Bernie Sanders did not just win all three states that voted this weekend -- Washington, Alaska and Hawaii -- he won them by overwhelming, impressive margins. The presidential hopeful won every county in Washington, and some of his biggest victory margins came from the state's most rural and traditionally conservative areas.
The win will likely mean a fundraising boost for the small-donor driven campaign. Sanders does not have a super PAC and instead has enjoyed injections of cash from his fans after big wins or important nights in the election calendar. According to the campaign, supporters from Washington State already give to his cause at disproportionately high rates, so these wins will likely produce another windfall.
The wins also validate Sanders' commitment to an extended primary. Despite the fact that he is trailing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a significant number of delegates needed for the nomination, Sanders has pledged to stay in the race until all 50 states get their say.
Since all delegates on the Democratic side are awarded proportionally, Sanders will receive a sizeable number of delegates from Saturday’s blowouts and dent Clinton’s delegate lead. Likewise, by winning so handily, he makes it harder for the super delegates from those states to stay committed to Clinton. The elected officials and party elites who hold these posts can swap their vote at any point until voting takes place at the party convention and will face grassroots pressure -– and pressure from the campaign –- to back the will of their hometown voters.
Sanders told ABC News' Jonathan Karl Sunday morning that he remains the "underdog" but that the campaign believes they "do have a path to victory."
"What we showed yesterday is in fact the momentum is with us," Sanders said. "We think we're going to do well in Wisconsin. We think we got a real shot in New York. And then we go out to California. You go out to Oregon. That's the most progressive part of America."
Bernie Sanders won three Western Democratic caucuses by landslides on Saturday, and all he got was this lousy Associated Press headline: “Sanders wins 3 states; Clinton holds delegate lead.” The AP header is accurate, but the Vermont Senator and his legions can be forgiven for wondering what he has to do to get some political respect.
Mr. Sanders won Alaska with about 82% of the vote, Hawaii with 70% and delegate-rich Washington state with 73%. These may not be bellwether states. But Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would love to have those margins, and in a normal year a front-runner like Hillary Clinton would be running up such totals at this stage of the presidential race. Instead the 74-year-old Mr. Sanders is showing the kind of electoral strength that gives him every right to fight on at least through April’s contests and maybe to the convention in July.
The challenger’s victories reveal Mrs. Clinton’s continuing weakness even among Democratic partisans. On Tuesday Mr. Sanders won in Utah and Idaho, while the former Secretary of State won easily in Arizona. She continues to have a delegate lead thanks to her victories in states dominated by older African-American voters and government-employee unions. But she inspires little enthusiasm, and the case for her seems to boil down to her inevitability as the nominee and that her political experience and stolidity are antidotes to the likely GOP nominee, Mr. Trump.
Mr. Sanders is also fighting the perception that as an avowed socialist he can’t win in November. “Don’t let anybody tell you that Hillary Clinton is the strongest Democratic candidate to take on the Republicans,” Mr. Sanders told an estimated crowd of 15,000 in the People’s Republic of Seattle. “It is not true.”
The current head-to-head polls bear him out. In the Real Clear Politics polling average, Mr. Sanders leads Mr. Trump by 17.5 points and Mr. Cruz by 8.4. Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. Trump by 11.2 and Mr. Cruz by only 2.9. Mr. Sanders is tied with John Kasich, while Mrs. Clinton loses to the Ohio Governor by 6.5 points.
Amazingly, most Sanders supporters I’ve spoken to, skeptical as they’ve been about the media’s coverage of the Sanders campaign, are still absolutely appalled at what unfolded after Sanders absolutely dominated Clinton on “Western Saturday” — which was, again, if we let demographic statistics be our guide, the day on the spring election calendar in which the largest number of racially and ethnically diverse populations got to weigh in on the Democratic primary race.
But you know what? They’ve a right to be appalled, and even by the low standards set by news media coverage of the presidential election, it was appalling.
Here’s an abbreviated list of the shocking, indeed borderline racist political analyses heard on CNN during Western Saturday:
- The claim that Hawaii is mostly white (it’s majority-minority);
- the claim that Alaska is overwhelmingly white (it’s the seventh-most diverse state);
- the claim that Michigan is the most diverse state Sanders has acquitted himself exceedingly well in (in fact it’s the sixth-most diverse, and eighth if you count the ties in Illinois in Massachusetts); and
- the claim that Wisconsin is more diverse than any of the states that voted on Western Saturday (in fact, Wisconsin is one of the dozen whitest states in America, while the Western Saturday states are all among the ten most diverse).
I’m not including, in the list above, all the other absurd misstatements that CNN in particular filled the airwaves with — such as Bakari Sellers stating that Clinton’s 13.8% win in Ohio (after polling had predicted a victory by more than 30 points) was as miraculous a performance as Sanders’ come-from-behind win in Michigan or (moreover) his making up of almost the entirety of a 42-point deficit in Illinois in just the last seven days of that campaign.
So what explains all this journalistic malpractice?
