Sanders campaign stays on the offensive as Biden streaks ahead in Arizona

While candidate sounds circumspect, his campaign continues to wage what looks like a real fight

On the eve of a set of primaries that could decide his future as a presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders has fallen 20 points behind Joe Biden in the crucial state of Arizona – a newly competitive state the Democrats are hoping to flip in November.

The polls have also put Mr Sanders behind in the other major states voting on 18 March: Illinois, Florida and Ohio. While Ohio has postponed its primary out of fears voting could aid the spread of coronavirus, the other two states will be going ahead.

Yet even as Mr Sanders looks set for his third Tuesday in a row losing badly to Mr Biden, he and his campaign have been hitting their opponent with everything they’ve got.

While the Democratic debate two nights before the primaries was overshadowed by the growing coronavirus crisis, the Sanders campaign were ready to pounce on all opportunities to lay into Mr Biden’s voting record.

Mr Sanders’s Twitter feed slammed Mr Biden’s voting record as a Senator. “Joe, be honest,” read one, “You have tried to cut Social Security for 40 years. #DemDebate.”

Another took the argument wider: “I voted against the Defense of Marriage Act. Biden voted for it. I voted against the war in Iraq. Biden voted for it. I voted against NAFTA and PNTR. Biden voted for them. It takes courage sometimes to do the right thing. #DemDebate”

Others advised followers to “go to the YouTube” and watch old clips of Mr Biden and Mr Sanders in their congressional days advancing different stances on social security.

And on the night before the primaries, Mr Sanders’s campaign held a livestreamed “digital rally” featuring celebrities including Darryl Hannah and Neil Young, as well as a speech by the candidate that reiterated his campaign is “winning the generational battle” – albeit with caveats.

“Now for whatever reason – and I plead guilty to this, maybe it’s some of my own doings, or lack of doings – we’re doing poorly with older people. That’s simply a fact. And I gotta work on that, because in truth, the agenda we have is the strongest agenda for senior citizens in this country … nonetheless, we’re not doing well with seniors.

“But you know where we are doing well, phenomenally well? I’m talking about 70, 80 per cent support among younger people in this country. And it is the younger people who will determine the future of this country.”

However, they will not in all probability determine the next Democratic candidate.

Write-ups of Mr Sanders’s performance on Super Tuesday and then “mini-Tuesday” a week later almost universally counted him out of the fight for the nomination.

The night of the 10 March primaries, on which he won only the delegate-poor North Dakota, Mr Sanders declined to give a speech. Instead he repaired to Burlington, Vermont, where he gave a televised address the next day.

That speech was widely read as only just short of a full concession, Mr Sanders acknowledging that his campaign was losing the arithmetical contest that will actually decide the nomination – even as he was at pains to argue he was winning “the generational argument”.

Still, just before Arizona’s polls opened, Brianna Westbrook, the campaign’s co-chair in the state, took a defiant and optimistic tone:

“This week, Democrats will have an important choice to make. And the contrast between those two choices couldn’t be any starker. We’ll be either accepting politics as usual or voting for a new vision, for a big, bold structural change to rise to this unprecedented moment in American politics.

“I for one will be voting for that new vision, and I am asking you to join me.”