But as the 2020 campaign heats up, McDermott is all-in for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, creating a Michigan for Warren PAC to raise early money for her efforts and promoting her campaign through a website and Facebook page. While he’s still a Sanders fan, McDermott sees Warren as a fresher face who’s more electable and doesn’t have the baggage of a 2016 loss.

“It’s really 1a and 1b for me,” McDermott said. “With Warren, I think there’s more crossover appeal. She doesn’t have 2016 branded on her.”

That sentiment represents the new challenge facing Sanders, who is in second place in most national polls behind Joe Biden. The former vice president has eaten into Sanders’ base with appeals to blue-collar union voters. But Warren is emerging as another threat, winning over voters such as McDermott with a raft of proposals that sometimes go further left than those backed by Sanders.

Warren and Sanders are vying to become the progressive alternative to Biden, a competition that’s especially pivotal in the Midwest. The region is critical to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House in 2020, and Sanders’ campaign wrote in an April memo that he’s “by far the best positioned candidate to win” in three upper Midwest states that handed President Donald Trump the White House.

The central peril Warren poses for Sanders is her status as the fresher liberal face in the race, eager to demonstrate her energy with hours of post-town hall photo lines, according to more than a dozen interviews with Michigan voters last week. Sanders still draws bigger crowds than Warren, who recently promoted her economic agenda before nearly 2,000 people at Lansing Community College, but the pro-worker, anti-establishment brand he brought to 2016 is no longer his alone.

“I don’t think, because Bernie Sanders did as well as he did in Michigan last time, that that means anything this time,” said Lisa Canada, political director with the Detroit-based Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters union.

Alexandra Lee, a 35-year-old graduate student from Lansing, said she backed Sanders in 2016 but now plans to support Warren when Michigan holds its primary on March 10. That will be one week after “Super Tuesday,” when several states hold their nominating contests and the largest number of delegates are up for grabs.

Lee said she thinks it’s time for a woman to be president: “I still like Bernie a lot. But I’d like to have someone younger and not male.”

During her Michigan appearances, Warren laid out a populist pitch that subtly echoed some of the U.S.-workers-first messaging that helped Trump overtake Clinton in much of the Midwest. She attacked giant corporations that market themselves as American but make most their products overseas.

“Those giant corporations, the more and more power they amass, understand this: They’re not loyal to America, and they’re not loyal to American workers,” the 69-year-old former law professor said in Lansing. “They are loyal to exactly one thing: their own bottom line, their own profits.”

Warren’s economic plan calls for “aggressive intervention” to create U.S. jobs and benefit U.S. exports, a spirit that aligned broadly enough with the anti-globalization rhetoric Trump invoked in 2016 to earn kudos from Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and conservative pundit Tucker Carlson.

But Warren’s pro-union economic message also aligns with the case Sanders made in his Michigan victory over Clinton. The Vermonter continues to make worker protection in trade agreements a centerpiece of his campaign, alongside a $15-per-hour minimum wage and single-payer health care.

Sanders told CNN on Sunday that his plan to lower student loan debt would “in some ways probably go further than” Warren’s, adding that “not only Senator Warren, but others have moved” toward his position, “considered to be pretty radical” in 2016.

The key difference between Warren and Sanders as they jockey for position as the primary’s leading liberal — with Biden still far ahead in polls — may be their political liabilities.

Warren has carefully set herself apart from Sanders’ self-identified democratic socialism, calling for stronger “rules” in the nation’s market economy to help make it more equal. Sanders’ supporters view him as the more proven commodity against Trump, pointing to polls that show him performing better against the president, but Warren is less well-known at this early stage of the 2020 primary, making it possible that she has more room to climb.

In the critical early-voting state of Iowa, a new CNN-Des Moines Register primary poll released Saturday found Sanders tightly clustered with Warren and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, rather than holding the clear second-place status he’s had in most national surveys.

For Michigan Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed, whose unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign last year won Sanders’ endorsement, the presence of two strong progressives in the presidential race will ultimately mean “a far better candidate” than 2016. El-Sayed has not endorsed in the 2020 primary yet but noted that Sanders has “a profound amount of support in our state” thanks to his first presidential bid.

Even so, some of that support may not remain firm. Cruz Villareal, 67, a college writing tutor, supported Sanders in 2016 but said he’s looking for “radical change” — the same thing he was looking for in 2016 — and this time it’s Warren who can deliver as the less polarizing candidate.

“I think that Bernie can’t win in the general, and I think they will fight him from the left and the right,” Villareal said. “They will do to Bernie what they did to him last time. I think they’re less likely to do it to Elizabeth.”

