Fearing a 2016 repeat, Democratic leaders urge unity as 2020 primary tensions flare

Ilyse Hogue was online last week when she started to get worried. It was the morning after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders’ post-debate quarrel, and the longtime liberal advocate was taken aback by a spate of alleged Democratic voters vowing they would no longer support Warren in a general election.

The president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a major force in progressive politics, decided to enter the fray with a decidedly different message.

“Anyone with a tweet that starts #Never and doesn’t end with #Trump does not understand the stakes of the next 10 months. Or they don’t care,” Hogue tweeted. “Either option is unacceptable. #Election2020”

Democratic and liberal leaders like Hogue acknowledge that tensions will inevitably erupt in a presidential primary, especially in the homestretch of a wide open race for the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3.

But leading progressives say they are nonetheless committed to reminding, urging and cajoling Democratic voters to unite after the 2020 primary, no matter how heated the arguments between the candidates — or their supporters — become.

It’s an effort they say too often was missing in 2016, either because of overconfidence or the lingering tensions from the race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

“There is a higher mandate and responsibility for everybody who has a platform of influence to use that platform to remind people what we’re up against at the end of the day — one of the most repressive and corrupt presidents this country has ever seen,” Hogue said in an interview.

Whether they can be successful remains to be seen. In just the last few weeks, fights have erupted between Sanders and Warren over reports he told her during a 2018 meeting that a woman couldn’t defeat President Donald Trump, and between Biden and Sanders over the former vice president’s past positions on Social Security.

Even Clinton, the party’s last nominee, decided to re-enter the fray to criticize Sanders, saying nobody liked her former rival while declining to say whether she’d support him in a matchup with Trump. Clinton’s comments, in particular, recalled for some Democrats the damage done four years ago — and re-stoked concerns it could happen again in 2020.

The concern, said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, isn’t that candidates disagree over policy or the nuances of their vision for the country, flare-ups she calls both inevitable and acceptable. Weingarten said she’s instead worried about the differences turning personal.

“If they’re too negative, and if they actually undermine or hurt the frontrunner, or give the other side fodder for an attack ad, it just gives Donald Trump more of a chance,” she said. “And that’s why Democratic unity is very important.”

Democrats and their allies have taken some concrete steps to try to promote unity. The progressive grassroots group Indivisble, for example, has asked rank-and-file party members to sign a pledge to “make the primary constructive” and support the eventual nominee.

The Democratic National Committee has made its own push, too, asking the presidential candidates to promise their support to the primary’s eventual victor while launching its own “unity program” late last year.

“The stakes get higher on an almost daily basis, making it all the more imperative we come together to put our eventual nominee in the strongest possible position to win the White House and help Democrats secure victories at every level in 2020,” DNC chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.

Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said his organization has a variety of plans to smooth over tensions after the primary, including incorporating former key supporters of losing candidates into the party infrastructure so they feel as if their voices are being heard.

“In my observation, this is the least acrimonious nominating process we’ve had since the 50s and 60s,” Buckley said, who later compared this year’s primary to a “pillow fight.”

“It was brutal last time,” he said. “People lost friends over it. There’s nobody fighting like that this time.”

Buckley has a point: Even amid the flurry of recent squabbles, candidates have been reluctant to elevate the attacks into TV ads. Sanders and Warren both worked feverishly after the debate to try to de-escalate tensions between the two sides, and Sanders even disavowed criticism that Biden was “corrupt” earlier this month.

Still, that doesn’t mean tensions won’t spill over as the primary continues — especially, some progressives warn, if a moderate like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg tries to wrestle the nomination away from Sanders or Warren.

The multi-billionaire is running an unconventional campaign, skipping the first four nominating contests in February while focusing on delegate-rich states that vote later in the process. He’s already spent more than $200 million on ads, far outpacing the rest of the field.

“I think if Bloomberg tried to spend his billions to torpedo a Sanders or Warren frontrunner, a lot of people would feel the nomination was rigged,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for Justice Democrats.

Hogue said she doesn’t plan to weigh in on every controversy, and she expressed optimism that most Democrats see Trump as enough of a threat that they will be eager to put aside whatever differences arise during the primary.

In other words, they won’t repeat the mistakes of 2016.

“The absence of a visceral Trump reality might have allowed us some latitude to sort of descend into the micro-nuances of the primary,” Hogue said. “I think we know we don’t have that luxury this time around.”