"Let me begin by making a very short statement so the people of Kentucky will understand what kind of president I will be. And that is I understand your new governor, Gov. Bevin, is busy cutting healthcare and cutting education," he said.
"So if you can imagine the kind of governor Gov. Bevin is, think about Bernie Sanders as a president doing exactly the opposite," he said to cheers from a partisan crowd.
Sanders, who is trying to overtake Clinton in the number of delegates, spoke for 59 minutes on the back of an old Louisville & Nashville Pullman at the Historic Railpark and Train Museum in Bowling Green as temperatures dipped to near 50 degrees.
Sanders was toughest on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he blamed for blocking legislation last year that would have protected coal miners' pensions.
"The message to Sen. McConnell, who I've known for many years, is that right now we have a major pension crisis all over the country," he said.
"The truth is that the United Mine Workers pension plan today, for a variety of reasons, is on the brink of failure. Some 90,000 workers and retirees are at risk of having their pension benefits slashed by 30, 40 or 50 percent," he said.
Despite a bipartisan agreement to protect the pensions, "at the last minute, Sen. McConnell, the most powerful member of the United States Senate, removed that provision from the budget deal," Sanders said.
"Frankly, it is very hard for me to understand why he would remove a provision that benefitted so many people in his very own state," he said.
I think he is the most honest out there, I think he actually has the concerns of America at hand in his campaign and I'm a big fan of his and I'm happy that he's running and we're here to support him." -- David Muffett, Presbyterian youth minister from Bowling Green, Ky.
"I think Bernie's definitely going to start the political revolution in America and I think it's about time for him. I love his momentum, his spirit and everything." -- Sarah Norris, who dragged her date, Kevin Wilson, to the Sanders rally before going to her prom at Grayson County High School
"The most important thing is, I work for just a little bit over minimum wage and he's looking to support those who are kind of living in between the poverty line. ... It's just so many people out her struggling. It's a shame." -- Johnnie Little, a plumber from St. Louis, Missouri
"I actually like how his voting record matches his stance. His voting record is really consistent." -- Derek Wilham, part-time worker at Staples in Bowling Green, Ky.
Bernie is for the people and he always has been. He has foresight. When you look at his positions, in 1983, he started the first pride parade in Burlington, Vt., Hillary didn't come around to LGBT rights until 2013. That's two decades of foresight." -- Samantha Bates, a teacher from Nashville.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talked health care, the economy and other issues in an unscheduled stop with supporters outside a Panera restaurant in Elizabethtown Saturday afternoon.
Sanders called the stop an "unusual town meeting, but 'what the heck.' It's an unusual campaign," as he ticked off several issues amid cheers from those gathered around him in a parking lot.
"Here in Kentucky, you have a pension fund administered by the United Mine Workers which is in serious trouble," Sanders said.
"We are going to have to do very, very well to earn more 'pledged' delegates than Clinton has," Sanders said, referring to the closed Kentucky primary election with 55 delegates at stake. Another 61 are in play in the Oregon primary, also Tuesday. "If there's a large voter turnout, we will win," Sanders said. He has previously won 19 states but trails Hillary Clinton in delegate count.
Sanders brought forward people struggling to pay medical and student debt to make his points.
"We need an economy that works for all of us, not just the one percent," Sanders said.
Supporters of Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders got to “feel the Bern” with Sanders in person Saturday afternoon at his campaign headquarters, located on East Main Street.
Sanders flew into the Capital City Airport on a private jet and was ushered into a vehicle in the company of secret service and local law enforcement officers, along with members of his entourage. The candidate’s first stop was at Starbucks on U.S. 127.
Starbucks employee Chuma Enej said he went to the bathroom and when he came out he saw Bernie Sanders standing at the counter.
Enej said Sanders spoke to the employees and the customers for a few minutes about the importance of the upcoming election before leaving the store.
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The next stop was at his campaign headquarters where members of his security detail tried to keep a standing room-only crowd pushed back far enough to give the Vermont Senator a small path to the front of the room.
Sanders told an adoring crowd that it was important for them to get the word out so that everyone goes to the polls on Tuesday.
