WASHINGTON _ For more than a year, Missouri voters watched from afar as the historically diverse Democratic presidential primary field winnowed down from more than 20 candidates to two septuagenarian white men who have spent decades in Washington.
Former Vice President Biden, 77, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 and remained there until his two terms as vice president from 2009 to 2017. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 78, won his U.S. House seat in 1990 before moving to the U.S. Senate 16 years later.
But Biden and Sanders offer a stark contrast in terms of their voting records and policy goals.
Sanders promises a political revolution with a platform to pursue massive changes to both the federal government and major industries. Biden has framed his campaign as a return to stability and a reset to life before President Donald Trump.
Missouri voters will have influence on which of these candidates emerges as the Democratic nominee when they cast ballots Tuesday along with voters in five other states. Missouri offers 68 delegates of the 352 up for grabs that day.
"It is possible that this could be a real nail-biter if history is any guide," said Roy Temple, the former chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party whose consulting firm had worked for Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar's campaign before she dropped out and endorsed Biden.
Sanders lost the state by less than 1 percentage point to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and essentially split the state's delegates.
"We've seen that movie before. There was pretty stark ideological distinction between Bernie and Hillary and it was a tie," Temple said.
Sanders has had four years to hone his message as loyal followers around the state have continued knocking doors and making calls on his behalf since the last election.
Biden, who first ran for president in 1988, has seen a flood of endorsements from prominent Missouri Democrats, including former Gov. Jay Nixon and former Kansas City Mayor Sly James, following his Super Tuesday surge.
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard remains in the race, but with only 2 delegates. Biden leads Sanders 621 to 553 going into Tuesday. A candidate needs 1,991 delegates to secure the nomination.
Both Biden and Sanders are visiting Missouri ahead of Tuesday in hopes of garnering every possible vote. Biden had Saturday events in St. Louis and Kansas City, while Sanders canceled a Kansas City rally in favor of a St. Louis appearance Monday.
Before a crowd of hundreds in St. Louis, Biden promised he would build on the legacy of "the most successful president of our lifetime, Barack Obama."
Biden would preserve the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature policy, and build on it with a public option. Sanders has staked his candidacy on "Medicare for All," a new federally funded health care system that would effectively replace the private insurance industry.
Sanders supports the ambitious "Green New Deal," which hopes to achieve 100% clean energy by 2030. Biden favors a more incremental approach to net-zero emissions by 2050 with a recommitment to the Paris Agreement, which was abandoned under Trump.
Biden voted for the 2003 invasion in Iraq, a decision he now calls a mistake. Sanders was one of the few dissenters in Congress and has remained one of Washington's biggest skeptics of the use of military force.
Sanders has hit Biden for supporting freezes on Social Security and Medicare benefits as a senator.
Biden has criticized Sanders' record on gun control, including a 1993 vote against background checks and 2005 vote in favor of shielding gun manufacturers from liability.
Jack Cardetti, a Jefferson City-based consultant who has worked for former Gov. Nixon and former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, among other prominent Democrats, said the key to winning a Democratic primary in Missouri is building a diverse coalition.
"Clearly, you need to have strong support from African American voters. You also need to perform well with union households in the state. And third and final, you need the support of female voters," Cardetti said. "I do think that Vice President Biden tends to do well with those groups."
During his rally in St. Louis, Biden faced jeers from a protester shouting, "No to crime bill Joe," in reference to his role crafting the 1994 crime bill, which critics blame for increases to the rate of incarceration of African Americans.
But Biden told the crowd he would be a unifying force.
"I promise you we're going to bring together Americans, every race, ethnicity, gender, economic status, Democrats, Republicans, independents," he said.
Missouri has an open primary, which means voters of all ideological stripes will be able to vote Tuesday if they request a Democratic ballot.
Debi Giarraputo, a 64-year-old Kansas City resident who spoke as she awaited Biden's speech at the National World War I Museum and Memorial, called Biden a statesman who would bring "stability and dignity back in the White House."
Giarraputo said she thinks the former vice president is more electable than Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
"But I wouldn't throw anybody under the bus. They're all better than the current occupant," she said.
Cardetti said that he would have favored Sanders to win the state three weeks ago, buoyed by his passionate base and a larger field of candidates. Now, in essentially a one-on-one race with Biden, he'll have to expand his support to win.
Jeff Smith, a former state senator who supported former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, said Missouri more closely resembles the states that have supported Biden.
"Missouri is in the lower half of states in terms of socioeconomic status, and has a pragmatic, moderate bent more in tune with Biden's approach. Though the state contains liberal enclaves Bernie will likely win ... the primary electorate as a whole is less liberal than those in states such as Colorado and California," he said in an email.
The political forecasting site FiveThirtyEight gives Biden an 8 in 9 chance of winning the state as of Saturday morning. The site's model projects that Biden will win an average of 57% of the vote.
A poll paid for by Missouri Scout, a political news site, and conducted by Remington Research Group, a Republican consulting firm, found that voters in the state favored Biden over Sanders 53% to 31%. The survey of 1,040 likely primary voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.
But the margin could be even closer.
Biden leads Sanders 48% to 44% in a poll of 425 likely Democratic primary voters conducted this week by Emerson College, which puts Biden's lead inside the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percent.
The poll asked supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who dropped out Thursday, to provide their second choice. Warren supporters favored Sanders over Biden by 53% to 32%, according to the poll.
Warren and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had more campaign staff in the state and outspent both Sanders and Biden on television before dropping out. Their supporters could be key in determining the outcome of the race and the margin of victory.
St. Louis Alderwoman Annie Rice, a Warren supporter, suggested Wednesday that Sanders' policies would be better for the region.
"I don't know that Biden would be enough of a change from what we've seen in the last four years," Rice said. "If Sanders is able to accomplish even a third of what he aims for, St. Louis will be better for it."
While Sanders' supporters have been canvassing for months, Biden's Missouri campaign was barely existent until this week.
After his Super Tuesday wins, high-profile Biden surrogates converged on the state, in the lead-up to his Saturday visit. Jill Biden, the candidate's wife, was to extend his presence with events in Kansas City on Monday.
"You won't see them deviate a ton from what they've said on the stump in other places, but if they can connect their main narrative to Missouri that's going to be powerful," Cardetti said.
Michele Watley, a Kansas City consultant who led Sanders' African American outreach efforts in 2016 but is uninvolved in this year's campaign, said in an email that if Biden "can speak to the issues impacting Kansas Citians _ housing costs that are going through the roof, jobs, solutions to gun violence that has plagued our city _ it could help him shore up a big win."
Some progressive leaders backing Sanders acknowledged they're worried what Tuesday's results in Missouri and elsewhere will bring.
"I think Biden is going to have a very good night Tuesday," said Rebecca Katz, a New York-based progressive strategist who supports Sanders after Warren dropped out of the race. But Katz said she's hopeful that Sanders can regain momentum.
"Let's put it this way: Joe Biden has run for president three times," she said. "In all of that time, he's only really exceeded expectations for one 72-hour period. But those were the 72 hours between South Carolina and Super Tuesday."
