Traffic stopped, foot traffic snarled, and lengthy queues of people jammed the sidewalks in downtown Monterey. Bernie Sanders was in town.
The Democratic presidential candidate’s visit to Monterey on Tuesday night attracted a crowd of 7,800, many of them supporters.
In his Monterey speech, Sanders addressed a wide spectrum of platforms from the economy, jobs, climate change, healthcare, fracking, the working class, immigrants, working mothers, gay marriage, healthcare and voiced his support for ethnic groups including Latinos, African Americans and Native Americans.
But the core of the Sanders’ speech was clear. In zeroing in on key platforms, he stressed that he’s running a campaign that is anti-establishment. He has chosen to steer clear of support from Wall Street, big pharma and large corporations.
“The establishment has betrayed the American people, and now is the time for real change,” said Sanders. “Our job is to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent, an economy that works for the middle class, the children, the elderly and for the poor. That is our economy.”
Change was a repeated if not pivotal theme in his speech. His campaign he said has united people “to fight for real change in this country.”
Within the theme of change, “we need a political party and movement of millions of working people and young people who are actively involved. We should not be taking money from Wall Street we should be taking Wall Street on.”
On the heels of Hillary Clinton’s visit to Salinas, Bernie Sanders is in the middle of his own California tour. The candidate for the Democratic nomination for President he held rallies in Santa Cruz and Monterey Tuesday.
The streets leading to the Kaiser Permanente Arena in downtown Santa Cruz buzzed with energy from the long line of Bernie Sanders supporters, which stretched around the block.
Mary Graydon-Fontana hoped to reach independent voters with the sign around her neck that read, “No Party Preference Voters. You can still vote for Bernie.”
“So what they need to do is they need to ask for a Democratic ballot. They need to turn their No Party Preference ballot in,” said Graydon-Fontana who has been with the group Santa Cruz for Bernie since last summer.
“I’m 70, and I have never been so excited about the campaign, so it’s not just the young people,” said Graydon-Fontana.
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The arena filled to capacity with more than two-thousand supporters and hundreds more still outside. Watsonville Mayor Felipe Hernandez introduced Bernie Sanders, who got right down to the business of next week’s tight primary race against Hillary Clinton.
“And if there is a large turnout on June 7th here in California where 475 pledged delegates are at stake, we are going to win here in California,” said Sanders.
“Given the system that we have, which is an absurd system, but it is the system. I want you as the super delegates to take a hard look at which candidate and which campaign can beat Donald Trump,” said Sanders.
His ideas drew huge applause from tuition free college to demilitarizing the police and how the law treats drug addiction. “What we have got to do is recognize is that addition and drug abuse are not criminal issues, but health issues,” said Sanders.
Even though Sen. Bernie Sanders supported the Affordable Care Act, he said Tuesday during a campaign stop in Emeryville that it didn’t go far enough in transforming the nation’s health care, leaving in place a system that is “the most wasteful, dysfunctional system in the world.”
“We need radical transformation of the American health care system,” Sanders said Tuesday at a hotel conference room packed with dozens of members of National Nurses United, one of his biggest and most vocal union endorsers, wearing red shirts.
Sanders is calling for more wholesale systematic change than his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, who wants to improve the current system, or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, but hasn’t proposed a replacement.
Sanders wants a single-payer health care system that would cover everyone, including what he estimated to be 28 million people who still don’t have health coverage and many others who are underinsured or can’t afford to buy the medicines they’re prescribed.
He believes that a single-payer plan not only would cut billions in administrative costs, but also would help bring down the high cost of prescription drugs, which he blamed on “greedy” pharmaceutical companies that care more about giving their departing executives lucrative “golden parachute” compensation packages.
“I think (the current health care law) made significant improvements, but clearly it has not gone far enough,” Sanders said. “How can we be satisfied when 28 million people in this country don’t have health insurance?”
A public rally for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders will be held in south Palo Alto on Wednesday, and residents should avoid the area if they're not attending the rally, police said in an advisory.
The traffic could cause delays for students at nearby Greendell School and for those traveling to graduation at Palo Alto and Gunn high schools Wednesday afternoon.
Sanders is expected to speak sometime between 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. at the Cubberley Community Center athletic fields, 4000 Middlefield Road.
Public admission begins at 11:30 a.m. RSVP online at bit.ly/1Z7m7Sf.
Campus officials confirmed Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will be here Wednesday night (June 1) for a campaign rally on Hutchison Field. The Sanders campaign is paying for all arrangements.
Officials said the field along La Rue Road will be fenced off, with entry gates and security screening set up at the northwest corner. The gates are tentatively set to open at 5 p.m.
The campaign says its “A Future to Believe In” rally is free and open to the public, with people to be admitted on a first-come-come, first-serve basis. The campaign advises: “For security reasons, please do not bring bags, and limit what you bring to small, personal items like keys and cell phones. Weapons, sharp objects, chairs, and signs or banners on sticks will not be allowed through security.”