He said that revolution is needed to force change for the people in terms of free healthcare, free education at public universities and working to end income inequality.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is banking on a major turnout in Oregon's primary this week to power his underdog presidential campaign to a badly needed victory against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
"If voter turnout is low, if young people and working people don't send in their ballots, we will probably lose," Sanders said during a Saturday phone interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. He was calling from Bowling Green, Kentucky, which also holds it primary Tuesday.
"Needless to say, what I hope we'll be seeing is a very large voter turnout."
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"Oregon is one of the most progressive states in the United States, and the agenda we have is the agenda that the people of Oregon feel comfortable with," he said, rattling off the mainstays of his campaign, including reform of a "corrupt campaign finance" system and a "rigged economy" and his call for free tuition at public colleges.
"If you look at my agenda and my record in Congress, I think it corresponds to where the voters of Oregon are, and if voter turnout is high, we will win," the Vermont senator said.
The Nevada Democratic Convention lasted for at least 16 hours on Saturday, but ended even more controversially than it began. The Convention began with a highly-debated decision to change the Convention rules despite not getting the needed majority of vocal votes. But at the end of the night, when a motion was made to recount the delegates, the chair of the Convention closed out the meeting without even giving the delegates’ a chance to say “nay.” Now it’s looking like legal action will be the next step. (To see a full livestream from Saturday’s convention, see our post here.)
Several motions were put on the floor near the end of the Nevada convention, including a motion for a recount of the delegates. This motion was seconded and would have gone up for a vote, but everything was stopped short by Roberta Lange, the Nevada State Democratic Chair. It happens in the video above, right around the 4:00 mark.
Rachel Avery, who was at the Convention, told Heavy that before there was a chance for the motions to be voted on, Lange came on stage and voted herself into power to overrule the motions. “She made a motion, someone on her staff seconded it, called a vote final without hearing any nays,” Avery said.
Jason Llanes, who was also livestreaming the Convention all day, confirmed this on his video.
“She (Lange) put in a new motion of her own, had someone second it, called for yays and nays and passed it before the nays even spoke,” he reported.
The Convention is not reconvening tomorrow, it was announced. Instead, protestors will have to pursue legal avenues.
“It was politically heartbreaking to see,” one person told Llanes on his livestream feed. “This is supposed to be about … bringing us together… We didn’t get any voice… Nothing… There were a chunk of Bernie supporters who would have supported Hillary. Would have. But when you divide the room the way they did…”
Adryenn Ashley posted several live videos (below) from inside the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, where arcane secondary rounds of the delegate selection process of Nevada's Democratic caucus erupted into chaos Saturday night. Bernie Sanders supporters demanded 64 rejected pro-Sanders delegates listed in a "minority report" prepared by their campaign be allowed to participate in selecting delegates for the national convention.
DNC leaders refused to reconsider their decision not to allow this, adjourned, and fled the building amid a chorus of boos; leaving hotel security and local police officers to handle the angry Sanders supporters.
Earlier in the day, the Sanders camp objected to several of their delegates being disqualified from voting for administrative reasons, and booed Sen. Barbara Boxer when she called for unity. "If you're booing me, you're booing Bernie Sanders," she told them. "Go ahead, boo yourselves out of this election."
A member of the rules committee called the act of disallowing votes for purely administrative reasons a violation of the spirit of the values of our nation.
Nevada State Democratic Convention organizers are shooting back against allegations that they unfairly disqualified some would-be Bernie Sanders delegates.
The controversy comes after Hillary Clinton took seven of the 12 delegates up for grabs at the Saturday convention. She won by 33 delegates in a field of nearly 3,400.
A member of the convention credentials committee presented a "minority report" after the announcement, criticizing the committee's decision to disqualify nearly 60 potential Sanders delegates and saying it didn't align with Democratic values.
Party officials said the ineligible Sanders supporters weren't registered as Democrats by a May 1 deadline or didn't provide necessary personal information. They said eight would-be Clinton supporters were also disqualified.
