As he battles for a primary win in California, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told cheering supporters in Vista on Sunday that he can beat Donald Trump — “and beat him badly” — in a head-to-head matchup in November.
It was a message not just to voters in the Golden State.
“I say to every Democrat in this country and those delegates who are going to the convention in Philadelphia, if you want the strongest candidate to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president, we are that campaign,” Sanders said during a rally at Rancho Buena Vista High School.
The Vermont senator pointed to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that showed him 15 points ahead of the billionaire and presumed Republican nominee. The same poll had Democratic rival Hillary Clinton besting Trump by three points.
Sanders’ roughly hourlong speech, before an estimated crowd of 7,250, covered familiar stump-speech ground: He railed against Wall Street, called for universal health care and free college education and raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Supporters cheered him throughout the address, occasionally breaking into chants of “Bernie, Bernie.” One big crowd pleaser on the sunny day came when Sanders put on a Rancho Buena Vista High School baseball cap midway through the event.
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Lucas Factor, 37, of Poway said Sanders’ ideas “hit home with every American household.”
“He inspires me,” Factor said. “I agree with a lot of what he believes in, helping out the less fortunate. He represents the 99 percent.”
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders brought his campaign against a “rigged” economy and political system to a boisterous, nearly full Irvine Meadows Amphitheater on Sunday, expressing optimism that he will win the nomination despite a disadvantage in party delegates.
“The reason this campaign is doing so well is that we’re doing something radical in modern politics,” he said in an hour-long speech at the 16,000-seat venue. “We’re telling the truth.
“It is true that billionaries and super PACs are buying elections. The truth is that if we do not allow the Donald Trumps of the world to divide us up, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.”
The stage was decked with giant American and California flags. Behind Sanders, several hundred supporters waved blue signs with the message “A Future to Believe In.”
They punctuated his speech with cheers, applause, chants of “Bernie! Bernie!” and, at one point, “Si se puede!” the Spanish version of “Yes, we can!”
In a wide-ranging speech, the Vermont senator hit familiar themes of free public university tuition and health care, paid family leave for new parents, tighter restrictions on Wall Street, higher taxes on the wealthy, comprehensive immigration reform, a $15 hourly minimum wage and investment in infrastructure
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Aliso Viejo resident Lauretta Brown, 65, walked out of the amphitheater after Sanders' rally saying “It was a privilege to see him live.”
She had been a Republican for more than 20 years, she said, campaigning to get GOP candidates on the board of supervisors and other agencies. But she has switched parties, she explained, because "billionaires need to pay their fair share."
Just prior to going on stage, Sanders spoke one-on-one with CBS2/KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan.
Sanders lashed out at what he called “the corrupt campaign finance system” an “an absurd” delegates-selection system.
Bryan began by asking Sanders about his criticism of the Democratic party. And his zero chance of winning. Doesn’t he get the math?
“Here’s the math,” he said. “there are polls that came out recently where Hillary Clinton actually lost to Donald Trump. So part of the math, is which candidate stands the best chance to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States? — and that’s me.”
If he does win the California primary, does he expect a divided convention?
“I think we have a realistic chance in the sense that if we do really well in California, and in the other five states, and the non-state primaries, it will be possible for us to get 50 percent of the pledged delegates,” Sanders said.
Bryan asked Sanders about the fear that many Democrats have that his continued “fight” could be splintering the party. He became fired up and attacked the Democratic party establishment.
“I look at it very differently,” Sanders said, “those, some Democrats, they are Senator Clinton’s supporters. I look at it, as here in California, more than one million people have registered to vote. Which as I understand is historical, it’s never happened. I look at tonight, where we’ll have 7-10,000 people there. And the Democratic party has to understand, if they’re going to be successful, they’re going to have to open up and bring new people in. And they have to bring in, the people who do not necessarily go to fancy, high-priced fundraisers.”
Before speaking at a rally at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Vista, Sanders spoke with FOX5 reporter Abbey Gibb. He acknowledged the stakes could not be higher in California, where he still trails Clinton by almost double digits. To win California, Sanders said it will take a historic grassroots effort.
Sunday marked his eight millionth individual campaign contribution, more than any other in history.
“We are taking our message directly to the people that we can’t continue a situation in which the middle class continues to decline while all new income wealth goes to the top," he said.
