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Evan Halper @ The NY Times
The savvy tech strategy fueling Bernie Sanders' upstart 2016 campaign
Bernie Sanders is more likely to sport a rumpled suit than a hoodie, has no affinity for geeking out on the gadgets of Silicon Valley and may prefer the company of protesters over programmers — yet no candidate running for president is more successfully leveraging technology.
The liberal Vermont senator’s rapid rise from a token leftist to a rival with the potential to disrupt Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton’s path to the nomination confirms that technology, as political data wizards like to say, has become an equalizer in modern campaigns.
“It is extraordinary how this has revolutionized politics in America,” Sanders said in an interview. He is the first to admit that he is no techie. “I consider myself smart enough to hire excellent people who know its importance.”
Betsy Woodruf writing @ The DailyBeast on
the return of Hillary to Capital Hill
Bernie Sanders is trying to kill Hillary Clinton with kindness.
The combative Vermont senator, who’s currently polling in second place (very distant second place, but hey, second place nonetheless) behind Clinton in the contest to be Democrats’ 2016 presidential nominee, rubbed shoulders with her Tuesday on Capitol Hill when she made a quick pit stop there to shmooze with old congressional pals.
After all, just because they are rivals doesn’t mean they can’t have lunch.
The weekly meeting Clinton attended is a closed-door, private luncheon, and usually senators are pretty cagey about details from the conversations they have inside.
Not on Tuesday.
The senators who spoke with The Daily Beast were eager to discuss Clinton’s conversation with them.
Several senators said Sanders joined his fellow liberals to stand and applaud the former secretary of state when she entered the room and indicated that the exchange between the two former colleagues was complimentary.
Damon Linker digs into the awful Trump vs Bernie comparisons:
Sanders is a lifelong democratic socialist specializing in class-based appeals, an idealist who began as an activist and agitator but eventually put his left-wing ideals to the practical, political test. He did hard work from the bottom up, repeatedly running in and losing low-level contests before finally becoming the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and then slowly clawing his way up from there to the House of Representative and then finally to the U.S. Senate.
Trump, meanwhile, inherited something between $40 million and $200 million from his father, used it to become a real estate mogul in a city (New York) where values have gone sky-high for everyone, filed for corporate bankruptcy four times in order to insulate himself from the consequences of bad investments, and ended up with a few billion dollars to his name. Oh, and he's never been elected to a political office of any kind.
When it comes to personal style, the contrast might be even starker.
Sanders shows little interest in tailoring his message to woo the masses. He says what he believes and lives with the consequences. This makes him seem far more honest and sincere than your average politician, but also more earnest, moralistic, and self-righteous. He doesn't appear to value compromise very highly — or to admire modesty and caution. Like many former activists, he seems to pine for a politics of mass mobilization, and to dream of standing at the head of a grassroots movement for High Ideals.
..
It should be obvious that neither Sanders nor Trump is my kind of politician. (My instincts lie in the center of the political spectrum, with my preferences leaning to the left on some issues and to the right on others.) Yet if I had to choose, there'd be no contest. I'd take the class-warring spendthrift moralist over the self-aggrandizing hate-mongering bully any day of the week.
'Friendemies':
Joining the Clinton bandwagon are Sens. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, Bill Nelson, of Florida, Martin Heinrich, of New Mexico, Barbara Mikulski, of Maryland and Claire McCaskill, of Missouri. The view among congressional Democrats is that Sanders simply cannot win because he’s too extreme and calls himself a socialist.
Sanders has continued to push back against that view in interviews, including in an appearance this past Sunday on CBS News’ “Face The Nation.” Responding to similar charges from Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a smiling Sanders noted that his proposals to raise the minimum wage and expand social security are viewed favorably by the American people in polls.
“I think in terms … of who’s out of touch with the American people, I would say the Republican Party is,” he said.
That will be a tough case for Sanders to make as long as elected Democrats in Washington are trying to portray him in the same light as Republicans.
Celina Jimenez on Bernie's Topics In Phoenix:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will be making his way into the Valley later this week to discuss education, climate, and personal and political financing.
Sanders and local leaders will host a Phoenix Town Meeting on Saturday, July 18 at Comerica Theater.
The meeting will discuss thoughts and plans regarding climate change, prices of college education, income inequality, and big money in politics.
Sanders wants the rural vote:
“So few have so much and so many have so little,” he said.
Sanders said the national minimum wage of $7.25 must be gradually lifted to a $15 per hour “living wage.” One way to do that is with a “major jobs program” that would include rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure.
Sanders said he Democrats can compete in rural areas where most voters support the GOP. He said they are voting against their own needs because Republicans use “wedge issues” such as abortion, gun rights and gay rights,
He said Democrats must admit to voters that they disagree on some matters, but share a desire to provide Social Security, improved education and better-paying jobs.
