At a campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Sunday, Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg repeated a message of “unity” and “electability” with one pervading theme: Democrats need to choose a candidate who can get President Donald Trump out of office.
“This is our only chance not just to bring an end to the Trump presidency, but to launch the era that must come next,” Buttigieg told the crowd. “I am seeing Democrats standing together. I am seeing independents refusing to sit on the sidelines.”
As Tuesday’s primary election looms, candidates across the state emphasized time and again the necessity of removing the current president and “unifying” to make that happen.
Earlier on Sunday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey kicked off a canvassing event for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, describing her as “the candidate who can unite and bring people together.”
At a campaign event in Manchester on Saturday, candidate Joe Biden had a similar message.
“We can't do anything unless we beat Donald Trump, to state the obvious,” Biden said. “And it's not going to be easy.”
The question of what makes someone “electable” is a squishy, amorphous term that historically makes room for sexism to be overlooked, and it relies a lot on not only the opinions of voters but the opinions voters might have about what other voters are thinking.
James Long, a Londonderry, N.H., resident, said he is attempting to think beyond this primary — to consider what voters in states across the country might be looking for.
“The number one factor that I'm considering is: who is here that can beat Trump?” Long said, holding his infant daughter at a Biden event on Saturday. “Those voters in the Midwest… I'm trying to determine [which candidate] those voters would appeal to and get into their heads a little bit.”
Strategies varied around the process of getting into the heads of voters across the country.
Most recent polls positioned Bernie Sanders as the front-runner in primary contests across the nation. But many voters in the Granite State repeated a concern that Sanders is “unlikable” or “too radical.”
“Can the person you're voting for beat Donald Trump?” Biden asked a crowd in Manchester on Saturday. If Sanders gets the nomination, he said, "every Democrat in America ... will have to carry the label that Senator Sanders has chosen for himself, not me. The label of Democratic Socialist.”
Andrew Thistle is a Manchester resident and a Bernie Sanders supporter. He said “electability” is subjective.
“What makes candidates 'electable' is totally arbitrary and different for each person,” Thistle said. “I don't care about electability. I don't care how you are in front of a camera, I care more about what you're doing behind the scenes.
“I think that's what a lot of people forget,” Thistle continued. “They all want to see someone who represents our country and makes our country look powerful. But like, does that really matter when behind the scenes it's all falling apart?”
He said it is impossible to predict how anyone else will vote, so it is safer to vote based on policy as opposed to factors like likability or personality.
“It doesn’t matter if you have the right personality for the job or any of that,” Thistle said. “It's all about like what you can do behind the scenes to make our country a better place.”
Nashua resident and Trump supporter Shawn Hart said he would see Sanders as a challenge to the president, but the “democratic socialist” label holds Sanders back.
“Bernie’s probably the only one who actually believes what he’s saying, I think he has integrity, but he’s basically a communist,” Hart said, protesting outside a Buttigieg event in Nashua. “Right now with the Democrats, I don't think they have anybody. I think they are scrambling, just hoping for somebody.”
Hart said he thinks Buttigieg might be the most “likable” candidate, though he could not pinpoint why exactly.
“I think that he's a very good speaker and he's a good communicator,” Hart said. “I just don’t agree with what he says when he’s communicating.”
