The Vermont senator on Wednesday offered no further details on what his campaign may look like before or after he and Biden – the last two major candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination – spar Sunday night on stage in Arizona. The only thing on Sanders' public schedule was taping an appearance on Wednesday's "Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

And that will continue to raise questions – as unlikely as it may seem less than two weeks after losing his once-commanding front-runner status – about how long Sanders will persist against increasingly daunting odds, especially as the pressure within his own party increases exponentially.

Sanders addressed reporters in Burlington after offering no public statements Tuesday night, when he suffered a devastating defeat in Michigan and losses in Missouri, Idaho and Mississippi. Sanders noted that he won North Dakota and that the continuing count in Washington state remained close – but admitted he was trailing badly in the race to secure enough delegates to clinch the nomination before the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.

"While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability," Sanders said, meaning Democrats think Biden has a better chance of beating President Donald Trump in the fall. "That is what millions of Democrats and independents today believe."

He was quick to add that he thinks he's the stronger choice, and that he could show that during Sunday's debate. Sanders promised to press Biden for answers about millions of Americans who don't have health insurance, a criminal justice system he said unfairly targets and punishes minorities and raising the federal minimum wage.

After that, though, Democrats' desperate desire to defeat Trump could affect his calculus. Should Sanders get out soon, he could save Democrats months of a messy and expensive primary fight. But an early departure would also deprive the party's most passionate supporters, including many young people, of the one man who embodies the dramatic change they crave.

Sanders also noted that he was winning a greater percentage of young voters while Biden continues to run up the score with older ones.

"Today, I say to the Democratic establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country," Sanders said. "And you must speak to the issues of concern to them. You cannot simply be satisfied by winning the votes of people who are older."

Sanders has indeed been widely favored over Biden by voters under 30, but he has not delivered on his strategy of getting them to the polls in great numbers, according to AP VoteCast surveys of voters in Tuesday's Democratic primaries. Also problematic for him: Sanders showed no overwhelming strength with voters age 30 to 44, typically a larger share of the vote than the young, in Michigan and Missouri.

Sanders' mathematical path to winning enough delegates for the nomination is rapidly disappearing.

Sanders now needs 57% of the delegates not won so far to get to 1991, the magic number to win the nomination. Both delegate allocation math and voting history show how unlikely it is for Sanders to hit that goal and overtake Biden.

That Sanders was vowing to soldier on was hardly a surprise. The 78-year-old democratic socialist is nothing if not willing to take on the political establishment against all odds – and Sanders' closest allies are happy to see him stay in the race, even if the rest of the party is not.

"The process of unity isn't just this pie-in-the-sky, vague, butterflies-in-your-tummy type of feeling," New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of Sanders' highest-profile supporters, said Wednesday in an interview on Capitol Hill. "It requires real coalition building, and coalition building requires plans and commitments to electorates to figure out how we unify. And so I think that this is a good opportunity for us to come together."

RoseAnn DeMoro, former executive director of National Nurses United and a Sanders confidant, said Sanders "has a mandate not to abandon the movement."

"Heroes aren't made, they're cornered," DeMoro said. "He is cornered."

Four years ago, under similar pressure in a primary match-up against Hillary Clinton, Sanders fought on for months before ultimately backing Clinton in July. Sanders has repeatedly insisted that he and Biden are friends and that he will back the former vice president if he's the party's nominee - he just may not be ready to yet follow through on that promise.

Still, Sanders didn't say Wednesday where he plans to travel next. His campaign is opening five offices in Arizona on Wednesday night, using top supporters rather than the candidate himself.

Adding to the uncertainty is the spread of coronavirus, which forced both Sanders and Biden to cancel campaign events Tuesday night in Cleveland and prompted Sanders' team to say it would evaluate future events on a case-by-case basis.

Beyond the debate, the primary calendar could get even bleaker for Sanders. Next week, four more states vote and while he is hoping his support with Hispanic voters can lift him in Arizona, Sanders may struggle in two of the most important ones, Illinois and Florida - where some voters could be alienated by his recent comments defending Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba.