The same thing that explains the absence of Sanders surrogates or supporters on cable TV. The same thing that explains media blackouts of Sanders speeches. The same thing that explains super-delegate tallies having been used by cable news all spring — successfully — to influence public perception of the Clinton-Sanders race, despite their use for this purpose having been explicitly opposed by the Democratic National Committee. The same thing that explains Sanders having netted 21 delegates on “Western Tuesday” (the votes in Arizona, Idaho, and Utah) rather than losing between one and ten net delegates — as predicted before the voting by the media — without anyone coming on air thereafter to issue a mea culpa or even a well-done to Sanders.
In short, the national media has a false narrative in its jaws like a dog with a bone and the only thing that will dislodge it is — apparently — Sanders not only winning the Democratic nomination for President but, also, each member of the media being allotted one Sanders voter apiece to pinch them mercilessly on the arm.
Bernie Sanders likes George Clooney. But the Vermont senator says Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s use of the actor in a pair of high-priced fundraisers next month is nonetheless “obscene.”
“It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big-money people to fund her campaign,” Sanders said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
Clinton is asking donors for $353,400 for two seats at the head table with herself, Clooney and his wife, Amal, at the April 15 event in San Francisco. The next night, the Clooneys will host a $33,400 per person fundraiser for Clinton at the couple’s Los Angeles home.
“I have a lot of respect for George Clooney. He’s a great actor. I like him,” Sanders said. “But this is the problem with American politics … Big money is dominating our political system. And [my supporters and I] are trying to move as far away from that as we can.”
Sanders, whose campaign has been largely funded by small donations, says his events usually cost “$15 or $50” to get into.
“So it’s not a criticism of Clooney,” he said. “It’s a criticism of a corrupt campaign finance system, where big money interests — and it’s not Clooney, it’s the people coming to this event — have undue influence on the political process.”
It was about 9 p.m. on a recent Saturday, the first I had off in two months, and I was sipping an organic vodka and rosemary cocktail at a restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
My cellphone rang. Bernie Sanders wanted to talk. He was worried that reporters were starting to conclude that he had no chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I don’t want to disturb the media narrative too much,” he said wryly, with his unmistakable Brooklyn inflection. “But don’t write us off.”
The Sanders campaign is unlike any other this election cycle. The packed rallies of liberals, young people and union workers; the anger at Wall Street; the indie rock anthems; and the kiwi slices consumed aboard his campaign plane characterize a movement that feels both unexpected and yet perfectly aligned with this cultural moment.
Covering Mr. Sanders is at times like watching a man almost surprised by his success and eager to make it last. And Mr. Sanders, a senator from Vermont who rarely attracted more than a handful of reporters on Capitol Hill, is now trying to convince the news media that, despite his lagging delegate tally, his cause is not lost.
Unlike our colleagues, especially those who cover Hillary Clinton, we in the Sanders press corps rarely lack access to the candidate. Mr. Sanders holds midair and plane-side news conferences regularly, taking questions from as many as a dozen journalists. I went hiking with his campaign aides through the Grand Canyon before the Arizona primary, and have chatted extensively with his wife, Jane, who sometimes serves bags of trail mix to reporters on late-night flights. Mr. Sanders learned early on to pronounce my name, which not everyone gets right. (It’s YAH-MEESH.)
Some Bernie Sanders supporters have had enough of CNN’s shenanigans when it comes to providing unbiased coverage of the 2016 Presidential primaries. The latest call-out comes from the network “whitewashing” the gray-haired candidate’s supporters.
Earlier this year, CNN called Alaska “the most diverse place in America,” but changed its tune on Sunday when Sanders won the state’s Democratic presidential caucus, as well as Washington and Hawaii caucuses:
In Alaska, he was winning by nearly 60 percentage points with 73% of the delegates in at 6:40 p.m. ET. In Washington state, he was ahead by more than 50 points with 31% of the delegates in. If that margin holds, he’ll outpace then-Sen. Barack Obama’s performance in Washington in 2008. These caucus states — largely white and rural — are the type of places Sanders traditionally does well. In order to win the nomination, he must replicate this success in other, more ethnically diverse states that hold primaries, as he did in Michigan last month.
Many hopped on social media to highlight CNN’s flip-flopping while also accusing the network — owned by Time Warner — of being in Hillary Clinton’s back pockets. One meme floating around said CNN’s biased Bernie Sanders coverage may have something to do with Time Warner “being the eighth largest contributor to Hillary Clinton.”
Bernie’s fans are now trending #BernieMadeMeWhite to point out the tale that CNN is spreading, which is that Bernie Sanders is only capable of garnering Caucasian votes.
Progressive insurgent Bernie Sanders and his famously passionate supporters, propelled by his decisive primary victories last week, are going after Hillary Clinton’s committed
superdelegates in an effort to cut into the former secretary of state’s lead and take the Vermont senator’s campaign all the way to the Democratic convention.
“We have won the last five out of six contests, all of them in landslide
victories,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union” yesterday, adding that he believes his latest primary surge will cause Clinton
superdelegates — especially those in states that backed him — to “rethink their position.”