Unlike New York state, California has an open primary allowing people regardless of party affiliation to vote. Because of that, Sanders feels confident he can take this delegate rich state.
"We have always done much better than Clinton with independents and it will play out right here in California," he said.
A major issue here in San Diego is immigration reform. Sanders wants to end the current deportation policies and said he would use executive power to pass that reform if he had to.
"Trump's views are prosperous . They’re hateful. The idea you’re going to throw 11 million people out of this country is absurd it’s not worth talking about," he added.
Bernie Sanders’ image gazes out from a corner storefront in Boyle Heights, a Hispanic enclave known for its plump burritos and a plaza where mariachis strum guitars. It’s here that his campaign is going house to house to cut into Hillary Clinton’s advantage with Latino voters.
The oversized painting of the silver-haired Sanders was created by local artists. Perched in a front window, it’s a centerpiece in an art gallery-turned-unofficial campaign office, where owner Mercedes Hart displays an array of T-shirts, lapel buttons — even pink underwear — bearing the Vermont senator’s name.
Out front, Sanders campaign workers have set up a table to register voters and organize volunteers, who will go out to knock on doors and stuff mailboxes with campaign literature.
“I don’t ever feel like I believe politicians, but I believe him,” says Hart, 35, who lived for years in Mexico. Like many Sanders’ devotees, she is a first-time voter, taken up by his concern for workaday Americans in an economy divided by haves and have-nots.
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Clinton ran up a commanding 2-to-1 edge with Hispanics when she carried California over Barack Obama in the state’s 2008 presidential primary. But an independent Field Poll last month revealed a much closer contest and a familiar divide in the electorate: Clinton had a 7-point edge with Hispanics overall, while Sanders was the choice by a nearly 3-to-1 margin for Latinos under age 40.
Meanwhile, voter registration among young Hispanics, those age 18 to 29, has been climbing, and they lean to Sanders.
Sanders “has a real potential to win Latinos” in California, predicted Sanders campaign pollster Ben Tulchin. “He needs an influx of young Latinos and he’s getting it, it’s happening.”
On the crowded football field of Ranch Buena Vista High School, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders endorsed a California measure that will be on this November’s ballot to legalize recreational use of marijuana.
“We have got to rethink the so-called war on drugs,” Sanders told thousands of supporters. “For the last 30 years millions of Americans have received police records for the possession of marijuana and you know that if you are 19 years of age and you’ve got a police record, and you try to get a job, it is not so easy.”
“A lot of lives have been ruined as a result of those police records,” continued Sanders, a U.S. Senator from Vermont. “Right now under the Federal Controlled Substance Act, marijuana is listed as a Schedule One drug, right next to heroin. That is pretty crazy and that is why we are going to take marijuana out of the Federal Controlled Substance Act.”
Noting the ballot initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana in California, Sanders said if the same measure were to be on the ballot in his home state of Vermont, he would vote for it.
The cheers from the crowd of thousands were voluble.
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In his speech, Sanders also inveighed against what he called the “raging crisis” of opiate and heroin addiction in the United States.
“This is a crisis that has impacted people in every part of this country, including my own state where it is a very serious problem,” Sanders said. “It is a crisis which is killing people every day who are overdosing on heroin or opiates. Now, in my view, to effectively address that crisis, what we have got to understand is that substance abuse and addiction should be treated not as criminal issues but as health issues!”
“Now you were making a point about the superdelegates,” Tapper said, “but what you left out of that data is that while it’s true – you have roughly 46 percent of the pledged delegates, Secretary Clinton has roughly 54 percent of them.”
“It seems unlikely that you’ll actually achieve the majority of the pledged delegates,” Tapper added.
Apparently taking umbrage at what appeared a suggestion that his supporters could not do the math or pause to work out the implication of the disparity between his delegate count and Clinton’s at a late stage of the nomination race, Sanders chided Tapper.
“I assume that most of the people who come to my rallies can do arithmetic,” he snapped.
“The point that I was making is there’s something absurd when I get 46 percent of the delegates that come from real contests — real elections, and 7 percent of the superdelegates,” he added.
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“The question is just a simple, yes or no,” Tapper insisted. “Should the person with the most pledged delegates be the Democratic nominee?”
Sanders decided to address the question directly, saying that despite his disapproval of the superdelegates system he had no choice in the circumstances but to face the reality before him.
