Bernie Sanders celebrated New Year’s Eve with supporters chanting “Feel the Bern” while “Disco Inferno” blared on loudspeakers at the historic Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
“Together, we have an opportunity to make 2016 a year to remember,” Sanders told twin crowds of 1,000 packed into two ballrooms a few hours before midnight. “You here in Iowa have a chance to make 2016 a year that people in the future will look back on and say. ‘Thank you, Iowa, for leading the political revolution.'”
In one month, Sanders supporters in Iowa will begin the process of nominating the Democratic Party presidential nominee. He told them they have a chance to make our government “represent all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.”
He envisioned a country where all people have health care, where we end “the grotesque level of wealth and income inequality that exists today,” where our energy system is transformed, where “we will end the disgrace of the United States having more people in jail than any other country and where we reform the criminal justice system and end institutional racism in America.
All of this can happen and Iowa is where it can begin, Sanders said. But it won’t happen, he added, “unless millions of people from Iowa and across the country stand up and say loudly and clearly enough is enough.”
Hundreds of Bernie Sanders’ supporters started the New Year’s Eve party earlier Thursday with the man himself.
The Democratic presidential hopeful talked about his goals for the new year, keeping in mind the Iowa caucuses, which are about a month away.
“Right here in Iowa and a week later going to New Hampshire and then to Nevada and then to South Carolina, we have an opportunity together to say that the United States government has got to represent all of us and not just a handful of billionaires,” Sanders said.
Iowans said as they reflect on the new year, they are “feeling the Bern."
“I love seeing him on New Year’s Eve,” said Katelyn Hoesing, of Ankeny. “There’s nowhere else I would rather be.”
“It’s pretty intense,” said Aaron Wingert, of Des Moines. “It’s pretty exciting that he’s here in Iowa. He showed up in Des Moines for New Year’s. I mean, people are jealous.
This holiday season, Sanders changed his routine and flew almost exclusively on private chartered planes with members of his traveling staff -- taking at least four trips.
Most recently, the campaign confirmed, a Gulfstream 200, took the Senator and some staff from Burlington, Vermont two days after Christmas and then from Las Vegas, Nevada to Moline, Illinois for campaign events in eastern Iowa this week.
Days before the holiday, a private jet whisked the team from Omaha, Nebraska to Chicago, Illinois in order to fit more campaign events into this tight schedule.
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His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs told ABC News in a statement: “Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.
“While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.”
Recent polls have consistently shown Bernie Sanders as the favorite Democratic presidential candidate of millennials. But the Vermont senator’s own generation isn’t feeling the Bern so much.
Sanders, 74, said in an interview here Thursday that he plans to step up outreach to senior citizens in the month remaining before the Iowa caucuses, acknowledging that he is doing “poorly” against Hillary Clinton among older voters.
Sanders and his aides say they will be placing television ads to air during programs watched by large numbers of seniors and adding campaign stops at retirement communities, among other strategies -- some of which are already underway.
“What our main task will be is to express to older people that there has been nobody in Congress who has fought harder for the needs of senior citizens,” Sanders said. “I don’t think a lot of seniors know that, and in the next month, we’re going to do our best to get that word out.”
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In Iowa, some of the precinct caucuses on Feb. 1 will be held at retirement centers. Sanders aides said that they are looking at holding campaign events in those communities in coming weeks in an attempt to bolster the senator’s support among those likely to participate.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, whose large crowds propelled his candidacy over the summer, closed out the year Thursday by touting the size of his recent rallies in the nation’s first caucus state.
“Often as not, the turnout has been double what we expected,” the Vermont senator told an overflow audience at a New Year’s Eve party he hosted here at a downtown hotel, capping off a three-day swing through eastern Iowa.
Aides distributed a tally showing that more than 34,000 people have now attended events hosted by the Sanders campaign since May, a figure that is certainly higher than either of his Democratic rivals. Sanders said he believes he’ll have reached close to 50,000 people by the Feb. 1 caucuses.
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In an interview Thursday afternoon, Sanders pointed to crowd sizes from this trip: 600 in Muscatine, 1,850 in Davenport, 500 in Keokuk, 800 in Ottumwa and 500 in Knoxville.
“It makes me think we have some momentum that can carry us over the top here in Iowa,” he said.
Bernie Sanders will return to Massachusetts Saturday, this time venturing into Hampshire County.
Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who is pursuing the Democratic nomination for president, will appear at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center, 151 Presidents Drive, at 1 p.m. to give a talk called “Future to Believe in.”
Doors open at noon and the event is free and open to the public.
Sanders will also hold a similar event in Worcester on Saturday at 5 p.m. at North High School, 140 Harrington Way.
