Sanders Returns To The Senate For Gun Votes
For the first time since Jan. 2, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) walked into the Senate to cast votes. He’d left as an unpretentious populist senator whose presidential campaign was clearly catching on; he returned with a full Secret Service detail and motorcade, with a few onlookers in the public gallery sporting brightly colored “Bernie” T-shirts.
Other than that, Sanders’s re-emergence as a senator was remarkably low-key. The senator slipped into his office in the mid-afternoon, joined by his wife Jane and watched by an NBC News cameraman. Two hours later he, Jane, and the Secret Service detail entered the Capitol through a first floor door, bypassing the basement where most reporters were waiting.
“Not now, thanks,” he said, when a reporter began to ask him a question.
Sanders spent the next hour making his way slowly around the Senate chamber. He cast his vote on the first of four gun safety amendments before most of his colleagues showed up, then ducked into the cloakroom. When he returned, he sat for a while with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the only colleague who’d endorsed him, and the two were occasionally, happily interrupted by well-wishers of both parties, who do not expect him to end his presidential bid until next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), two progressives who’d fended off criticism for not endorsing Sanders, gave him friendly taps on the shoulder. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) offered some celebratory finger-snaps. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the dean of the Senate’s former presidential candidate club, patted Sanders on the back and stomach and told a joke inaudible from the galleries. [...]
Halfway through the votes, he released a statement calling the Democrats’ amendments “no-brainers.” (Like the rest of the Democratic caucus, he opposed the Republicans’ amendments.)
“Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein’s and Sen. [Chris] Murphy’s proposals are commonsense,” he said. “In light of the terrible tragedies that have taken place in Orlando and other cities, it’s not very hard to understand that terrorists or potential terrorists, criminals and the dangerously mentally ill should not have access to guns. We have got to do everything we can to stop guns from falling into the hands of people who should not have them.”
Sanders Overwhelmingly Wins The Youth Vote
It’s hard to overemphasize how completely and utterly Sen. Bernie Sanders dominated the youth vote to this point in the 2016 presidential campaign. While Hillary Clinton dominated him among older voters, he dominated her right back among younger voters — even winning more than 80 percent of their votes in some states against no less than the eventual Democratic nominee.
But this fact might say it better than any: In the 2016 campaign, Sanders won more votes among those under age 30 than the two presumptive major-party presidential nominees combined. And it wasn’t close.
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The above chart comes from a report by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. It shows more than 2 million young people cast ballots for Sanders in the 21 states that voted by June 1 and where exit polls included data on the youth vote.
The above chart comes from a report by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. It shows more than 2 million young people cast ballots for Sanders in the 21 states that voted by June 1 and where exit polls included data on the youth vote.
Clinton and Donald Trump combined? Less than 1.6 million. Sanders, in fact, won about 29 percent more votes among those under the age of 30.
And that number actually rose as the campaign went on. Back in mid-March, we looked at the same numbers and found Sanders had about 25 percent more votes than Trump and Clinton combined. And despite Clinton effectively locking up her party’s nomination around that point and Trump’s opponents starting to drop out, Sanders actually extended his advantage late in the campaign.
Sanders Staffers Organize To Fight Climate Change
More than a dozen former Bernie Sanders campaign staffers have joined NextGen Climate, according to the group run by environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer. They’re helping to organize millennials around climate issues and keep them engaged in the political process as Democrats fear young people will stay home in November.
More young people voted for Sanders than for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined, according a new Tufts University study. That same group of voters under age 30 was central to both of Barack Obama’s wins, but tend to vote in lower numbers. Some say they won’t go to the polls this fall if Sanders isn’t on the ballot.
To help address that, NextGen is running what they call the largest non-candidate student organizing effort in American political history. They plan to register and organize students on over 200 campuses in seven states, including Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois, which has a competitive Senate race. The group already has 175 full time paid staffers and fellows, up from the over 140 staffers they deployed 2014, and is adding more
NextGen, which Steyer started in 2013 to help build the political power and fight climate change, has spent tens of millions of dollars on grassroots organizing in recent election cycles, but is focused this year on young voters, who tend to care more deeply about the climate than other cohorts but have yet to fully utilize their power at the polls.
Zack Malitz, who was the deputy director of Sanders’ digital organizing team and will now lead campus organizing for NextGen, said he and the other former Sanders staffers are bringing with them many of the “distributed organizing” techniques employed by the Vermont senator.
“Working for Sen. Sanders, I saw the incredible power of young people to reshape American politics and push a broad-based progressive agenda,” Malitz explained. “I’m excited to continue that work.”
Sanders Raises 15.6 Million In May
Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign raised $15.6 million in the month of May, ending the month with more than $9.2 million in cash on hand, Federal Election Commission reports show.
The influx of cash came even as the Democratic primary for president wound down, with Hillary Clinton becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee in early June.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign raised $28.28 million in May and has more than $42 million in cash on hand, according to monthly fundraising totals released on Monday afternoon.
Her campaign noted, in a release breaking down the fundraising, that the average donation was about $44.
The Attempt To Discredit Bernie Sanders
And tirades, I think, is an accurate portrayal, as many of the critiques put forward by the anti-Sanders crowd are not critiques at all. Rather, they are polemics filled with musings on the motives of Sanders and his supporters — musings that are rarely grounded in data.
Sanders backers have been classified on the basis of this flimsy framework in a variety of ways: Racist, sexist, conservative, Trump sympathizers.