“I’m not a fan of superdelegates, but their job is to take an objective look at reality,” Sanders said.
“We are where we are right now!” he continued firmly. “And where we are is we are fighting to win the pledged delegates. So before I can answer your question, let’s see what’s going to happen.”
It would be difficult to find a more dynamic and well-rounded Democratic political creature than Howard Dean. One year after the infamous Dean Scream, the beloved longtime Vermonter and former medical doctor stepped up as chair of the Democratic Party, a position he would hold from 2005 to 2009. In 2005, Dean also founded Democracy for America, a progressive PAC and advocacy group that is thriving in the 2016 cycle. This is all in addition to his many years in the Vermont legislature, his six consecutive terms as governor of the Green Mountain State, and his service as head of the National Governors Association.
And now that America is on the precipice of what will inevitably be one of the most polarized and unpredictable general elections in recent history, Dean has become a sought-after political pundit, appearing frequently on cable news and quoted often in print media. In the present political climate, Dean has a unique perspective on his fellow Vermonter, Bernie Sanders; on Hillary Clinton, whom Dean has endorsed; and on the shape of the Democratic electorate itself. In fact, if there were an emperor of progressive Democrats, Dean would be the man—except of course his fellow Vermonter, Sanders, is now that man. Unsurprisingly, Dean’s feelings about Sanders are… complicated.
The two have certainly clashed over the years—dating back to the early 1990s, when Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and one of the founders of the Progressive Coalition, now the Progressive Party. As an unusually viable third party, Vermont’s Progressives caused then-Governor Dean more than a few headaches over dozens of policies, like free trade, environmental regulations, and party registration. And then there’s health care. In November 1993, Dean slammed then-Representative Sanders for his health-care proposal. According to The Vermont Times, Sanders “marched into the Statehouse to unveil his own study of how a Canadian-style single-payer health system would save Vermont $270 million. Sanders’ Statehouse appearance was a violation of the accepted and unspoken protocol that dictates that members of the Washington delegation stay the hell out of Montpelier’s business.” After the Statehouse move, Dean went all in and compared Sanders to Ronald Reagan—perhaps the only person ever to do so. Dean said Sanders—just like the former Republican president—was building expectations for something that was “not going to happen.” This year, during the battle for Iowa, Dean again bashed Sanders’s health-care plan: “Would his plan result in the kind of chaos that in fact would undo people’s health care? That is something to be concerned about.”
All of this confirms the sentiments several Democratic insiders expressed to me: Dean and Sanders are not pals.
ederal lawsuit alleging widespread confusion over California's presidential primary rules asks that voter registration be extended past Monday's deadline until the day of the state's primary election on June 7.
"Mistakes are being made," said William Simpich, an Oakland civil rights attorney who filed the lawsuit Friday.
At issue is whether voters understand the rules for the presidential primary, which differ from those governing other elections in California.
Unlike statewide primaries — where voters now choose any candidate, no matter the political party — the presidential contests are controlled by the parties themselves. Democrats have opened up their primary between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to voters that have no political affiliation, known in California as having "no party preference."
But the lawsuit alleges elections officials in some of California's 58 counties aren't making that clear to these unaffiliated voters.
"There's mass confusion," Simpich said in an interview on Saturday night. "This is a situation that really shouts out for some uniformity."
Simpich said a judge should require state elections officials to conduct a broad public awareness campaign about the voting rules before May 31, the deadline for requesting a ballot by mail.
And to ensure unregistered Californians aren't disenfranchised in the presidential contest, the lawsuit asks voter registration be extended from its deadline on Monday until June 7, the day of the election.
Presidential hopeful/ bird whisperer Bernie Sanders will be holding a rally in Santa Monica on Monday afternoon—the same day as California's deadline to register for the primary on June 7. (Here's a handy guide on how to do that, by the way. Just do it.)
The event will take place at the Santa Monica High School football field at 4 p.m. It's free and open to the public, but RSVPs are encouraged, which you can do here.
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Bernie has made a handful of trips to Los Angeles over the last few months. In March, he strolled down Hollywood Boulevard, to the delight of Jack Sparrow impersonators and tourists alike. LAist was at his impromptu, quasi-NSFW rally at the Wiltern. And just last week, Bernie held another massive rally at the StubHub Center in Carson.
He'll also appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday, one day after Donald Trump visits the show.