Candidates counter Biden's electability argument

COLUMBIA - On stage before a throng of party faithful in a key early primary state, Joe Biden's leading rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination sought Saturday to undercut the former vice president's argument that he's the ideal Democrat to oust President Donald Trump.

They tried to do it without mentioning the 76-year-old front-runner at all.

California Sen. Kamala Harris charged straight at Trump as she addressed hundreds of activists at the South Carolina Democratic Party Convention.

"We need somebody on our stage when it comes for that general election who knows how to recognize a rap sheet when they see it and prosecute the case," Harris said, playing off her experience as a state and local prosecutor as she shredded Trump on a litany of policy fronts.

Then, in a seeming reference to Biden, the 54-year-old senator added that South Carolina voters mustn't "turn back the clock" but instead, "Let's start the next chapter. Let's turn the page."

It was a reminder that Biden, who's drawn fire in recent weeks for his flip-flop on taxpayer funding of abortion and his recollections of working with long-dead segregationist senators, won't become the Democratic nominee without an intense fight, no matter his front-runner's strategy.

Harris, one of two top candidates who is black, called attention to the recent fourth anniversary of a white supremacist massacre of nine black men and women at a Charleston, South Carolina, church. And she mentioned generations of civil rights activists who preceded her candidacy. Both groups, she said, were "heroes who fought and died for equality."

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren pitched her progressive policies as an agenda with wide reach.

"People across this nation understand it is time for big, structural change in America. The time for small ideas is over," Warren said, adding the approach can draw in Democrats and Republicans.

"We need big, structural change in this country, in this economy. And big structural change starts with big ideas," she said, offering a list of ways she'd spend new revenue from her proposed tax on the wealthiest American fortunes.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, pushed back at a centrist Democratic group, "Third Way," and some of its members' assertions that his democratic socialism is an "existential threat" to the party's 2020 hopes.

Sanders countered that his left-flank agenda can win the White House.

"We defeat Trump by running a campaign of energy and enthusiasm that substantially grows voter turnout ... in a way we have never seen," he said.

Biden was the last of the 20-plus presidential candidates to address the convention. It was part of a big political weekend in South Carolina that also included a Friday night party gala; the annual fish fry hosted by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and a Saturday forum hosted by Planned Parenthood.

For South Carolina Democrats, it was the culmination of several decades raising the state's profile to compete with Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that for decades have led off presidential voting. For Biden and his rivals, it was a key test in a crucial primary state and a last public tune-up ahead of next week's inaugural 2020 debates in Miami.

South Carolina boasts the largest electorate of the four early nominating states, and its mix of black voters and moderate whites gives candidates a proving ground ahead of a Super Tuesday slate that includes other similar Southern states and hundreds of delegates at stake.

"People see Vice President Biden as one of us, but most people are wide open," said former state party Chairwoman Carol Fowler, who is uncommitted in the primary. "They just want to be part of the process of defeating Donald Trump."

Biden has led national Democratic polls since he announced his bid in April. He has shown particular strength in South Carolina, where he has deep relationships from previous presidential runs, friendships with two of the state's towering former senators and, perhaps most important in 2020, his eight years as President Barack Obama's vice president.

At Clyburn's fish fry on Friday, Biden nodded to that familiarity, while his rivals opted for policy proposals and made autobiographical pitches.

"I've been in every one of your counties over the years," Biden said.

The wide-ranging arguments in response revealed a Democratic field without a settled counter to the front-runner's early advantages. But it was clear that Biden's rivals won't yield South Carolina or the Super Tuesday map.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who campaigns heavily on her electoral success in Midwest states that swept Trump to office, tried to apply that to Republican-run South Carolina.

"I know how to win," she said.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, made his first appearance of the weekend on Saturday, a white politician whose relationships with black constituents are in the spotlight. Buttigieg had canceled his Friday plans in South Carolina to remain at home after a South Bend police officer shot and killed black man last weekend.

"We will heal, and we will become stronger in the broken places," Buttigieg promised on the morning after he was jeered in his hometown.

Buttigieg later promised massive investments in the black community on the scale of the Marshall Plan in post-World War II Europe.