Late Wednesday morning at the White House Rose Garden, Obama announced his nomination for the next Supreme Court Justice who would replace the late Antonin Scalia. Obama officially nominated the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Merrick Garland. Following statements made by Republicans over the last month — that they will not move forward with anyone the president nominates — Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders responded to the nomination with a call to action.
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Following the president's announcement on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it very clear that he would not consider Garland to fill the vacant seat. He said, "The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration. The next president may also nominate somebody very different."
But Sanders was not interested in Senate Republicans' refusal to even consider Garland. In his statement published on Wednesday, the presidential candidate stated:
Judge Garland is a strong nominee with decades of experience on the bench. My Republican colleagues have called Judge Garland a ‘consensus nominee’ and said that there is ‘no question’ he could be confirmed. Refusing to hold hearings on the president's nominee would be unprecedented. President Obama has done his job. It’s time for Republicans to do theirs. I call on Sen. Grassley to hold confirmation hearings immediately and for Leader McConnell to bring the nomination to floor of the Senate if Judge Garland is approved by the Judiciary Committee.
Bernie Sanders, who fell further behind Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s presidential primaries, told supporters Wednesday that he has “an extremely good chance to win nearly every state that votes in the next month.”
Sanders’s rosy assessment comes as he tries to reassure supporters that he has a path to the Democratic nomination despite a mounting lead by Clinton in the number of delegates needed to claim victory.
In a fundraising solicitation, the senator from Vermont wrote that
“Starting today, the map now shifts dramatically in our favor,” Sanders said.
His take echoes the case his aides have sought to make in recent days that Sanders is well-positioned to win all three contests Tuesday in Arizona, Idaho and Utah. Primaries and caucuses then follow in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington state and Wisconsin.
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Sanders’s email solicitation carried the subject header “How we respond to this moment.”
He said that his campaign has exceeded all expectations, winning nine primaries and caucuses to this point, and said that on Tuesday “we earned a significant number of delegates, and we are on track for the nomination.”
This presidential election has the country transfixed, even horrified, in ways that none of us can remember seeing before. As we’ve seen during primary election season, voter turnout and participation is up in many states. A self-proclaimed socialist and a TV personality are confounding pundits.
Why? Well, in this reality show of an election, it’s hard to not get drawn in. Just like voting for your favorites on The Bachelor or The Voice, voters are closely following the primaries, debate after debate, state after state. And their take on what they really think of the candidates is quite surprising, according to a survey of voters’ perceptions of the candidates conducted by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and Brand Imperatives / Survata. The survey, taken last week, asked potential voters what words come to mind when they think of each candidate.
For five of the six candidates studied, the most common first association is far from a vote of confidence. For Republican Donald Trump and Democrat HillaryClinton, the most common first associations are “racist” and “liar,” respectively.
For Bernie Sanders, old. More than half, 60% of voters, have an overall negative impression of Republican front runner, Donald Trump, according to the survey. Nearly half, 48% of voters, have a “very negative” impression. Hillary Clinton, still considered the Democratic frontrunner, has the second highest level of negative perceptions at 44%, with 31% “very negative.” Interestingly, the candidate with the least negative perceptions, John Kasich, is struggling to stay in the race.
And while it was assumed that Clinton would have a huge advantage with female voters only six months ago, that’s not entirely clear. Our study indicated that women are no more likely to have a positive impression than male voters. In fact, Bernie Sanders’ positive impression ratings beat Clinton’s with both males and females for all voters younger than 55 years old.
Bernie Sanders, the oldest candidate in the pack, has the most favorable impressions overall. And, the younger the voter, the better the ratings.
Sanders has tapped into the overwhelming sense of injury, frustration and anger at the toll that market fundamentalism has exacted on Americans, especially the young. And in defiance of the “greedy geezer” stereotype, Sanders personifies the fact that older people—the parents and grandparents of millennials—actually care deeply about the financial struggles of young people and know something about the ravages of market fundamentalism themselves. During the Great Depression and the post-WWII period, there was a general acceptance that the state has a responsibility to mitigate inequality, provide basic services and even out capitalism’s boom-bust cycle.
Older Americans saw the dismantling of that acceptance and the rise of free-market fundamentalism. What followed was an era of “trickle down” economics, efforts to limit or eliminate the government’s role in redistributing wealth, tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of corporations and of finance, and widespread privatization of things the government used to run, such as schools, prisons and hospitals.
To justify this, the mantra of market fundamentalism glorifies individual responsibility as if it were a sacrament. We allegedly create our own circumstances by the choices we make. There are no structural, institutional obstacles that might thwart such choices, and thus, no need for any notion of collective responsibility or the common good.
Millennials have been hit especially hard by this ideological shift. The massive defunding of public universities and federal grants and loans has led to the tripling of student loan debt since the 1990s. More than three-quarters of renters between the ages of 18 and 24 spend more than they earn every month, and they are racking up credit card debt at a faster rate than other age groups. One in five twentysomethings have more credit card debt than savings, and the usurious interest rates and late fees are more burdensome when you’re just starting out. At least 8 million didn’t have health insurance as of 2014.