“I think when they begin
to look at reality, and that is that we are beating Donald Trump by much larger margins than is Secretary Clinton ... I think the
momentum is with us,” said Sanders, who is also planning an aggressive push in Clinton’s home state of New York ahead of the April 19 primary there. “I think their own constituents are
going to say to them, ‘Hey, why don’t you support the
people of our state and vote for Sanders?’ ”
“There are 712 superdelegates made up of Democratic elected officials and other prominent party leaders — who have the power to tip the scales, potentially shifting the vote at the convention to whomever they choose,” said Ilya Sheyman, executive director of pro-Sanders MoveOn.org Political Action, in a petition calling for superdelegates to vote according to the will of voters at the Democratic Convention in July.
The petition, one of several launched on MoveOn’s website, is close to its goal of 200,000 signatures, and in recent days has gained a large number of supporters from the states where Sanders won big this past week.
Nearly all of the committed superdelegates in Hawaii, Washington and Alaska are backing Clinton, despite the fact that Sanders won on those states by large margins in a sweep of Saturday’s primaries.
“This process is undemocratic and fundamentally unfair to Democratic primary voters,” Sheyman said.
In the wake of Bernie Sanders’s three resounding victories Saturday, the political media could be forgiven for asking: When will this all end?
This, after all, was not how Election 2016 was supposed to go. Senator Sanders was not supposed to win caucuses in Washington State, Hawaii, and Alaska in a landslide. Donald Trump was not supposed to be steaming toward the Republican convention with the most delegates.
At some point, the presidential campaign has to reenter political reality. Right?
Actually, maybe not.
True, Hillary Clinton’s path to the Democratic nomination still seems mathematically iron-clad, but when you lose three caucuses all by at least 40 points – as Mrs. Clinton did Saturday – you’re hardly barreling through the checkered flag at full speed.
Aside from the matter of electing a president, Election 2016 is becoming a crucible for modern politics unlike any other for at least a generation. With the ascendance of Sanders, Mr. Trump, and Ted Cruz, the question can honestly be asked: Is American politics entering a new era?
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont challenged Hillary Clinton on Sunday to a debate in New York before the state’s primary on April 19 and expressed concern that Mrs. Clinton might not debate him now that she is far ahead in the race to win the Democratic nomination.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Sanders said he wanted to have a debate in “New York City, upstate, wherever, on the important issues facing New York and, in fact, the country.” The Democrats have held eight debates so far, the last one on March 9 in Miami, and the two campaigns pledged to hold an additional debate in April and another one in May before the final primaries in June.
Asked by Chuck Todd, the host, if he was worried that Mrs. Clinton would not debate him again, Mr. Sanders replied, “Yeah, I do have a little bit of concern about that. But I certainly would like to see a debate in New York State.”
A Clinton campaign spokesman declined to comment about the debate proposal on Sunday.
Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, sent a letter on Sunday to his counterpart in the Clinton campaign, Robby Mook, asserting that the two teams had agreed to have a debate in California in May but had not yet come to terms on an April showdown. Mr. Weaver argued for New York as the location, noting that it had the most delegates at stake in April, and then adopted a taunting tone, suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was afraid to debate Mr. Sanders.
“It is difficult to understand your motivation,” Mr. Weaver wrote. “Can you please explain why New York should not host the April debate? Is the Secretary concerned about debating before the people who twice elected her to the U.S. Senate? Perhaps there is some tactical advantage you are seeking by avoiding a debate in New York but I would remind you that Senator Sanders agreed to debate the secretary in New Hampshire when he was well ahead.”
Bernie Sanders officially has Eli Gold, Chicago campaign manager extraordinaire, in his corner.
Alan Cumming, who plays Gold on The Good Wife, endorsed the Vermont senator for president in a new video posted to Facebook, just ahead of Sanders' big wins in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii on Saturday.
In the clip, Cumming – who is Scottish but became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008, according to the Los Angeles Times – explained why Sanders will get his vote for the Democratic nomination.
"The important thing to remember when you vote for the President of the United States of America is that you're voting for a leader, you're voting for someone who inspires you, and leads you and makes you a better person," Cumming said of the 74-year-old. "I'm really inspired by the messages of Bernie Sanders."
The actor continued, "I think the fact that he believes that America can be a fair and just country, where everyone can have access to healthcare and education, that really inspires me and that makes me want to vote for a better America."
In an exclusive interview with WPTZ NewsChannel 5’s Stephanie Gorin, Sanders talked about the state of the Democratic race, defeating ISIS, smoking marijuana and being away from his family during the campaign.
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Sanders shared points on his foreign policy less than a week after suicide bombers killed at least 30 people in multiple attacks in Brussels.
“I think it is quite possible that if we continue to well arm and well train and provide the support that the Muslim troops need in that area, ISIS could be defeated in a year or two. Crushed. Destroyed. That's clearly what we have to do,” Sanders told Gorin.
The senator, 74, had his usual talking points heard in his campaign stump speeches, but he also touched on personal topics.
When asked about Vermont’s push to legalize recreational marijuana, Sanders admitted to having smoked pot when he was younger.
“You know, I’m not big into marijuana. I have smoked it twice in my life when I was very young and the result for me was I did a lot of coughing,” Sanders told Gorin.
Sanders said he liked the idea of legalizing recreational marijuana usage.