"Trump must be defeated, and I will do everything in my power to make sure that happens," Sanders said. "On Sunday night, in the first one-on-one debate of this campaign, the American people will have the opportunity to see which candidate is best positioned to accomplish that."

The post Sanders isn't dropping out, but where does he go from here? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Bloomberg announced his departure from the race after a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday in the slate of states that account for almost one-third of the total delegates available in the Democratic nominating contest. He won only the territory of American Samoa, and picked up several dozen delegates elsewhere. Biden, meanwhile, won big in Southern states where Bloomberg had poured tens of millions of dollars and even cautiously hoped for a victory.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Two of his former Democratic rivals, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden as the moderate alternative to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders just the day before Super Tuesday.

Biden scored victories from Texas to Massachusetts on Super Tuesday, revitalizing a presidential bid that was teetering on the edge of disaster just days earlier. But his rival Bernie Sanders seized the biggest prize with a win in California that ensured he – and his embrace of democratic socialism – would drive the Democrats' nomination fight for the foreseeable future.

And suddenly, the Democratic Party's presidential field, which featured more than a half-dozen candidates a week ago, transformed into a two-man contest.

Biden and Sanders, lifelong politicians with starkly different visions for America's future, were battling for delegates as 14 states and one US territory held a series of high-stakes elections that marked the most significant day of voting in the party's 2020 presidential nomination fight.

It could take weeks – or months – for the party to pick one of them to take on US President Donald Trump in the November general election. But the new contours of the fight between Biden and Sanders crystallized as the former vice president and the three-term Vermont senator spoke to each other from dueling victory speeches delivered from opposite ends of the country Tuesday night.

"People are talking about a revolution. We started a movement," Biden said in Los Angeles, knocking one of Sanders' signature lines.

Without citing his surging rival by name, Sanders swiped at Biden from Burlington, Vermont.

"You cannot beat Trump with the same-old, same-old kind of politics," Sanders declared, ticking down a list of past policy differences with Biden on Social Security, trade and military force. "This will become a contrast in ideas."

Biden's victories were powered by Democratic voters who broke his way just days before casting their ballots – a wave of late momentum that scrambled the race in a matter of hours. In some states, the late-deciders made up roughly half of all voters, according to AP VoteCast, surveys of voters in several state primaries. He drew support from a broad coalition of moderates and conservatives, African Americans and voters older than 45.

Sanders' success proved he could deliver in perhaps the greatest test of his decades-long political career. His success was built on a base of energized liberals, young people and Latinos. But he was unable to sufficiently widen his appeal to older voters and college graduates who make up a sizable share of Democratic voters, according to AP VoteCast.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren finished in an embarrassing third place in her home state, and Bloomberg planned to reassess his candidacy on Wednesday after spending more than a half-billion dollars to score one victory – in American Samoa.

The balance of Super Tuesday's battlefield – with Biden winning nine states and Sanders four – raised questions about whether the Democratic primary contest would stretch all the way to the July convention or be decided much sooner.

Biden's strong finish punctuated a dramatic turnaround in the span of just three days when he leveraged a blowout victory in South Carolina to score sweeping victories on Tuesday that transcended geography, class and race. And lest there be any doubt, he cemented his status as the standard-bearer for the Democrats' establishment wing.

The former vice president showed strength in the Northeast with a victory in Massachusetts. He won delegate-rich Texas in the Southwest, Minnesota in the upper Midwest and finished on top across the South in Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas – in addition to Oklahoma.

Sanders opened the night as the undisputed Democratic front-runner and was in a position to claim an insurmountable delegate lead. And while he scored the night's biggest delegate-prize in California, he scored just three other decisive victories, winning his home state of Vermont, along with Utah and Colorado.

Biden racked up his victories despite being dramatically outspent and out-staffed. Moderate rival Bloomberg, for example, poured more than $12 million into television advertising in Virginia, while Biden spent less than $200,000.

The Democratic race has shifted dramatically as Biden capitalized on his commanding South Carolina victory to persuade anxious establishment allies to rally behind his campaign. Former rivals Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg abruptly ended their campaigns in the days leading up to Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden.

