Bernie Sanders capped off a day of campaigning around Indiana on Monday with a boisterous and energetic rally in downtown Indianapolis.
Mr. Sanders’s voice sounded particularly hoarse as he railed against income inequality, with many of his supporters reciting parts of his now familiar speech along with him. The rally was one of three he held in Indiana on Monday to court the state’s voters, who go to the polls on Tuesday, and stress the state’s importance in his push to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Although the chances have narrowed for the Vermont senator, his supporters were as lively as ever on Monday night, shouting his name and waving signs throughout his speech.
“Our ideas are the future of America,” Mr. Sanders said to loud cheers. “Our ideas are the future of the Democratic Party.”
A victory in Indiana, where polls show that Mr. Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in a tight race, could help him regain some momentum after tough losses last week on the East Coast. On Monday, Mr. Sanders repeatedly told supporters that he was counting on them to add to his victories.
“Tomorrow let us see Indiana have the largest voter turnout in its history,” Mr. Sanders said at his Indianapolis event. “Tomorrow let us see Indiana help lead this country into the political revolution.”
"We are going to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the one percent," presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (D-VT) told a Monument Circle crowd estimated at almost 8,000.
Sanders took on Carrier Corporation for sending Indiana jobs to Mexico.
"The greed of United Technologies is almost unbelievable, they have no shame."
In the crowd before the speech Diana Gibbons asked her daughter Zoe Marquez why she wanted to come to today's rally. "I wanted to come to show my support for Bernie and everything he represents," Zoe said. That includes the Sanders plan for tuition-free public college for all. We asked Sanders how he'd pay the price tag for that program.
"You pay for it with a tax on Wall Street speculation," he said. "When Wall Street's greed and illegal behavior almost destroyed this economy, the middle-class bailed them out. Now it's Wall Streets turn."
For Zoe, her mother says the election is about her future. "I get a chance to go to college," she says, "Without afterward being just buried in student loan debt."
Is Indiana ready for a political revolution?
Bernie Sanders asked that to a passionate crowd of more than 3,000 during a rally in Downtown Evansville Monday morning.
The event was a rallying cry for Sanders in the final hours before Indiana voters take to the ballot box for the primary elections Tuesday.
The 74-year-old Democratic presidential hopeful touched on every aspect of his progressive, liberal message — from chiding "corporate greed" to calling for Medicare for all and appealing for a $15 an hour minimum wage — in an hourlong speech in Old National Events Plaza.
"What they will be looking at is whether or not the people of Indiana are prepared to go forward with a political revolution," Sanders said to a roaring crowd.
Unlike crowds for the other two presidential rallies in town — Republicans Ted Cruz and Donald Trump — the standing crowd was vocal the entire speech — boos when Clinton's name was mentioned, jeers at the mention of super delegates, praise for his free public college plan and hurrahs for calls for income equality.
"It looks like you're not afraid of the establishment," Sanders said to the youth-filled crowd as he started his speech following an introduction by former Indiana State Rep. Dennis Avery.
Shortly after 2:30 p.m. Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders walked out on stage at IPFW’s Hilliard Gates Athletic Center to thunderous applause.
As the nation’s eyes turn to Indiana today for its presidential primary, the independent senator from Vermont arrived in Fort Wayne to deliver the message that has captured the adoration of many of the country’s young voters. Some of them drove for several hours across state lines to hear Sanders speak.
“This is a radical group. I like this group,” Sanders said as the crowd roared. “Fort Wayne is ready for the political revolution.”
Sanders did not disappoint his supporters. The thousands-strong crowd – the athletic center seats about 2,000 people – screamed and chanted as he, in his unmistakable style, launched into familiar rhetoric railing against the so-called 1 percent and Hillary Clinton’s fundraising, while also advocating for trade reform, immigration reform, free healthcare, paid family leave and free public college education.
“I want every kid in Indiana, every child in America to understand that if he or she takes their schoolwork seriously, does well, that kid will be able to get a college education,” Sanders said.
Sanders also touched on the state of manufacturing jobs in Indiana, mentioning Carrier and United Technologies as examples of the greed of the corporate class. In an interview before Monday’s rally, Sanders said he would change the country’s trade policies to keep manufacturing jobs from disappearing overseas.