So when Sanders says that “it’s time to make college tuition-free and debt-free,” that the big banks should be broken up, that health insurance is a human right, and that the minimum wage should be increased to $15 an hour, no wonder young people cheer for him, pack his rallies and donate to his cause. He may have lost Super Tuesday, but he won the youth vote. His relentless focus on income inequality has constructed an intergenerational bridge around a wholesale rejection of a government by elites, for elites. One of his many great contributions during the campaign has been to show that such a bridge can be built.
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, was on an afternoon call with reporters on Wednesday, sunnily explaining the path forward for his candidate, who faces increasingly long odds to win the nomination. His campaign had lost five states on Tuesday and left Sanders with a more-than-300 delegate gap behind to Clinton, who has won twice as many states. But Sanders can win if he stays on, Weaver argued.
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Here are four more reasons why Sanders’ aides say he will soldier on:
The second half of the primary will be good to Sanders. The primaries just ahead in the calendar, Sanders aides argue, are auspicious for the Vermont Senator and look more like the Northern states he has already won than the Southern, heavily African-American states he has lost. Arizona looks like Colorado, Wisconsin is like Minnesota, Washington is a bit like Vermont.
“We have always understood that the first half of the calendar was much more advantageous to the Secretary,” said Weaver. Wins in the second half of the primary schedule, Sanders aides say, will help them close the gap with Clinton. And with the grassroots money-making machine Sanders has, funds will not be difficult to come by.
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The less hectic primary schedule helps Sanders. The states in the coming months are spaced out, with more time between primaries. Arizona, Idaho and Utah are on March 22, and Washington, Hawaii and Alaska about a week after that. But fewer delegates are at stake on each days.
Sanders, his aides say, has done best and often defeated Clinton in states he has spent more time in and been able to introduce himself, including states like Michigan, New Hampshire or Iowa. “Almost everywhere we compete with her, even places that we lose, we turn around huge margins,” Devine said.
Comedian Kristina Wong was on tour in Minneapolis for her one-woman show "The Wong Street Journal" when she got a text message from her manager asking if she wanted to meet Sen. Bernie Sanders. She jumped at the opportunity to meet Sanders, who she calls "the most exciting man of the campaign."
According to a press release from the Sanders campaign, the March 13 meeting covered issues spanning immigration reform to affordable healthcare. Guests at the meeting also included Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Brad Jenkins, executive producer at Funny or Die and the former associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
Wong said that the presidential candidate's meeting with Asian-American leaders made her more aware of how little Asian Americans are "acknowledged in general by politicians."
"It wasn't until after I posted the photos of the meeting did I hear some discontent about how [Asian and Pacific Islander Americans] feel we are ignored by politicians," she said. "I guess I just got so used to politicians talking about race in terms of black and white or undocumented immigrants (usually characterized as being from "Mexico" and not Asia), that I had to just infer my own experience from those media narratives of national issues."
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Ricky Ly, a food writer and vocal Sanders supporter, acknowledged Clinton's ties to the Asian-American community, but suggested that Sanders has the potential to garner the Asian-American vote.
"Hillary Clinton has enjoyed a lot of support from the AAPI community and has enjoyed exposure to the country in ways Bernie Sanders has never had," Ly said. "But the more people learn about Bernie Sanders and what he stands for, his ideas for America where we are in it together - they grow strong in their support for him. His actions over the course of 50 years show that he is true to his word in fighting for the poor, the marginalized, for an America united."
Clinton’s coverage on television has dwarfed Sanders’s. As a New York Times Upshot report this week pointed out, Clinton has received more than twice the “news and commentary” about her campaign “on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on social media” as Sanders has.
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There appear to be two parallel universes of Democratic voters this season — one disproportionately older, the other disproportionately younger — whose habits make them almost invisible to each other.
Clinton’s voters may be less likely to show up to rallies, or post on social media or be serial commenters who commandeer comments sections, but they do show up to vote. But these are the same voters who are less likely to hear much news about Sanders.
In a February Pew Research Center survey, a plurality of people 18 to 29 years old said that the social media was their most helpful source for learning about the 2016 presidential election. A plurality of those 30 and over cited cable news as the primary source. Network news was the second most popular source for those and older.
The Sanders campaign and its supporters have a right to be unhappy about the disparity. But the Clinton campaign has its own view of Sanders’s supporters media grousing, and, as to be expected, it isn’t kind. As The Times reported last month:
“The Clinton campaign, however, argues that Mr. Sanders has benefited from the superficial horse-race journalism he scorns, and that coverage has largely focused on his avuncular style and cross-generational appeal rather than thorough inspections of his proposals or record.