An exultant Trump took victory laps on Twitter: “Everyone very excited about the new deal with Mexico!” “There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades.”

Speaking in Tijuana, Lopez Obrador hailed a trade war averted.

“We celebrate the important agreement because it was a very difficult situation and would have been very awkward applying tariffs to some U.S. products, the same measures, commercial restrictions similar to the ones that would be imposed on Mexican exports,” said Lopez Obrador.

The accord calls for Mexico to better patrol its southern border with Guatemala and to hold asylum-seeking migrants while their cases are heard in the United States.

In a statement, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was “good news … that U.S. families won’t be hit with the price increases that would have resulted from new tariffs on imports from Mexico.” McConnell also urged more funds for operations along the U.S.-Mexico border, accusing Democrats of “dragging their heels” and engaging in “political gamesmanship.”

Democrats, meanwhile, say Trump’s own actions have worsened the migrant crisis and that the deal with Mexico was no masterstroke of White House diplomacy.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said Trump tried to take more credit than was due.

“The president has completely overblown what he purports to have achieved. These are agreements that Mexico had already made, in some cases, months ago … By and large, the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has. There are six million jobs in this country that depend on U.S.-Mexico trade,” said O’Rourke, spaking on ABC’s “This Week” program.

For Central American migrants, a perilous journey to the United States is expected to become even more difficult.

Reyna Vazquez, a Honduran migrant in Mexico, says, the migrants’ motivation is not always fully understood.

“Everyone should think about the reasons that cause us to migrate and leave our families, our country and come to another country. Instead of closing doors, they should give us an opportunity to demonstrate that we are people who want a job. The only thing we want is a better future for our children and our families,” Vazquez said.

Some, like Josue Arenal, another Honduran migrant in Mexico, say they will not be deterred.

“You can close the border, you can build a thousand walls and a thousand walls will be crossed. By land, by air, they are always going to get in. Donald Trump can do whatever he wants,” Arenal said.

Migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border are surpassing 100,000 a month, including record numbers of families and unaccompanied minors.

The U.S. leader warned, however, that “if for some unknown reason” Mexico does not stanch the flow of Central American migrants heading north to the U.S., “we can always go back to our previous, very profitable” imposition of tariffs on Mexican exports sent to the United States. “But I don’t believe that will be necessary,” he added.

A deal announced Friday calls for Mexico to dispatch 6,000 troops to its border with Guatemala to halt the flow of migrants, while the U.S. gained new authority to force asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their legal cases in the U.S. are pending. Trump said there is one particular provision of the pact that has yet to be disclosed but will be announced “at the appropriate time.”

“There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades,” he said on Twitter.

“Now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done,” Trump said.

He dismissed an account in The New York Times as “another false report” that key parts of the deal had been reached in December. He contended that the “failing” newspaper and the “ratings challenged” CNN television network “will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!”

Trump’s acting Homeland Security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, told Fox News Sunday “There’s a mechanism to make sure that [Mexico does] what they promised to do, that there’s an actual result, that we see a vast reduction in those [migration] numbers.”

He said the arriving migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras largely amounted to “an economic migration that we need to stop with enforcement. We need to be able to repatriate people successfully.”

McAleenan said that “people can disagree with the tactics” — Trump’s threat to impose a 5% tariff on Mexican imports starting Monday  but that “Mexico came to the table with real proposals. We have an agreement that, if they implement, will be effective.”

But he said Congress still needs to enact other immigration reforms, including the right to detain migrant families beyond 20 days and change the provisions of asylum requests to more closely align with the likelihood of whether migrants ultimately will be successful in their bids to stay permanently in the United States.

“We made enormous progress, I think we had a deal that was almost 90% done,” Mnuchin told CNBC. “China wanted to go backwards on certain things,” which Beijing has denied.

“We’ve stopped negotiating,” Mnuchin said, with the next steps depending on Trump’s meeting with Xi in Osaka, Japan at the G-20 meeting of world leaders at the end of June.

“The president will make a decision [on tariffs] after the meeting,” Mnuchin said. “I believe if China is willing to move forward on the terms that we were discussing, we’ll have an agreement. If they’re not, we will proceed with tariffs.”

Trump has already imposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, but now is weighing whether to tax an additional $325 billion worth of Chinese products, a move that would encompass virtually all Chinese goods exported to the U.S. The world’s two biggest economies have sparred for months over a trade deal, but not been able to reach an agreement.

Trump’s threatened tariff hike came as G-20 finance ministers meeting in Fukuoka, Japan, said that trade and geopolitical conflicts are risking global economic growth, but at the U.S. insistence, dropped a call to “recognize the pressing need to resolve trade tensions.”