Be prepared for traffic congestion between Highway 113 and the field, on streets around the field, and in and around the Pavilion Parking Structure off Hutchison Drive. Faculty, staff and students may want to consider alternative parking or public transit. Unitrans has posted a Sanders rally webpage, with detailed information on routes and stops in the vicinity of Hutchison Field, and a note of caution: "Buses could be crowded, resulting in potential delays and minor service disruptions."
Democrats in Hawaii conducted their state convention over the weekend, concluding on Sunday with a floor debate about superdelegates, as well as the selection of Tim Vandeveer to the state party chair position.
According to the Honolulu Civil Beat Vandeveer, a grassroots activist known for his “keeping the country country” campaign on Oahu’s North Shore, is a staunch supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Reportedly, Vandeveer beat three other candidates for the chair position, all with closer ties to the mainstream of the party, including: Jacce Miklanec, Tylor Dos Santos-Tam and Flo Kong Kee.
“When the people lead, our leaders will follow, and that absolutely applies to me,” Vandeveer said. “I am going to need your support to put this party back on track. No matter what side of the debate you are on, we must always engage in civil discourse and treat each other with aloha.”
Hawaii Governor David Ige joined all four candidates on stage after the selection.
“We are in good hands,” Ige said. “Let us come together for victory in November! Mahalo!”
Hawaii Democrats sent a message to their national party to stop using superdelegates for the presidential election. Hawaii Democrats did more than just elect new party leaders at their convention -- they also overwhelmingly supported a national party resolution.
"It calls for abolishing superdelegates," said Tim Vandeveer, the newly-elected chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. He is also the state's newest superdelegate, so how does he feel about the resolution?
"It wasn't one that I helped to draft, but it is certainly one I support. The notion that someone, a superdelegate, would be protecting Hawaii's delegation from their own bad judgment or prevent an excessive outbreak of democracy is silly," said Vandeveer.
In elections, every vote counts. When it comes to electing a presidential candidate for the Democratic party, some votes count more than others -- namely votes from superdelegates.
Democratic candidates get delegates proportionally to popular votes at the caucus. Because 70 percent of the 33,655 voters picked Bernie Sanders, he got 17 delegates. Hillary Clinton won 30 percent of the votes, so she gets eight. Each of those delegates represent between 1,200 and 1,400 people who voted.
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Another change that may come from the convention is fund raising for elections.
"Many believe politicians are out of touch and that's in large part because of special interests and big money in elections. My idea is to fund our party through grassroots support," said Vandeveer.
Instead of big checks written by a few connected people or companies before each election, Vandeveer would like to see smaller donations given more frequently throughout the year.
Fiercely loyal Bernie Sanders supporters argued Tuesday that superdelegates who vote for Hillary Clinton, despite Sanders' overwhelming victory in Utah's caucus, should lose their positions in the state Democratic Party and be shunned for life.
The Utah Democratic Central Committee wasn't willing to go that far in a raucous back and forth that ended with its members backing a resolution urging the national party to eliminate superdelegates in future presidential contests, but saying nothing about the current race.
"The issue is not about any one candidate; rather, it is about a process that minimizes the will of our citizens," said Sim Gill, a committee member and the Salt Lake County district attorney. "We are either for the people or we are not."
Utah has four Democratic superdelegates. Party Chairman Peter Corroon and Utah national committeeman Wayne Holland are supporting Sanders. Party Vice Chairwoman Breanne Miller and national committeewoman Patrice Arent are supporting Clinton, and they announced that position before the caucus.
Announcing early has allowed superdelegates to tilt the scales toward Clinton by driving news coverage of her lead, which wasn't fully earned at the polls, argued Hyrum Matthews, a national convention delegate backing Sanders.
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The committee backed Corroon's alternative, a nonbinding resolution urging the national party to dump superdelegates in 2020 and beyond. It's a debate that is likely to continue on to Philadelphia, where Democrats will hold the national convention in July.
Atlantic City is a city on the brink. It could be the state's first city to default on its debts in more than 75 years. Even with the proposed compromise legislation out of Trenton, the already-diminished city would be forced to cut nearly $100 million over the next five years.
While the city is figuring out how to cut services for it residents and provide less for its workers, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is on the campaign trail bragging about how much money he's made in Atlantic City. Trump went to the bank and Atlantic City went to the poor house.
Trump's greed, enabled by tax policies that favor the rich, is a prime example of the rigged economy propped up by a corrupt system of campaign finance.
Of course, the mega-wealthy like Trump think this rigged economy is good for America. And to be fair, it has been good for them. They've gotten richer while the vast majority of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages and millions of children live in poverty.
Polices that favored the rich were bad for Atlantic City and are bad for America. We need an economy that works for all of us, not just some of us. It is time that we as a nation, as citizens of the United States, as friends and neighbors, as sisters and brothers, say loud and clear, we cannot afford a president who puts the desires of the rich above the needs of everyday, working Americans.