The state party said it abided by rules adopted by Clinton and Sanders supporters alike.
If Bernie Sanders wins the Oregon primary on Tuesday, his victory will have been secured back in April.
Oregon has a closed primary, meaning anyone who wants to vote for a Democratic candidate needs to be registered with the party. The Sanders campaign, which has lost every other state with a closed primary, launched a statewide effort here to get independents and new voters to sign up as Democrats before the April 26 deadline.
Volunteers worked the phones, made the rounds at college campuses and staked out farmers’ markets, targeting places where the young and the liberal gather.
“You say, 'Hey, you’re feeling the Bern?' They come over and register,” said Monte Jarvis, the Oregon state director for the Sanders campaign.
The number of voters who switched their party affiliation this year so they could vote for a presidential candidate in the primary neared 130,000, and most of them signed up as Democrats, according to the Oregon secretary of state’s office.
Although undoubtedly some of those new Democratic voters will cast ballots for Hillary Clinton, the registration effort could end up as the most critical part of the Sanders campaign in Oregon. The Vermont senator has been expected to pull off a victory here despite trailing Clinton by a wide margin in a recent poll.
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Out of the 92,000 voters who signed up as Democrats this year, nearly 29,000 did so in the last two weeks before the deadline.
“It was great. It completely opened up our universe of potential voters,” said Kelli Kuhlman, a 28-year-old environmental researcher who helped organize squads of volunteers for the registration effort.
Does the best candidate for American women have to be a woman? Not necessarily. Although we often advocate for gender parity in politics, let's not forget that sometimes, a woman with dangerous policies is not the better choice. Exhibit A: Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) routinely votes against the Affordable Care Act, paid sick leave, mandated paid maternity leave, and abortion rights. Someone who identifies as a woman doesn't always promote pro-women policies. So, what do we do about Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is up against a woman accused of playing the so-called woman card? Well, Sanders has stood up for women's rights in the past, making him a male politician worth a second look.
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Although a report released by Harvard University in late April showed that Clinton is the overwhelming favorite among millennial voters in a general election between her and likely GOP nominee Donald Trump, Sanders remains the only candidate with a net positive rating among millennial voters. Nearly 55 percent of millennial voters still favor Sanders, and would take him over Clinton. However, when it came to which candidate would be better for women, even millennial voters were undecided: Clinton led Sanders 29 percent to 25 percent, but a whopping 32 percent of millennials said they were still undecided on that issue.
What makes those young voters so undecided? Well, it might be Sanders' track record, which overwhelmingly supports women's rights. Here are five times Sanders has supported women's rights throughout his political tenure:
Violence Against Women Act
Sanders was one of the original supporters of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which was drafted by another pro-women politician, then-Sen. Joe Biden. "Mr. Speaker, it is disturbing that the death of Nicole Simpson, a tragedy affecting the rich and the famous, should be necessary to force us to take notice of the horror of domestic violence," Sanders said in a speech on the Senate floor in 1994 during a debate on the federal crime bill. Sanders argued for VAWA to be included and passed with the crime bill.
Mark Jendrysik, a political science professor at the University of North Dakota, wasn't surprised Sanders decided to spend a day campaigning in North Dakota, even though the deep-red state is essentially a nonfactor in the Democratic Party nationally. The state will have only 23 delegates at the Democratic National Convention, less than 0.05 percent of the 4,763 available.
"North Dakota's delegates are not going to be pivotal in any Democratic convention ever," he said. Sanders's goal is "more spreading his message and continuing to build what he sees as a movement."
If Sanders wins the state's caucus, "It would certainly add to his claim that, 'The views I represent should be listened to,' " Jendrysik said.
Sanders has said that he may have a shot at the nomination if superdelegates--Democratic party leaders who can vote for whoever they want--shift their support from Clinton to him. But Headrick said that was a pipe dream, and would only be possible in the unlikely event Sanders surpasses Clinton in pledged delegates.
Though he's not aware of any statewide polls in the Democratic race, Jendrysik said he expects Sanders will win in North Dakota. He's done well in whiter-than-average, low-population states that eschew a primary in favor of a caucus, which tends to reward candidates with more fervent supporters.
