A massive crowd of more than 14,000 Bernie Sanders supporters came out on Friday to Brigham Young State Park overlooking the snow-capped Rocky Mountains to hear the Democratic presidential candidate.
“On Tuesday there is going to be a very important caucus here in Utah. Let me give you a simple political truism. We will win that caucus if there is a large turnout. We will lose if there isn’t,” Sanders said.
Across town, Republican front-runner Donald Trump drew a much smaller crowd in the same city on the same day.
Sanders told his supporters that he would be the best choice for Democrats who want to retain the White House and defeat Trump in November. “In almost every poll we run much stronger against him that does Secretary Clinton,” Sanders said.
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Utah was the second stop on a three-state swing that took him earlier to Idaho Falls, another state where Democrats will go to caucuses next Tuesday to choose a nominee for the Democratic Party nomination for president. Later Friday, Sanders was headed to Tucson to resume campaigning in Arizona where voters will go to the polls in a primary election on Tuesday.
Sanders spoke about a wide range of issues including his plan for a Medicare-for-all health care system. “Despite the Affordable Care Act, many millions of Americans have no health insurance,” he said.
Sanders also called for bold action to reverse global warming caused by burning coal, oil, gas and other fossil fuels. Sanders would tax carbon to discourage burning fuels that emit the greenhouse gasses responsible for climate change.
Undeterred by questions of delegate math or political momentum, Senator Bernie Sanders brushed off suggestions on Friday that his campaign had no way forward and forcefully made the case that he was the Democratic candidate better suited to defeat Donald J. Trump in a general election.
Mr. Sanders blitzed through Idaho, Utah and Arizona ahead of crucial nominating contests in those states on Tuesday. Facing a deep deficit in the race for delegates after losses in five states this week, he continued to hammer away at his core messages on campaign finance and Wall Street reform while trying to seize the mantle of electability from Hillary Clinton.
“Let me say a word to you about my good friend Donald Trump,” Mr. Sanders said at a rally before more than 3,000 people at a high school gym in Idaho Falls. “Just kidding, he’s not my good friend. In fact, I never even went to one of his weddings.”
Despite the veiled jab at Mrs. Clinton, who did attend Mr. Trump’s third wedding, Mr. Sanders directed most of his fire at the leading Republican candidate. He said he was “making an exception” to his promise not to campaign negatively, saying it was a necessary evil because of the gravity of Mr. Trump’s rise.
“The truth is that Donald Trump is a pathological liar,” Mr. Sanders said, spending several minutes discussing Mr. Trump’s record of bending the truth. “People can disagree about ideas, but you cannot have a president who the American people cannot trust when he speaks.”
Capacity crowd. Scores of young people. A raucous one-hour stump speech centered on economic inequality and creating a “political revolution” from the “bottom up.”
All of this in a place, Idaho Falls, known far more for its conservative politics than presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ Democratic socialism.
“When we began our campaign about 10 months ago, we were at 3 percent in the polls, about 70 points behind (Hillary Clinton). We had no political organization, we had no money — and I dare say not a whole lot of people in Idaho were Bernie Sanders supporters,” the Vermont senator told 3,200 in a full Skyline High School gymnasium.
“But we’ve come a long way,” he said to big cheers. “And we have a path toward victory that goes right through Idaho.”
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Sanders was preceded on the stage by Lee Juan Taylor, vice chairman of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, who said the candidate would look out for Idaho’s best environmental and wildlife interests, including the grizzly bear. Sanders was introduced by Sierra Sandison, Miss Idaho 2014 and a diabetic who backs Sanders because of his position on improving the U.S. health care system.
Health care was where Sanders started his speech. He took a dig at the Idaho Legislature, which he said for “ideological reasons” has thus far refused to expand Medicaid coverage to about 78,000 people in the state.
“Health care is a right of all people, not a privilege,” Sanders said. “It’s not something that’s radical. In fact, health care for all is something that exists in every other major country on Earth.”
Bernie Sanders has wrapped up his hour-long campaign speech before a crowd of more than 5,000 tonight at the Tucson Convention Center, telling them: "Now is that moment when we look around us and say we can do much, much better."