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The campaign is suggesting that people who wish to attend get their names on a list by visiting:
go.berniesanders.com/page/event/detail/rally/4rh3c.
There has been a lot of talk about Sanders in Worcester, and this time it has nothing to do with the road conditions. Presidential Candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is holding his first Worcester rally on Saturday.
The "Future to Believe In" rally will held at North High School, 150 Harrington Way, at 5 p.m. Doors open at 4 p.m. and the candidate's campaign is suggesting people arrive early and to pre-register on the campaign's website. Admission is free.
A campaign spokesperson said North High has a capacity of just under 2,000 people and that the campaign expects a sizeable turnout. Sanders drew 6,000 people to a rally in Springfield in October; that was about double what organizers had expected.
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Worcester campaign volunteer Chris Horton said there is an expectation of a good turnout in Worcester.
"People have been wondering when Bernie was coming to Worcester for a long time," Horton said. "There is a lot of excitement about this."
The Washington Post's longtime progressive columnist Harold Meyerson published his final weekly piece for the paper yesterday. Among the mourners: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
"It's extremely unfortunate," said Sanders in a statement to the Post, which he later adapted into a tweet. "There are very few progressive voices out there in the corporate media. Harold is one of the best. Harold's insights into the decline of the middle class and wealth and income inequality will be sorely missed by readers of The Washington Post."
On the campaign trail, Sanders has wound critiques of the media into many of his speeches and Q&As. His supporters have echoed that, asking editors and programmers why the surprisingly robust support for a self-avowed democratic socialist has received a fraction of the coverage granted to Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
Meyerson, whose column appeared in the Post for 13 years, took a pro-labor approach to politics that often mirrored that of Sanders. "I've still encountered just two avowed democratic socialists in my daily rounds through the nation's capital: Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders... and the guy I see in the mirror when I shave," wrote Meyerson in a 2009 piece.
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In an email Meyerson sent to some media contacts last night, he characterized the final pre-cancellation discussions with Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post. Hiatt, according to Meyerson, said the column was suffering from "poor social media metrics" and "excessive discussion of two topics: worker power (decline thereof) and alternative corporate structures."
One month before the crucial Iowa caucuses, Sen. Bernard Sanders‘ White House campaign is getting a big boost from Hollywood.
Political analysts say the new film “The Big Short,” a star-studded flick that highlights the greed and incompetence that led to the 2008 financial meltdown, at its core wraps the Democratic 2016 hopeful’s campaign message into a relatively simple two-hour package.
The movie, which has pulled in $22 million in domestic ticket sales so far against a $28 million budget and, as of Thursday, ranks sixth on U.S. charts, makes no bones about its political leanings. Characters on multiple occasions express shock and outrage that virtually no Wall Street figures were jailed in the aftermath of the 2008 crash that led to millions of Americans losing their homes, pensions and savings.
Mr. Sanders, a Vermont senator and self-described socialist seeking the presidency as a Democrat, has put greater regulation of Wall Street, the dismantling of big banks and greater federal regulation of financial markets at the center of his campaign. Specialists say “The Big Short” — which boasts an A-list cast including Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale — can only help get Mr. Sanders‘ message across to the broader American movie-going public.
“‘The Big Short’ is an argument for Sanders,” said Matthew Dallek, an assistant professor of political management at George Washington University, arguing the film encapsulates the anger and resentment many Americans still harbor toward the
so-called “1 percent.”
In the late 1950s, a few years after the Korean War, a 17-year-old young man ran for president of James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. While other high school candidates campaigned on the promises of rule changes, this young man's platform was based on a proposal to offer scholarships to Korean orphans affected by the war, who couldn't otherwise afford to go to school. That young man was Bernie Sanders.
"He didn't win. He came third out of three," Larry Sanders, the presidential candidate's big brother and only sibling said with a chuckle. "And, in fact, the guy who won adopted [Bernie's scholarship program]."
Larry, himself a politician on the local level, spoke with Mic at his home in Oxford, England, where he immigrated as a young man. Despite the move, Larry has maintained the same Brooklyn accent for which his brother is famous.
Bernie and Larry's parents died when they were young, making Larry one of the few people left who's known "Bernard" intimately throughout his life.
Larry, 80, sat back in his armchair by the window, surrounded by Christmas cards and decorations. Sipping from a mug of coffee, he regaled Mic with stories of their youth and explained why he believes his brother is the key to restoring equality in America.
The Bernie News Roundup is a voluntary, non-campaign associated roundup of news, media, & other information related to Bernie Sanders' run for President.
More information about Bernie & The Issues @ feelthebern.org
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