Monday night's town hall -- which featured three back-to-back interviews with the candidates -- the fourth and final non-debate match-up scheduled on the primary calendar, comes on the heels of the Jan. 17 debate in which Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed over the former New York senator's relationship with Wall Street and the Vermont senator's record on foreign policy and guns. Since the new year, the two candidates have increasingly attacked each other, with Sanders hitting Clinton for being a member of the establishment and Clinton's surrogates assailing Sanders as unelectable.
The town hall set-up didn’t produce any fireworks -- the candidates stuck to making their own closing arguments to Iowa voters, rather than rip into each other.
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Sanders was first up, and listed major policy differences from Hillary Clinton. But he also took the high road, couching those attacks with a compliment: “I like Hillary Clinton and I respect Hillary Clinton,” he said. In terms of keeping the debate about issues rather than personal attacks, Sanders said, “we’re doing a lot better than the Republicans in that regard.”
But he ticked off Clinton’s 2002 vote to support the war in Iraq; his effort to end Wall Street deregulation; and her foot-dragging before opposing the Keystone pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership as major points of difference. “From day one, I said the Keystone pipeline is a dumb idea,” he said.
He also defended the tax hike necessary to fund his "Medicare-for-All" health insurance plans, as well as his record on gun control and his decision to support legislation to repeal a law that grants immunity to gun manufacturers. Sanders also said that despite his comment last week that Planned Parenthood was part of the establishment he is trying to upend, he admitted, "I did not say it well. They are a fantastic organization...count me in" as a supporter.
Two very clear choices emerged from Monday’s Democratic forum – the last of at least 700 randomly-timed televised “debates”, or town halls, or whatever you called them – between Clinton, Sanders and former governor Martin O’Malley, whose last hurrah even Rand Paul will no longer deign to live-tweet.
There was the softer, suddenly more endearing Old Man Sanders, and the sharp, energetic, Benghazi-proof Clinton. But with the polls and the momentum in both Iowa and New Hampshire on his side, this was a winning dichotomy for Sanders, who presented a side of himself that we haven’t really seen before: intimate, surprising, dynamic and, yes, a real boy!
When a town-hall participant asked Sanders a question about how his parents would feel about his campaign’s success, he was visibly – even honestly – moved. He said they never would have believed it. This was the foundational story that the second-generation Cubans Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio still haven’t been able to muster, that Clinton couldn’t dream of when her origin story is – at this point in the Iowa hive-mind – based out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Plus, Bernie had jokes!
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With Clinton and Sanders neck-and-neck, any big night at this point could set up Larry David incarnate to pull off a win in a state where, last spring, he was somewhere in the vicinity of 50 points down. What it will come down to, perhaps, is whether the enthusiasm of his voters can – uh – trump the superior voter operation drive of the Clinton machine.
Sanders has exhibited a tendency to veer too quickly toward stump-speech territory, even when circumstances call for something else entirely. But on Monday, the message always felt relevant, neatly catered to whatever had just been asked of him.
Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s launched a series of new ads on social media, radio and TV, is being viewed more favorably than ever by students in New Hampshire, a new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll shows.
According to the survey, 82 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 24 say they have a very favorable impression of Sanders — and only 9 percent of likely Democratic primary voters have an unfavorable view.
Students believe that Sanders supports issues that are important to them, including making tuition free at public colleges and universities and cutting student loan rates.
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Part of the reason for Sanders’ surging popularity is that he doesn’t seem as grumpy and angry as he did earlier in the campaign. His new “America” ad on YouTube, which features the music of Simon & Garfunkel, casts him in a warmer and friendlier light. And on the stump, he smiles more these days and has even been showing his sense of humor.
Bernie Sanders did a town hall event Monday morning in Iowa Falls, Iowa. He asked the crowd for testimonials about the difficulties of sustaining a life off of $12,000 a year.
What happened next is both hard to watch/listen to and important. A woman is called on and she emotionally tells the story of her life -- minimum wage jobs despite a degree, on disability and living with her parents. Here's a snippet of what she said:
It’s so hard to do anything to pay your bills, you’re ashamed all the time...when you can’t buy presents for your children it’s really really really hard – and I work 3, 4, 5 jobs sometimes, always minimum wage, I have a degree, divorced and it’s just I’m waiting for disability to come through so my parents have to support me – it’s just hard.