Taking the stage shortly after 7:30 p.m., Sanders began by saying he thinks he can defeat fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Arizona's presidential preference election on Tuesday.
He launched into his regular themes, saying his campaign is supported by working families, not by Wall Street.
Sanders joked he is willing to release all of the speeches he gave to Wall Street — "zero" — as he pushes Clinton to release transcripts of her speeches. He said her SuperPac has taken millions from Wall Street.
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Before Sanders took the stage, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva introduced him, getting the crowd to boo at his mention of Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, told the crowd Trump "will bring hate to Tucson." Trump will hold a rally at the Tucson Convention Center at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Later in the night, Grijalva urged any protesters at Trump's rally here Saturday to use restraint.
High school student Emma Lamae stood at the head of a line that snaked through the parking lot, across the field and down to the street.
Beneath a blue sky and warm sun, she was among the thousands of people who made the trek to the top of This Is the Place Heritage Park Friday afternoon to hear Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders speak.
"He's for us; he's not for himself," said Lamae, who was there with her friends, all of whom are in high school or college. "He's for our generation," she said of the 74-year-old candidate.
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Those at the rally, many of them young adults, said they were drawn to Sanders for his authenticity and saw him as a grassroots leader and activist.
They ticked off the topics important to them: income inequality, health care, the cost of education, LGBT rights, reproductive rights and fair trade.
American Fork resident Kathy Clark, who came with her two daughters and a friend, said Sanders “doesn’t come across as a typical politician.”
“I love that he’s a genuine, sincere person and he’s for the middle class,” she said.
Andy Triplett, a retired steelworker, said he is voting for Sanders because of his commitment to keeping manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
Bernie Sanders confirmed Friday afternoon that he will not attend a major pro-Israel conference in Washington next week.
Sanders, the first Jewish politician to ever win a presidential primary, is the only remaining 2016 contender who will not speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major gathering for politicians and Jewish leaders every year.
In a letter to AIPAC President Robert Cohen, Sanders expressed regret that he could not attend the annual conference, but said "issues impacting Israel and the Middle East are of the utmost importance to me, to our country and to the world."
Sanders said he was scheduled to be traveling throughout the West and his campaign schedule prevents him from attending. He said he would send remarks to the organization in the hopes that they could be distributed to members as AIPAC does not permit candidates to address the conference remotely.
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A petition started by Max Blumenthal, the son of former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal and a pro-Palestinian writer, had garnered more then 5,000 signatures urging Sanders not to speak at AIPAC. One of the signers is Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters, who has endorsed Sanders.
On the other hand, foreign policy writer Robert Naiman wrote an open letter to Sanders encouraging him to speak at AIPAC -- urging him to be a "truth-teller" to the group. Naiman is critical of the group's hard-line pro-Israel stance.
Jane Sanders is the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and her influence on his campaign is increasing. This week in Arizona, she visited a number of Native American communities, supporting Apache protests against mining interests and engaging with the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe, the Indian Country Today Media Network reports. She also sat down for a discussion with Simon Moya-Smith, a journalist from Indian County Today Media Network.
In the interview, she spoke about the “lack of attention” being given to Native American voices and the failures of the United States government to support Native American nations. She said that her husband had worked originally in city government and dealt with issues “one at a time” to “make enormous progress.” As president and first lady they would apply a similar strategy to work with Native American communities to address such problems as police brutality and high rates of violence against indigenous women.
“As first lady, I feel that the most important thing I can do is reach out to the populations that are having difficulties … [and] make sure that we bring those [voices] into the consciousness of everybody, and then deal with the issues,” she said.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is urging the Treasury Department to impose new tax rules that could halt Pfizer Inc.'s proposed merger with Allergan PLC , or at least make it more expensive.
In a letter sent Friday from his Senate office, Sanders asked Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to prevent Pfizer PFE, +0.37% and other companies that take foreign tax addresses from borrowing against stockpiled foreign earnings without paying U.S. taxes. He also wants Treasury to limit "earnings stripping," the intercompany maneuvers companies use after taking a non-U.S. address to load up their U.S. operations with subsidiaries and shift profits to low-tax foreign countries.