“What we do is to transform our trade policy,” Sanders said. “And we make it clear that we will have policies that says you can’t shut down in Indiana or Vermont or America, move abroad and bring your products back here tariff free, that’s all.”
“I think that when the top one-tenth of 1 percent — one-tenth of 1 percent — now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we got some other choices that we can make,” Sanders said at a rally in Evansville, Indiana, repeating a common refrain on the trail.
As Sanders then said, “That choice is to tell the billionaire class — ” a man in the audience could be heard shouting, “To f--- off!”
Sanders briefly continued before pausing and chuckling.
“Well, that is one way to phrase it,” he said, gesturing at the interrupter. “See, I myself am constrained. I can’t quite phrase it like that, but that’s not bad.”
“You get to the point very succinctly. I like it,” Sanders continued. “But I will not repeat what the gentleman just said.
The crowd cheered, as Sanders let out another laugh before continuing with his speech.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaign spent part of Monday fighting over how much money the front-runner's operation has actually raised for state parties, with Sanders' campaign charging Clinton with "laundering" donations.
Both Democratic campaigns have signed joint fundraising efforts with the Democratic National Committee, allowing the presidential campaigns to raise money for the Democratic committee and a host of state Democratic parties. Because of federal election rules, campaigns are allowed to raise upwards of $350,000 from individuals for joint fundraising efforts.
But Clinton has been the only candidate to use it, raising, according to her campaign, $46 million for the DNC and state parties through the Hillary Victory Fund, the Clinton campaign's joint fundraising effort.
Politico reported on Monday that Clinton's campaign has only transferred $3.8 million to the state parities, with almost 88% of that being transferred to the DNC after being sent to the states. Sanders campaign jumped on the report, blasting the story out to reporters and following up with a statement.
"Secretary Clinton is looting funds meant for the state parties to skirt fundraising limits on her presidential campaign," Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manger, said in a statement Monday. "We think the Clinton campaign should let the state parties keep their fair share of the cash.
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The Democratic National Committee has so far declined to get in between the two campaigns. Instead aides have taken to noting that both Sanders and Clinton were offered and signed the same agreement.
Under fire from Sanders supporters, Clinton surrogates have cited the joint fundraising effort and the need to help down ballot Democrats as a reason Clinton headlines top-dollar fundraisers. By hitting Clinton for not providing much money to state parties, Sanders' campaign is looking to cut into her ability to explain her appeal.
From here on out, pretty much every state presidential primary election in the Democratic race will be a matter of life and death for Bernie Sanders’ campaign. The left-wing upstart has been hanging on ever since he got clobbered by front-runner Hillary Clinton in the Northeast last week. Now he appears less focused on securing an outright delegate lead than he is on entering the Democratic National Convention in July with as slim a deficit as possible.
Lucky for Sanders, then, that Indiana will be the first place to hold a primary since the routs in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania last week. If there’s any place where he can regain his footing, it’s the Hoosier State. A victory there Tuesday night wouldn’t make Sanders any more likely to win the nomination — but it could give him more clout at the convention, where he reportedly intends to fight for a more-progressive Democratic Party platform.
That’s because Indiana has some important features in common with Michigan, the site of the Democratic primary season’s most stunning upset. Michigan is where Sanders confounded the pollsters and recorded a decisive victory almost two months ago. His campaign staff has reason to hope for a similar performance in Indiana.
It all comes down to themes Sanders has sounded on the campaign trail and will likely want better represented in the Democratic platform: the shrinking of the middle class, the economic devastation wrought by free trade agreements and the decay of the American labor movement. Like Michigan, Indiana perfectly embodies these themes. The question is whether the resulting voter anger will deliver Sanders another much-needed victory.
Indiana residents are subject to many of the same economic pressures that helped define the Michigan primary. Both Indiana and Michigan are Rust Belt states with declining manufacturing strongholds. Both states boast proud blue-collar labor movement traditions, which in recent years have been substantially undermined by conservative lawmakers. And both states, thanks to their reliance on factory work, have suffered as a result of free trade — perhaps more than anywhere else in the country.
In fact, the labor-friendly Economic Policy Institute reported in March that Indiana lost more jobs proportionally in 2015 due to the U.S. trade deficit with Pacific Rim countries than any other state except Michigan.