Sanders thanked her and the crowd applauded. Then he said this: "It is not easy for people to stand up and say that but the truth is that until millions of people who are experiencing what you’re experiencing do say that we don’t make change."
Whether you like Sanders or loathe him, it's hard not to be moved by the video above. And, in terms of the campaign to come -- in Iowa and elsewhere -- the clip speaks to not only the difficulties people are still facing in this economy but also how they believe Sanders is speaking to their fears and anxieties.
At a CNN town-hall event Monday, Sanders said that although he understands Clinton's election would be a historic achievement for the women's-rights movement in the US, his voting record proved that he would be an even better ally for women than Clinton.
"How do you think that you would be as helpful to women as a woman president would? What about that aspect?" CNN host Chris Cuomo asked Sanders. "That's what Hillary Clinton represents on one level, to voters — that she would be the first female president, and there's something special in that, especially when it comes to women's issues."
"Of course I understand that," Sanders responded. "I think if you look at my record in terms of fighting for women's rights, I think there are very few members of Congress who have a stronger record. It's 100% lifetime, and I've been there for a while."
Sanders proceeded to tout his pro-choice voting record. And he said his plan to raise the minimum wage and expand Social Security benefits would disproportionately benefit women and go even further than Clinton's plans.
"Hillary Clinton and I have a disagreement on a very important issue. It affects everybody, but especially women," Sanders said. "Ask Hillary Clinton if she's willing to lift the cap on taxable income."
A majority of Democratic voters say Hillary Clinton is their top choice in the race for their party's nomination, but her margin over Bernie Sanders is smaller than it has been at any point since before the field narrowed to three.
According to a new nationwide CNN/ORC Poll, Clinton tops Sanders 52% to 38% among registered voters who are Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is far behind the two top candidates at just 2%.
Though Clinton's lead over Sanders remains in double-digits, these figures represent the tightest the contest has been since early September. Back then, before Vice President Joe Biden had opted out of the race and before the remaining Democratic field ever took to a debate stage, Clinton topped Sanders by just 10 points.
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Both candidates enjoy broadly positive favorability ratings among Democrats (80% view Clinton favorably, 79% Sanders).
The poll also finds Democratic voters broadly focused on economic issues and health care: More than 8 in 10 say the economy (86% "extremely" or "very" important), the income gap between rich and poor (83%), and health care (83%) are critical to their vote for president this year.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is making a final, optimistic pitch to Iowans in a TV ad set to air Tuesday ahead of the Feb. 1 nominating caucuses.
“There are those who say we cannot defeat a corrupt political system and fix a rigged economy,” Sanders says to the camera at the beginning of the 60-second spot, which was first obtained by Bloomberg Politics. As the sun rises over a cornfield, Sanders delivers the money line: “But I believe we need to lift our vision above the obstacles in place and look to the American horizon.”
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In Sanders' new ad, the grandfather makes an appeal to Baby Boomers in a different way: tossing a ball to a young boy and envisioning “an America where after a lifetime of labor, there is time for rest and grandchildren.”
Widely respected pollster John Zogby is reporting that national surveys show Bernie Sanders has larger leads than Hillary Clinton over the GOP presidential contenders
In the new Zogby Analytics Poll of 843 likely voters nationwide, Sanders leads in a head to head contest with Donald Trump – 45.5% Sanders, 44.5% Trump, with 9% undecided. By contrast, the poll said Clinton and Trump are tied 45.0% to 45.0%. Ten percent are undecided.
The poll, conducted online January 19-20, has a margin of sampling error of +/-3.4 percentage points.
Sanders, however, has even larger leads than Clinton over the other GOP contenders – 10 points (46%-36%) over Jeb Bush; 8 points vs. Dr. Ben Carson (44%-35%); 14 points over Carly Fiorina (47%-33%); 7 points over Marco Rubio (44%-37%); 14 points over John Kasich (46%-32%); and 7 points over Chris Christie (44%-37%).