"Large multinational corporations should not be able to avoid paying U.S. taxes when children in America go hungry," wrote Sanders, a Vermont senator. "Blocking this inversion would not only be sound fiscal policy, it would also act as a strong deterrent to other companies that are contemplating similar tax scams."
Bernie Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist. This is music to the ears of many Republicans who pretend that Sanders wants to turn the U.S. into the next Venezuela and claim that Sanders’ supporters don’t understand history or economics, because in their minds socialism is an unmitigated disaster. While this rhetoric plays well with conservatives in bite-sized Facebook posts, it exposes how little some understand Sanders’ policies.
As conservative author and Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, Tim Worstall wrote, “Venezuela’s Not Suffering From Socialism But From Anti-Marketism.” While Venezuela may be a socialist country, their biggest failures have occurred because of their attempts at setting prices for products. It should also be noted that Venezuela’s programs that most would consider socialist did actually improve the lives of many poor people by lowering poverty, increasing access to health care and improving educational outcomes. That’s not to say that Venezuela represents a successful socialist government, but comparing Bernie Sanders’ policies to the Venezuelan’s government form of socialism is completely disingenuous.
The reality is that Bernie Sanders’ “Democratic Socialism” is almost nothing like the socialism currently at work in Venezuela. Sanders is looking at offering free college and universal health care which are programs offered in countries like Germany, France, Finland and Norway, not a government takeover of private industries and $0.02 per gallon gas.
While misrepresenting Sanders’ policies as something akin to Communism is a dishonest analysis of why people shouldn’t vote for him, the bigger problem here is the hypocrisy of many of the same people when it comes to socialism.
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The reality is that tax breaks, special deals and government programs that Republicans support cost well over a trillion dollars a year. So if you’re the kind of person that thinks people who support Bernie Sanders are idiots because “someone has to pay for that free college”, you need to recognize that someone also has to pay for the Republican backed socialist wealth redistribution that benefits rich individuals and corporations. The big difference is, the average Joe might actually benefit from Sanders’ socialism.
Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont says that if elected president, he’d ask President Obama to withdraw his Supreme Court pick so that Mr. Sanders could select his own nominee to fill the current vacancy, while also saying he would do everything he can in the meantime to try to make sure Judge Merrick Garland is confirmed.
“Yes, I would,” Mr. Sanders told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Thursday when asked if he would ask Mr. Obama to withdraw the nomination in a lame-duck session so Mr. Sanders could name his own nominee.
“And I think I’m 100 percent prepared to support Judge Garland. I think he’s clearly very knowledgeable and can serve ably on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Sanders said.
“But between you and me, I think there are some more progressive judges out there,” he said. “I have said over and over again that I do have a litmus test for a Supreme Court justice and that litmus test is that justice must be loud and clear in telling us that he or she will vote to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision.”
“The idea that the president should not be able to make a nomination is totally absurd,” he said. “Republican obstructionism just tells us what’s been going on for the last seven years. I will do everything I can to see that there [are] hearings, that a vote takes place, and that Garland becomes seated on the Supreme Court.”
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton on Friday said more than one million people have donated to her campaign, touting the number as proof of her grassroots support.
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Clinton rival Bernie Sanders, not to be outdone, sent a tweet seconds later touting that his campaign has nearly two million donors, with an average contribution of $27.
The Vermont senator frequently touts his grassroots support, boasting last September that the campaign had broken President Barack Obama’s record in reaching 1 million individual online contributions in the shortest period.
While Mrs. Clinton has raised millions in so-called small donations of $200 or less, her campaign has relied far more heavily than Mr. Sanders’s on larger donations. Some 82% of her funds raised through January were for more than $200, compared to 29% for Mr. Sanders. He also has a well funded super PAC, Priorities USA Action, supporting her.
A broad base of small donors is an advantage for campaigns, because it allows them to tap the same donors repeatedly for more donations. Donors are capped at contributing $2,700 to a campaign in a primary, so when a candidate receives thousands of maxed-out contributions, it means they have to find new supporters to donate in the future.