Sanders had no specific plan to bring back jobs. Mrs Clinton has otherwise focused on attacking the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, after strong showings in Tuesday’s primaries increased the likelihood of each capturing their party’s nominations.
She is ahead of Mr Sanders in Louisiana, which votes today, along with Kansas and Nebraska. Mr Sanders leads only in the latter, with 67 per cent, even though, or perhaps because, his opponent is backed by Warren Buffett, the Nebraska billionaire.
Mr Sanders’s path to the nomination looks to be narrow. “With momentum on our side, we anticipate building on [our delegate lead] further making it eventually mathematically impossible for Senator Sanders to catch up,” a memo from the Clinton campaign said.