Then, of course, there is the famous “Bernie bro” narrative, a tall tale that purports to demonstrate that Sanders supporters are motivated not by left politics or by a desire to improve the material conditions of Americans, but by their incessant drive, as young, white males, to regain their status in a rapidly diversifying society.
When one takes little more than a cursory glance at these claims, however, they fall apart.
Sadly, otherwise insightful commentators have latched onto these lines of attack: Paul Krugman, for instance, gleefully seized upon a faulty interpretation of survey data, exclaiming on one occasion that he had found “the truth about the Sanders movement,” and on another that Sanders, himself, is becoming a “Bernie bro.”
In terms of their factual weight, these smears are easily brushed aside; but, because they have been pushed by influential voices, these narratives, fraudulent as they are, have shown tremendous staying power.
But perhaps more pernicious than the strange, speculative musings and left-right combos coming from the anti-Sanders crowd are the flippant dismissals of Sanders’s platform, one that contains elements that liberals are usually happy to embrace: Like, say, single-payer healthcare, (much) higher taxes on the wealthy, and an overhaul of the nation’s disastrous campaign finance system.
Some commentators, in the face of a politician who seems genuinely determined to move forward with the agenda he has articulated throughout his campaign, have twisted themselves into knots to justify their emphatic rejection of the most progressive candidacy in recent history.
A growing number of Democratic senators support reforming the party’s superdelegate system — a move that would dilute their own power in the presidential nominating process but satisfy Bernie Sanders and his millions of supporters as Democrats move to unify for the general election.
Politico interviewed nearly 20 of Sanders’ colleagues over the past week and found a surprisingly strong appetite for change, including among influential members of the party establishment such as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a top prospect for vice president. More than half the senators surveyed support at least lowering the number of superdelegates, and all but two said the party should take up the matter at next month’s convention in Philadelphia, despite the potential for a high-profile intraparty feud at a critical moment in the campaign.
The findings point to growing momentum among Democrats for changing a system that’s been criticized for giving party bigwigs undue sway over the nominee at the expense of the grass roots. But powerful Democratic Party constituencies, including the Congressional Black Caucus, are firmly opposed. And lawmakers who are open to reform disagree over how far-reaching it should be.
“It’s not useful to anyone to be in a position where you could potentially overturn the will of the electorate. I mean nobody likes this, and it undermines public confidence,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who has spoken privately to a dozen other Democratic senators about the matter. His support for scrapping superdelegates isn’t shared by a majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus, but it could be a starting point for negotiations. [...]
The sustained push by Sanders supporters, combined with Clinton’s interest in winning over his backers, is likely to push the issue onto the agenda in Philadelphia.
“It’s something we should debate,” said Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware. “There’s probably a middle ground somewhere between get rid of every single superdelegate and maintaining the status quo.”
The ‘Political Revolution’ PAC
Sanders’ supporters say the political movement he’s sparked will outlast his campaign and the founders of Vermont’s newest political action committee are now working to harness the energy generated by his bid.
“We’re directly answering Bernie Sanders’ call to bring the political revolution to the state and local level,” says Scott Garren.
Garren is the treasurer of the Vermont Political Revolution Fund, which, as its name suggests, will try to advance the progressive planks of the Sanders platform.
Garren says the new PAC will try to use the small-ball fundraising strategy that Sanders employed at the federal level to bankroll progressive candidates locally.
“I think our broad focus on the political revolution, economic and social justice, really is unique in the state of Vermont anyway,” Garren says.
The PAC will serve as the electioneering arm of a group called Rights and Democracy, and its board members will formally endorse a slate of candidates to support in 2016 House and Senate races.
James Haslam, executive director of Rights and Democracy, says the organization will look to advance at the state level some of the touchstones of Sanders’ presidential platform, like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and “moving forward with a universal health care system.”
Bernie Backers Look To Create A Brand New Congress
Brand New Congress is an ambitious campaign that seeks to use the same grassroots organizing tactics to back a “slate” of 535 candidates for the House of Representatives and Senate in the 2018 midterm elections.
“What the Bernie campaign showed us was that you could out-raise a well-funded opponent with grassroots donations, and you could out-voter-contact them, too,” says Saikat Chakrabarti, Sanders’s former director of organizing technology. “But it only works if you can concentrate all of these dispersed people onto one goal and focus it.”
So far Brand New Congress is run by about a dozen all-volunteer teams, with about 100 people doing work every day, says Chakrabarti. Many people supporting it include regional and local volunteer organizers for the Sanders campaign, such as Moumita Ahmed, a lead organizer for Millennials for Bernie, as well as some of his campaign staff, such as senior adviser Zack Exley.
“The power of Bernie Sanders was not only in his email list,” says Chakrabarti. “The centers of power were local groups that formed on Facebook and Reddit.”
It hopes to provide a “campaign in a box” to candidates with no experience, giving them all the infrastructure they need to run, including a grassroots network of volunteers ready to go. In the same way that the Sanders campaign rallied supporters in, say, New York to call Arizona voters on primary day, Brand New Congress hopes that it can leverage people around the country to help make phone calls and otherwise organize in local races that are far away from their state. Their common cause would be to reform Congress as a whole, treating the midterm elections more like a presidential campaign with one massive organization than dozens of unrelated local races.
Brand New Congress plans to work with candidates from both parties that sign on to its general principles and agree to only raise money from small donors. In Democrat majority districts, it will back Democrats, and, in Republican districts, it is looking for relatively progressive Republicans. It is just beginning the recruiting process, but ideally they are looking for respected people in their communities who aren’t necessarily “career politicians.”
Crossposted from The Progressive Wing.
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