That's going to take a president who is not afraid to stand up to big business, casino tycoons and Wall Street bankers alike. It is going to take a president like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
You've lit a fire under a young generation of progressives – brought them out in droves to the Democratic Party's primary process. What does the party have to do to keep them there?
That's a good question. Unlike all your other dumb questions.
[Laughter, joined by nearby Sanders staffers]
That's why the media love me. I'm so subtle. Naw, I'm only kidding. You asked a very important question. Let me just give you an example: We were in Denver. We had a rally at 5:00 in the afternoon. We had 18,000 people. People who are passionate about wanting to change America, wanting to be involved in the political process. My guess is that 95 percent of those people had never gone to a Democratic Party meeting – or ever dreamed of going to a Democratic Party meeting. Two hours later, I walk into a [Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson fundraising] dinner where there are 1,000, maybe 2,000 Democrats, who are contributors to the party, who are lawyers and whatever, local politicians. Older people, upper-middle-class and professional people – who are active in the Democratic Party.
There are two different worlds. So the question is: What happens when that 18,000 marches into that room with 2,000 people? Will they be welcomed? Will the door be open? Will the party hierarchy say, "Thank you for coming in. We need your energy. We need your idealism. C'mon in!"? Or will they say, "Hey, we've got a pretty good thing going right now. We don't need you. We don't want you"? That's the challenge that the Democratic Party faces. And I don't know what the answer is.
This has been a tough campaign – a good campaign, but tough in many respects. I've heard a number of your supporters, more than I would expect, say that they'd rather vote for Trump than Clinton, or that they'd rather sit out the whole thing. What's your message to those people?
Wrong question. It's not, "What is my message to them?" It's not my job to think that I can reach out and say to millions, "Do what I want you to do." That's not the way it works. The question that should be asked is, "Why?" I think Trump is incredibly irresponsible. And an incredibly dangerous person. A man who is primarily a showman and an opportunist and an egomaniac. A man who has already significantly damaged this country with his attacks on Mexicans and Muslims and women and veterans and African-Americans and so forth. Very dangerous man. And yet, how come you have millions of people who are prepared to vote for him and not Hillary Clinton? [We got] information from West Virginia just a few hours ago. Apparently, a lot of people who voted for me are not prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton. Why is that?
Many working-class people in this country no longer have faith in establishment politics. And, of course, that's what Trump has seized upon. He's a phony and an opportunist. But he has seized upon that and said, "I am not part of the establishment." He's only a multibillionaire who has worked with Wall Street and everybody else. But he claims not to be part of the establishment, right? That has created a certain amount of support for him.
I am the son of working-class people. It is incomprehensible to me that you have working-class people vote for a Donald Trump. And yet working-class people in this country – white working-class people – have voted for Republicans for a number of years. Why? Why is that? How does it happen that they vote for candidates who want to send their jobs to China, want to give tax breaks to billionaires and want to cut their health care and their education for their kids? What are they doing? That's the question we have to deal with.
When Lyndon Baines Johnson was Bernie Sanders’ age, he’d been dead 10 years. Unlike LBJ, Bernie is still very much alive, leading a campaign caravan through California and aiming to take his left-wing children’s crusade all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia the last week of July.
I caught up with Sanders at two rallies — one at a high school football stadium in Pomona on Thursday, the other on Saturday evening at the county fairgrounds in Bakersfield, the city represented by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican whose politics are far to the right of Sanders.
The crowds at both events were largely young, heavily Latino and predominantly working class. In both places, Sanders delivered the same speech — the same one he has given in every corner of America — with no need for a teleprompter. It is the consistent content of that message and the way he delivers it that has made him a completely unanticipated force in this campaign.
A year ago, only a few dreamy progressives would have predicted that the septuagenarian democratic socialist senator from out-of-the-way Vermont would become the leader of a youth movement that would seriously disrupt Hillary Clinton’s smooth path to the Democratic nomination. Sanders’ rise to the top tier in the 2016 campaign is, arguably, even more of a surprise than Donald Trump’s success. Trump already had huge notoriety, billions of dollars, easy media access and a fractured field of competitors. Bernie Sanders had nothing but ideas.
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Many of the people who run for president act as if they’ve been planning their campaigns since high school (think Ted Cruz and Martin O’Malley). They tailor their message around what will make them most electable (think Marco Rubio and Scott Walker). They struggle to project an image that researchers tell them will be appealing to voters (think Hillary Clinton and a host of others). Bernie is definitely different. He is as much community organizer as politician. Certainly, he is not a man without ambitions, but he came to the idea of running for president very late. He appears to be doing it as simply the latest avenue of his social activism.
That difference is what has won him an unexpectedly big and passionate following. It is also the thing Democratic leaders who wish he would quit before he gets to Philadelphia simply do not understand. For Bernie, this isn’t politics, this is revolution.