Since the beginning of the presidential campaign Bernie Sanders has received little coverage and has been counted out of having any possibility of winning the Democratic nomination. Though the candidate has gained momentum as he continues his campaign, after Tuesday’s loss, mainstream media outlets counted Sanders out completely, claiming it is basically impossible to reach the number of delegates needed for the nomination. If we examine the numbers closely Hillary Clinton is ahead of Sanders by 314 pledged delegates and there are still 2,308 delegates up for grabs in the upcoming months.
Greg Guma, the author of "The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution," told teleSUR that the path to the nomination is far from over. “Over the next three months, we have the states of California, we have New York, we have the Midwest and the Atlantic coast. Even though Hillary Clinton has won certain states in the South, the South is not the key to either the primary or the election as many of the people in the leadership of the Democratic Party understand the key to winning the Democratic primary and the election is to win the coasts, to win the East coast and the West coast, that has not yet been decided and Bernie has just as good a chance,” Guma said.
Another aspect of the Sanders campaign that is often overlooked is the reasons that have driven the campaign to gain momentum. There has been an overwhelming number of young people, between the ages of 18 and 29 who have been supporting Sanders with very high percentages. According to Richard Wolff, a professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, this is evidence of a shift in the future of American politics that is breaking the standards of the traditional old establishment Democratic Party.
“To understand the phenomena of Bernie Sanders is to understand that he proves a fundamental shift in American politics is underway. I know from my own direct experience that the Democratic Party leadership expected Mr. Sanders to get between 1 and 3 percent of the vote in this election, period. The fact that he has done as well as he has done, getting an excess of 40 percent or even closer to half the votes in so many states and winning as many states as he has is an unspeakable change in American politics and will have enormous ramifications for the future,” Wolff said.
This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Bernie-Sanders-a-Path-Forward-20160316-0039.html".
To say the results of Super Tuesday were disappointing for Bernie supporters would be an understatement. Four out of five states were lost. The tie in Missouri was no consolation either. While the defeats in the Southeast were expected the ones in the industrial Midwestern states of Illinois and Ohio hurt -- and hurt bad.
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Is there anxiety about the numbers game? Yes.
But here's the thing:
Twenty-six states as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and the District are still to be contested. Half the delegates are still up for grabs. Hillary still needs more than 800 delegates to win the nomination. Some, most, or all of the 712 super delegates can still switch sides. The Southern states and the more conservative red states in the Midwest where Bernie was polling lowest are all but done voting.
The math is most definitely tough for Sanders -- but not impossible. What is certain is that he can absolutely not afford to lose the two states with the highest delegate counts (California and New York) and will need to win a few states in the north and northwest, where he is polling best, by large margins.
And here's what's more. Taking the liberty of speaking for all Bernie Sanders supporters:
This is not a sporting contest, this is our future.
To quote one of my favorite movie lines:
"Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I'll ever know."
A teenager who as a little girl became a flashpoint figure in the fight for immigration reform after her parents were swept up by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office stumped Tuesday for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Katherine Figueroa, then 9, was playing at her aunt’s house seven years ago when she heard a man on TV say there had been a workplace raid at the car wash where her parents worked. She ran to the living room in time to see her father on television, his hands cuffed behind his back with zip ties. Her mother, too, was detained in the raid. Katherine screamed, then started to cry.
On Tuesday, dwarfed by a podium set up for Sanders, Figueroa used her voice to stump for the Vermont senator. The 15-year-old spoke to thousands who waited for Sanders to take the stage about how her family’s life was upended and about her hopes for this presidential election.
“I’m the daughter of immigrants,” she said to a cheering crowd. “They came here to give me and my family a better future. My parents were arrested by Arpaio.”
The crowd jeered.
"I am one of millions of kids that are left behind every day,” she said. “We want deportations to stop — completely. And I truly believe that Bernie is going to make a change and that he’s going to make our future even better…. He is our future president.”
Moments after taking the stage, Sanders told a cheering crowd his campaign is aimed at making sure arrests like those of Figueroa's parents "never ever happen again."
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders will make a campaign stop in Utah sometime before the Utah presidential vote on March 22.
The Sanders campaign has confirmed to UtahPolicy.com that the Vermont Senator will campaign in Utah on Friday afternoon. Sanders has an event scheduled in Flagstaff, Arizona on March 17 and Idaho Falls, Idaho on March 18.
Sanders will hold a town hall meeting at This is the Place Heritage Park at 3:30 pm on Friday. The campaign says RSVP's for public wishing to attend event are strongly encouraged. You can RSVP for the town hall at this link.
The Sanders visit comes during an unprecedented amount of presidential campaign activity for the Beehive State. On Tuesday Chelsea Clinton stumped for her mom in Salt Lake City, and Ohio governor John Kasich is scheduled to visit Utah on Friday
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The Democratic presidential vote on March 22 is an open event, meaning any registered voter in Utah can cast a ballot in the Democratic contest. That's important because the latest UtahPolicy.com survey finds Sanders leading Hillary Clinton among all Utahns by a 41-19% margin. Among Democrats only, it's a much tighter contest with Clinton leading Sanders 51-44%