“That’s a challenge, that’s a challenge we have to accept,” he said. “Let’s get on the offensive.”
Nate Silver:
Perhaps you can perceive a slight downturn in Clinton’s favorability numbers among Democrats in New Hampshire — they’re now in the high 70s instead of the mid-80s, while her unfavorable ratings have grown by a few percentage points. Her ratings are still very good, however, and (given the noise in the polling) the change isn’t statistically significant.1
Instead, it’s the Vermont senator’s ratings that have shifted dramatically. In Iowa, Sanders’s favorability rating has grown from about 35 percent at the start of the year to 60 percent now. And in New Hampshire, it has improved from around 45 percent to 65 percent. Some of that is from improved name recognition, but Sanders’s unfavorable ratings haven’t increased even as he’s become better known, remaining at about 10 percent in each state.
The Bernie Sanders surge, in other words, has a lot more to do with Bernie Sanders than with Hillary Clinton. More specifically, it has to do with his left-populist politics
Nick Gass @ Politico:
Bernie's Still Moving Up In Polls:
Among Democrats and those leaning toward the Democratic Party, Clinton picked up the support of 51 percent, down from 57 percent in June and 60 percent in April.
Sanders came in second with 17 percent, followed by former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb with 1 percent each. Lincoln Chafee, the former governor and senator from Rhode Island, registered no support.
If Vice President Joe Biden were to run, however, the results suggest that he would take some votes from Clinton. He has not announced his intentions, but poll respondents backed him with 13 percent, just behind Sanders.
Among voters who said they were likely to vote for Biden in the event of his candidacy, 68 percent said they currently support Clinton, while 18 percent said they are backing another candidate, with 14 percent undecided.
My transcript of Bernie's speech taking on Reagan Imperialism did not make the Rec-List yesterday but it has managed to reach almost 4,500 facebook shares already:
There are times when one wishes one was smarter than one is so that when one looks out at the world and sees the problems one wishes one knew the answers and I dont know the answers. Sometimes I think one wishes one is dumber than one is so one does not have to look out into the world and see the pain that is out there and the horrible situations that are out there, and not know what to do.
...
The real challenge of the civilization and the US and it is a difficult challenge and noone has easy answers. In a world which is economically disintergrating . The conditions in the 3rd world today are as real as they have ever been. And the challenge, the real challenge for tough people... Reagan thinks he is tough... the challenge is how to use our resources, our wealth, our energy not in military adventurism, but in working with people through the third world. In cooperation and mutual respect so that children dont have to starve. Die of diseases which our people know the answer to. Where people can read and write where people can learn to relate to each other. That is the challenge we face. And the guns, and the bombs and the contras are going in exactly the wrong direction.
Jonathan Topaz @ Politico details
Bernies 15.2 Million Dollar Haul
More than 76 percent of the Vermont senator’s donations were $200 or less, amounting to just under $10.5 million of the $13.7 his campaign raised through the end of June. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton — despite raising an eye-popping $47.5 million in that time period — got just $8 million from donations of $200 or less, making up less than 17 percent of her haul.
The candidate closest to Sanders in small-dollar percentage is Republican retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, a conservative favorite who has galvanized the grass roots despite little campaign infrastructure. About 67 percent of his $8.5 million came from donations of $200 or less; the next highest for any reported candidate thus far is below 50 percent. Just 3 percent of donations to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for example, were $200 or less.
The small-dollar donations show the significant grass-roots influence in Sanders’ liberal insurgency, which has attracted huge crowds around the country and has him rising in the polls against Clinton. And they demonstrate another contrast with Clinton, whose campaign had tried in recent days to play up its small-dollar donor base by asking for $1 donations before the June 30 filing deadline and boasting that 91 percent of the donations were $100 or less.
Duncan Cooper @ The Fader:
Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Is Following Lil B On Twitter
Now, Lil B is a seeker. He reaches out. He tries to be as informed as he can, like any thoughtful voter. So in addition to Hillary Clinton, he also follows a number of Republicans running for president: Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum. None of them follow him back—not a single, sorry one.
But there is one wise presidential candidate who does follow Lil B. His name is Bernie Sanders, and like Lil B he is establishing himself as a true man of the people. Sanders' core issue is income inequality, which he intends to fight with higher taxes on the wealthy, a $15/hr minimum wage, public health care for everyone, and other expanded social services. His biggest donors are not banks but labor unions. He wants to overturn Citizens United, which infamously treats election donations from corporations like they’re coming from people. Fifty years ago, he marched on Washington with Dr. King. He's an ex-hippie who wants to legalize marijuana. And of the 999 people he currently follows on Twitter, one of them is Lil B.