[C]ONCORD, N.H. — A month ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was considered the front-runner in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race — until former Vice President Joe Biden joined the field and pushed his fellow contender into second place.
It’s just one way Sanders, a once long-shot candidate in his initially quixotic 2016 run, is discovering the downside of larger 2020 expectations.
The Vermonter hoped to reset his White House bid with a home-state Montpelier rally expected to draw up to 5,000 people Saturday — until the actual event attracted only about half that, causing staffers to question the media’s reporting of the “surprisingly underwhelming” crowd.
A subsequent visit Tuesday to the neighboring first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire offered similar optics.
During his first tour of the Granite State in March, Sanders drew a crowd of about 1,000 to Concord. Two months later, his campaign booked the 246-seat auditorium of the city’s NHTI Community College, only to find about 50 chairs empty when the candidate took the stage.
“Bernie seems to be a candidate all of a sudden trying to figure out how to get traction again,” NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd said on Sunday’s program.
A new Monmouth University poll finds Sanders’ national numbers have fallen 5 points in the past month. The more moderate Biden’s are up 6, while the equally progressive Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s have risen 4.
“Bernie Sanders seems to be getting squeezed from two sides,” Todd said.
The Vermonter had hoped to start this Memorial Day weekend with a morale-refueling rally in front of the Montpelier Statehouse. But while the event was broadcast live on CNN, C-Span and MSNBC, the number present in the capital city appeared less than the campaign’s advance projections.
Capitol Police Chief Matthew Romei said his department “did a best guess estimation from camera shots” of 1,500 people at any one time, noting the campaign told him its total of 3,000 counted all spectators who appeared, whether for a long or short period, from the start to the finish of the multi-hour event.
But subsequent scrutiny by the local press is the least of Sanders’ concerns. Capping a two-day tour of the Granite State on Tuesday, he faced a Politico story headlined “Inside the 2020 Democrats’ Survival Strategies” that began with the sentence, “Bernie Sanders must win New Hampshire.”
That could prove a challenge. The latest Monmouth poll of Granite State voters shows Biden leading with 36% support, followed by Sanders at 18%, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 9%, Warren at 8%, California Sen. Kamala Harris at 6%, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker tying with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke at 2%.
The Politico story noted Sanders, acquiescing to voters’ demands for more interaction, is shifting away from giving speeches at rallies to taking questions at town halls such as the one he held Tuesday in Concord.
“Today turns out to be my 31st wedding anniversary,” Sanders told the crowd. “My wife thinks I should be in Vermont, but here I am. We thought long and hard about whether I should run this time. We knew when you get into a campaign it’s a very ugly business. We finally concluded that I should run for two reasons. No. 1, I believe it is true that our campaign is the strongest to defeat the worst president in the history of the United States. Second, our campaign has struck a good chord among young people.”
Sanders addressed an array of subjects ranging from economic inequality to climate change before asking attendees for their concerns.
“We get trapped into what TV or the front page of the newspaper tells us are the most important issues,” he said.
Then again, Sanders didn’t always agree with what people told him. One woman, saying she chose candidates based solely on whether they supported a third-gender option on federal forms, asked for his opinion on the matter. The Vermonter said he, too, was in favor before adding, “I take issue with your question.”
“We have got to be thinking holistically,” he said. “There are a lot of issues out there. Let’s bring them together in what I call a progressive agenda.”
Sanders is scheduled to head west to the early-voting states of Nevada on Wednesday and Thursday and California on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Reporters on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” said he then has another eight months to recalibrate his campaign before the first 2020 voting.
Even so, Todd wasn’t sure if the 2016 long-shot could make lightning strike again.
“There is part of this where you look at Sanders and you think, ‘Maybe it’s nothing he can do about it,’” the host said. “It’s tough to be an insurgent twice.”