The lawyer for the family of Walter L. Scott, who was fatally shot by a police officer in South Carolina, is withdrawing his support from Hillary Clinton and endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Monday afternoon.
The lawyer, State Representative Justin T. Bamberg of South Carolina, said he is switching sides because he believes Mrs. Clinton embodies establishment politics, while Mr. Sanders offers a bolder platform that will improve the lives of people in the South and across the country. The endorsement could help Mr. Sanders as he tries to win more support from black voters — especially in South Carolina — in the series of southern states that hold contests after Iowa and New Hampshire, where he is well positioned.
“Hillary Clinton is more a representation of the status quo when I think about politics or about what it means to be a Democrat,” said Mr. Bamberg, who initially endorsed Mrs. Clinton in December. “Bernie Sanders on the other hand is bold. He doesn’t think like everyone else. He is not afraid to call things as they are.”
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Mr. Bamberg said he eventually decided to support Mr. Sanders after the two men spoke for 20 minutes last week on Martin Luther King’s Birthday about the shooting death of Mr. Scott. They also discussed Mr. Sanders’s plans for criminal justice reform, for creating new policies for police departments and about the struggles of working-class people.
“What I got from him was not a presidential candidate talking to a state representative, or an old white man talking to a young black guy,” Mr. Bamberg said. “What I got from him was a man talking to a man about things that they are passionate about, and that was the tipping point for me.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) did something politicians rarely do at CNN’s town hall forum for the Democratic presidential candidates on Monday night — he explicitly promised to raise taxes if he reaches the White House, and not just for the wealthy.
“We will raise taxes. Yes we will,” Sanders said.
The soundbite made headlines and immediately had politicos predicting it could be fodder for negative ads. However, what Sanders actually said was more complex and, in fact, he promised his plans would save Americans money.
Sanders made the comment when he was asked about his “Medicare for All” national single-payer health care program. Moderator Chris Cuomo that noted critics of Sanders’ health plan point out he will raise taxes to fund expanded social programs. Sanders said he does plan to increase taxes, but argued his health plan will save people more money than they spend on tax hikes.
“That is an unfair criticism for the following reason. If you are paying, now, $10,000 a year to a private health insurance company and I say to you, hypothetically, ‘You’re going to pay $5,000 more in taxes — or actually less than that — but you’re not going to pay any more private health insurance,’” Sanders said. “Are you going to be complaining about the fact that I’ve saved you $5,000 in your total bills? So, it’s demagogic to say, 'Oh, you’re paying more in taxes.' Let’s all talk about — we are going to eliminate private health insurance premiums and payments not only for individuals, but for businesses.”
What began as just a fun exercise in fantasy ice cream-making has turned into a new limited-edition flavor by one of Ben & Jerry's original co-founders, Ben Cohen. Loyal Vermont citizen Cohen has dubbed the new flavor Bernie's Yearnings for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The ice cream's slogan? "Nothing is so unstoppable as a flavor whose time has finally come."
On the Bernie's Yearning's website, Cohen explains: "Jerry and I have been constituents of Bernie Sanders for the last 30 years. We've seen him in action and we believe in him." When he and Jerry are out speaking on Bernie's behalf, Cohen says, people often ask him if there is a Bernie Sanders ice cream flavor. There wasn't, so Cohen said he came up with the idea for one.
The mere concept generated so much buzz that Ben decided to personally whip up 40 pints in his kitchen. (The Ben & Jerry's brand was sold to Unilever a decade ago, so this is a solo Ben flavor under the label "Ben's Best.") The flavor consists of plain mint ice cream covered by a thick slab of solid chocolate. According to Cohen, "The chocolate disc represents the huge majority of economic gains that have gone to the top 1 percent since the end of the recession. Beneath it, the rest of us."
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Cohen donated 25 pints of Bernie's Yearning to the Sanders campaign. The rest will be given to the random winners of this contest.
The Bernie News Roundup is a voluntary, non-campaign associated roundup of news, media, & other information related to Bernie Sanders' run for President.
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