Voters consider many things when weighing their options at the polls: Policy views. Experience. Track record. Likability. And one hopes, what kind of leader they think each candidate would be.
But when it comes to the public's perceptions on four essential leadership traits -- a candidate's capacity to be inspiring, visionary, courageous and to care about individuals -- three of the four leading candidates for the most important leadership job in the world score remarkably low.
New research from Gallup, released Friday, asked 7,500 members of the public to rate Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on their perceptions of 12 leadership traits for each candidate. Though Gallup tweaked the wording slightly, they are the same dozen attributes the research and consulting firm has found to most predict leadership success in the more than 200 organizations it has studied.
What it found: Each candidate has strengths and weaknesses. As one might guess, Donald Trump does particularly well on being competitive (84 percent of respondents gave him a "4" or "5" rating on a 1 to 5 scale), and two to three times more respondents said Bernie Sanders cares about individuals than they did about the other candidates.
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Average the percentage of respondents who gave the candidate a "4" or a "5" on the four key traits outlined above, and Sanders comes out far and above the other candidates, with an average of 54 percent. Clinton and Trump, meanwhile, tie with an average of 29 percent across the ratings for these four attributes, and Cruz comes in last with an average of 25 percent.
Sanders' image is most distinctive from the others, winning on more of the traits than any other candidate, particularly when it comes to being consistent or caring about individuals, winning on the " 'softer' dimensions of leadership," the Gallup report notes.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has no problem exciting the college crowd with his fiery rhetoric about political revolution.
An app called Hustle helped the campaign connect with these young supporters, and recruit volunteers, using text messages. Texting proved to be more effective at reaching supporters and prospective volunteers than, say, emails or phone calls. And it works well with everyone — not just millennials.
“We’re adapting to the times by sending out millions of personal text messages from volunteers to prospective voters,” said Kenneth Pennington, digital director for Sanders 2016. “Hustle allows us to reach new people over text messages and engage in meaningful one-on-one conversations about the important issues in this election.”
Hustle is the brainchild of Roddy Lindsay, a former Facebook software engineer who saw first-hand the power of technology to connect people; Perry Rosenstein, a digital veteran of the 2008 Obama campaign who later worked as a strategist for a number of Congressional campaigns and ballot initiatives; and Tyler Brock, a former software engineer at the database firm MongoDB.
“I saw there was a need for better tooling around relationship-building,” Lindsay said. “The whole thing with organizing, there are no shortcuts. You have to go one by one, person by person, and build a relationship over time.”
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The Sanders campaign has been using Hustle since the Iowa caucus. Rosenstein said Hustle is at its best getting people to show up at a particular place and time. One Sanders field organizer — a campaign worker charged with finding, training and scheduling volunteers — touched down in Tulsa, Okla., and began reaching out to people who’d expressed interest in the Vermont senator’s campaign.
Within three days, some 340 people showed up at a campaign event. “It’s called Barnstorms,'” Rosenstein said. “They land in a city and use Hustle to reach out to every potential volunteer leader within a certain radius to get them to a huge organizing rally. Once there, they ask everyone in person to commit to hosting a volunteer contact meeting in their community, and train them on the spot.”
Once upon a time in a high school in Brooklyn, Sen. Bernie Sanders was a champion long-distance runner and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a baton twirler. James Madison High School produced some of the biggest names in politics, like Sen. Chuck Schumer and celebrities such as Judge Judy.
So why do so many notable people come out of this school?
"It must be in the water," said principal Jodie Cohen, who attended James Madison herself and came back to teach English.
Another reason? The sense of community, Cohen said. James Madison is a zoned high school, which draws from children growing up in the same neighborhood.
"It's not something where we're picked, where we're the elite," said Steve Slavin, an economist who attended James Madison and was a few years older than Sanders (who graduated in 1959). He and Sanders later became roommates while attending Brooklyn College together, only a few minutes drive away from James Madison.
Slavin said Sanders couldn't have told him then where he would be now but remembers that you could see his conscience forming as a teenager. Even after suffering defeats like not making the prestigious basketball team or losing the election for class president, the future senator from Vermont and Democratic presidential candidate found his own way to make an impact.
"He lost the election but he convinced his friend who had beaten him in the election to actually set up something to help Korean War orphans," said Slavin of Sanders. After not making the basketball team, Sanders joined the track team and became a champion long-distance runner.