A progressive group is calling on supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to work together at the Iowa caucuses to further their cause.
As The Hill reported, the group Democracy for America is urging voters hoping for a progressive president to back the other candidate if their preferred choice falls below the 15 percent threshold in voting. In the Iowa caucuses, there is an initial round of voting where voters back their preferred candidate. Anyone that falls below the 15 percent mark is eliminated, and in the second round, those voters can choose to back someone else — or not cast their vote at all.
Charles Chamberlain, the group’s chairman, said that those backing progressive candidates must be willing to work together to make sure one of them wins.
“What we’re saying is if you’re a supporter of a candidate who gets less than 15 percent, then it’s absolutely critical that you don’t go home — make sure you move to one of the top two progressives, so that we make sure that a progressive wins the caucus,” he said.
This is not the first call for cooperation between candidates at the Iowa caucuses. As The Inquisitr reported earlier this week, members of former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign staff had reportedly reached out to Amy Klobuchar’s campaign to suggest they work together.
As The New York Times reported, the Biden staffers met with Klobuchar strategist Pete Giangreco to propose the idea that they would encourage their supporters to caucus for each other in districts where they fell below the threshold. Klobuchar’s campaign rejected the idea and released a statement saying they could stand on their own merits.
“Our campaign is on the rise,” said communications director Tim Hogan. “We’ve never made caucus deals with other campaigns and don’t intend to.”
It was not clear if Warren and Sanders had any intention of working together, though the arrangement would appear to benefit the Vermont senator more than his Massachusetts counterpart. As The Inquisitr reported, Sanders has been rising in polls, with a number of recent ones showing him in the lead in Iowa. At the same time, Warren has fallen off since briefly taking the lead in national polls last year, with a number of recent polls showing her around the 15 percent mark in the first caucus state.
Both Sanders and Warren have been unable to spend much time in Iowa over the last two weeks as they sit as jurors in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
