Revolution or realism? NH tests Democrats' call for change
HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire voters are poised Tuesday to re-order the field of Democratic presidential candidates. But as important, they will also send a message about what kind of change they want their party to stand for to challenge President Donald Trump.
Will it be the call for revolutionary change offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a democratic socialist who wants to dramatically re-engineer the U.S. economy, or the one for generational change by Pete Buttigieg, who says his plans are rooted in realism?
The candidates are separated by 40 years — longer than Buttigieg, 38, has been alive — and their appeals are starkly different as well. So far, Sanders, the candidate who is too old to be even be a Baby Boomer, has created far more energy among younger partisans, while Buttigieg is reminding voters that when the party chose generational change, it delivered candidates like John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Tuesday's primary will in part be a referendum on which call is more powerful as the nominating process accelerates. It is a question shaped by ideology and perceptions of electability as much as age. And on the eve of the second contest in the Democrats' presidential primary season, the political world is looking to New Hampshire for answers in a primary election that hinges, above all, on change.
It's an easy choice for Rebecca Nicol, a 19-year-old Dartmouth College sophomore. She packed into an off-campus conference hall over the weekend where hundreds of young people cheered the 78-year-old Sanders who personifies the kind of change they're craving in 2020, even in a field that features much younger and more diverse options.
“Age isn’t a factor. It’s more what they stand for," Nicol says. “I'm definitely voting for Bernie.”
Sanders has won the hearts of young...