In Biden and Sanders, Democrats have a stark choice in what kind of candidate they want to run against Trump.

Sanders is a 78-year-old democratic socialist who relies on an energized coalition of his party's far-left flank that embraces his longtime fight to transform the nation's political and economic systems. Biden is a 77-year-old lifelong leader of his party's Washington establishment who emphasizes a more pragmatic approach to core policy issues like health care and climate change.

Across the Super Tuesday states, there were early questions about Sanders' claims that he is growing his support from his failed 2016 presidential bid.

Biden bested him in Oklahoma, though Sanders won the state against Hillary Clinton four years ago. In Virginia, where Democratic turnout this year surpassed 2016's numbers by more than 500,000 votes, Sanders' vote share dropped significantly. And in Tennessee, Democratic turnout was up more than 30% from 2016, but Sanders' raw vote total was only a few hundred votes greater than four years ago.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg was trying to look beyond the primary to the November election against Trump, who racked up easy victories in lightly contested Republican primaries across the country.

"We have the resources to beat Trump in swing states that Democrats lost in 2016," Bloomberg said Tuesday night while campaigning in Florida.

The billionaire former New York mayor, who threw more than a half a billion dollars into the Super Tuesday states, will reassess his campaign on Wednesday, according to a person close to his operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Warren was also fighting to be optimistic.

Facing a roaring crowd in Michigan before news of her disappointing home-state finish was announced, she called on her supporters to ignore the political pundits and predictions as her advisers insist she's willing to go all the way to a contested convention in July even if she doesn't claim an outright victory anywhere.

"Here's my advice: Cast a vote that will make you proud. Cast a vote from your heart," Warren declared. She added: "You don't get what you don't fight for. I am in this fight."

With votes still being counted across the country, The Associated Press has allocated 453 delegates to Biden, 382 to Sanders, 50 to Warren, 44 to Bloomberg and one for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. The numbers are expected to shift as new states report their numbers and as some candidates hover around the 15% vote threshold they must hit to earn delegates.

The ultimate nominee must claim 1,991 delegates, which is a majority of the 3,979 pledged delegates available this primary season.

The post Bloomberg drops out of Democratic race, endorses Biden appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

When asked by former White House National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor, who served under former US President Barack Obama, if he would follow what his fellow candidates South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have said about such a contingency, Castro responded, "That wouldn't be my first move, [though] I would not take that of the table."

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Castro stressed a two-state solution and the hope of working with an Israeli government not led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose policies he criticized in his remarks, including accusing the Trump administration of being in lockstep with him.

And he reiterated his support for the United States to re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from in May 2018, re-imposing sanctions lifted under it, along with enacting new financial penalties against the regime.

Additionally, Castro expressed support for opening a US consulate in east Jerusalem and "make clear that under a two-state approach, that would be the embassy to a Palestinian state."

He also called for restoring US assistance to the Palestinian Authority and the UN agencies supporting the Palestinians. If elected, he said that he would reopen the Palestine Liberation Organization mission in Washington, DC, which the Trump administration shuttered in October 2018.

Moreover, Castro expressed his opposition to the anti-Israel BDS movement, but criticized efforts to legislate against it.

"I also don't support cracking down on political speech," earning a strong applause from the audience.

Finally, Castro noted the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 27, 2018, Tree of Life-Or L'Simcha Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were killed in the deadliest attack in American Jewish history.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) are scheduled to address the J Street conference on Monday afternoon. Buttigieg addressed the conference on Monday shortly before Castro.

They, too, plan to sit with the hosts of the weekly podcast "Pod Save the World," Vietor and former US Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes to "discuss the future of the US-Israel relationship, their visions for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their plans to combat the growing threat of white supremacy and more," according to an email from J Street ahead of the conference.

The conference concludes on Tuesday, when participants will lobby J Street's agenda on Capitol Hill.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

The post Democratic hopeful Castro wants to rejoin 2015 Iran deal, condition aid to Israel appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.