“Global growth appears to be stabilizing and is generally projected to pick up moderately later this year and into 2020,” the finance chiefs, including Mnuchin, said in an end-of-meeting communique. “However, growth remains low and risks remain tilted to the downside. Most importantly, trade and geopolitical tensions have intensified. We will continue to address these risks and stand ready to take further action.”

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde emphasized that “the first priority should be to resolve the current trade tensions” while working to modernize international trading rules. But the communique contained no assessment that the U.S.-China trade conflict was inhibiting global growth.

The IMF warned last week that a continuing U.S.-China standoff on tariffs could cut a half percentage point from the global economy in 2020.

They might be a little bit nervous at the beginning, but the experience is invigorating. Their jokes bring lots of laughter to normally busy, often stressed-out, students. 

But comedy, as club member Ariella Shua says, is serious work. In their weekly meetings, students try out and rehearse the jokes they wrote over the week.

“Whoever is reading, we read all of the material, and then we would go joke by joke and see what works and what doesn’t,” she said. “So, it starts as an individual project for yourself and becomes a group effort.”

Since joining last year, Shua has become a better observer of what’s going around her. She doesn’t go anywhere without her notebook.

“It’s in my backpack all the time,” she explained. “Whenever I just have a thought in my head that seems like, ‘Oh, this is strange,’ or when I see something or overhear someone saying something in the library, I just write it down. Later, when I’m trying to write my own set, I go walk through that notebook to see if there is anything in there that I can use.” 

A funny break

Along with achieving academic excellence, universities across the United States encourage their students to explore their potential and develop interests beyond their major. Joining an on-campus club is a good way to do that. Whether they are cultural, social, political or recreational, these clubs give students a voice and a chance to hone various skills, from community engagement to being funny. That is what the Stand-up Comedy Club offers.

Club president Nicholas Scandura finds that writing is one of the many skills he has developed since joining the club.

“Writing jokes is really fun,” he said. “It takes a lot of critical thinking.”

The club gives its members a sense of community. When they meet, they share funny experiences, tell jokes and laugh.

“It’s just a nice, relaxing break,” Scandura said.

Over the past decade, stand-up comedy clubs have become common on college campuses in America. 

“Now that it’s become a popular pop culture, everyone wants to do it,” he said.

While students use the stand-up comedy format to express themselves and exercise their freedom of speech, they usually stay away from certain controversial topics.

“If you offend people, if you say something and people are going to hate you for saying it, why are you up saying it? Scandura said.

Funny in real life

Last year, sophomore Harry Kuperstein joined the club and discovered it was a natural fit for his personality. Observing ironies and funny aspects of different situations improved his perspective on life. Becoming an active member also helped him work on the future skills he will need as a neurosurgeon.

“Elements of, say, talking to patients as a doctor. I think that being good in scripting and just having jokes ready to go might help smooth these interactions and make you a better public speaker,” he said.

Fellow club member Alex Hecksher Gomes, a computer science major, credits the club for helping him develop his own style and discover the secrets of writing good comedy.

“Not always tell the truth. Sometimes, it’s funny to go after your imagination,” he said. “You kind of get stuck in doing it, if you just follow what actually happened. Also, don’t always go with your first idea. I definitely thought some things that I said were funny, and then looked back. And where I got to with the joke was a lot funnier than when I started.”

‘Tomato Show’

Despite the workshops, rewrites and run-throughs, some ideas just aren’t funny. 

Club member Benjamin Monteagudo said performing in front of a student audience doesn’t mean comedians won’t receive harsh criticism. Last year, they came up with an idea to keep the audience involved and get their feedback.

“We called it ‘Tomato Show,’ where if you were performing very badly on stage, we just let the audience throw tomatoes at us to kind of roll with the joke. So, we spent our entire budget on a big box of foam tomatoes. There were 200 to 300 of them. We gave them to the audience, and it was the best show ever. I think the audience was really engaged because of the tomatoes. And it helped us stay attentive and focused.”

Tony Rodham, who died Friday, was a kind and generous person who could walk into a room and “light it up with laughter,” said Clinton, who gave no details about his death.

Rodham was born in 1954 and raised in the Chicago suburbs with his siblings, Hillary and Hugh Rodham. 

He worked a variety of jobs, including stints as a prison guard, insurance salesman, repo man and private detective.  

He also worked on the Democratic National Committee, helped on his sister’s political campaigns and previously married the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California. 

Rodham is survived by his wife, Megan, and three children.