The Clinton campaign's decision to have the former president, Hillary Clinton's top surrogate, headline a Fargo rally on Friday, May 20, was probably a direct reaction to Sanders coming, Jendrysik said.
"It's bad to be seen as ignoring the state," he said.
There are lots of ways to support a political candidate, from making phone calls to donating money. Some turn to prayer, Christian or otherwise. Add Wiccan rituals to the list.
Lafleur, a patent agent, has already hosted “Beanies for Bernie” knitting parties and helped out at the senator’s rallies. But she had never performed a Wiccan ritual for Sanders before, and if it was going to happen somewhere, it would be here in Portland, a place she described as a much more welcoming community than where she grew up in Michigan.
She advertised the event on a Sanders volunteer website, calling on Wiccans, pagans, goddess worshipers, atheists or anyone who is spiritually open-minded to “engage with a community of like minded individuals.” Participants were asked to bring a canned good for the Oregon Food Bank.
The event caught the eye of a handful of reporters, as well as a man who said he runs a YouTube channel called Laughing at Liberals. In the end, observers were almost as numerous as participants, who included a 24-year-old mother who does Tarot readings and brought her toddler, a 43-year-old researcher, a 53-year-old semi-retired chef and a 36-year-old food service employee with his dog.
They gathered around a small rug with four candles, flowers and an imitation ballot box adorned with Bernie stickers. Each person was handed a replica ballot and took turns declaring what they would like to see changed — ending private prisons, bringing back Glass-Steagal financial regulations, labeling genetically modified foods and increasing access to college. A reporter for a local alternative weekly who participated in the ritual asked for more transparent public records laws.
Lafleur reminded participants to stay engaged in local politics, not just the presidential race.
Pundits have jumped on the fact that Bernie Sanders is so popular amongst young people. He has galvanized a whole generation into getting politically aware and socially active, making art, going to rallies, creating songs and memes and animations. Young people have been inspired by him like no other political candidate in living memory. His rallies rival rock concerts. The youth love him.
But that’s a bad thing. Millennials love Bernie Sanders, which is why we shouldn’t listen to him. That’s how the story goes anyway. Millennials are brattish, ignorant, self-centered, and uninformed, don’t you know? They are immoral and narcissistic and know nothing, so an endorsement from them is a reason to ignore him.
The youth of today are disruptive, lazy, and far more decadent than previous generations. Right?
“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?” said Plato, in the fourth century BCE.
Here’s the thing: the kids are more socially aware than you, better informed, more networked, more tolerant, kinder, less intoxicated, and less criminal than you. Teen births have plummeted since the 1990s, along with abortions. That’s right, not only are 90 percent less kids getting pregnant, they are also not having as many abortions. They’re better at contraception, but that’s not the only reason they’re not falling pregnant — they’re also having less sex. They also drink less, commit far less crime, use less drugs than the previous generations across the board including drugs like marijuana, meth, and heroin. They’re happier and report less thoughts of suicide, have better relationships with their parents, carry fewer guns than we did, they exercise more, and they even wear their seat belts more than we did.
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There’s a name for it. It’s called juvenoia, a term coined by academic David Finkelhor and brought to the internet’s attention by Vsauce; it’s a knee-jerk biological reaction for which there is no real explanation yet. Humans become suspicious of the youth as they grow older. Every generation has thought itself smarter than the previous and wiser than the next, as exemplified in this beautiful XKCD cartoon. That just happens in our brains. It’s not real, it’s not evidence-based; it’s just our brains trolling us, probably for some biological tribal reason that is no longer relevant to our way of life now.
In fact, it’s not only irrelevant, it’s dangerous. This year, more than ever, with our own species on the precipice of extinction, we would be downright stupid not to listen to the voice of our young people who are screaming “wrong way, go back!” As the planet warms at an alarming rate and our bizarre obsession with fueling the bank accounts of oil magnates continues, the fresh voices of alarm from our newest humans as they open their eyes to the idiocy of our past mistakes should be heard and enacted.