Nearly 6,000 North Coast residents cheered Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders in Cloverdale on Friday as the Vermont senator promised to revolutionize American politics, the U.S. economy and society at large.
Beside the tarmac of the city’s municipal airport on a sweltering night, Sanders supporters heard the populist politician roll out many of the standby pledges of his campaign, including a single-payer health care system, the expansion of Social Security, equal pay for women and comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship.
“We need a political revolution. We need millions of people from California to Maine to begin to stand up and fight back and demand a government that represents all of us, not just the 1 percent,” Sanders said to the boisterous crowd. “That is what this campaign is all about.”
Shortly before his speech, in an interview, Sanders said he chose to stage a rally in Cloverdale, Sonoma County’s northernmost outpost, with a population of 8,700, because of its rural location and his affinity for small communities.
“I come from a rural state,” he said. “I think it’s important for people from all across this state, all across this country, to hear from presidential candidates and you don’t have to live in major city to do so.”
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This will be 21-year-old Megan Pollock’s first presidential election and the Santa Rosa Junior College student said she valued Sanders’ “great ideas and great plans,” pointing to his call to make higher education more affordable.
“I’ve never felt as strongly about a candidate as I do about Bernie,” she said. “I know a lot of people who have decided against college because it’s so expensive.”
Bernie Sanders during a Friday campaign speech at Solano Community College mocked “the brilliant meteorologist and scientist Donald Trump” for concluding California doesn’t have a drought and that climate change is a hoax.
Speaking in front of the college bookstore, Sanders also said he’ll win the Democratic presidential primary Tuesday in California if the turnout is strong.+
He spoke about campaign themes including a rigged economy that sends most of the new wealth to the top 1 percent, a broken criminal justice system and corrupt campaign financing that allows billionaires to buy elections.
The words “Wall Street” brought boos from the crowd and Sanders said it was time for public officials to “take on the Wall Street crowd – not take their money.”
With the temperature at 99 degrees and at least two people requiring medical attention because of the heat, Sanders started his half-hour speech with a reference to the weather.
“Let me thank all of you crazy people for coming outside,” he said. “We’re from Vermont. We don’t know about weather like this.”
Sanders said near the end of the his speech that real change is always from the bottom up and spoke about an American middle class in decline for 30 years.
“What we need is a political revolution,” he said, “and you are the revolutionaries.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders shot back at critics of his economic proposals at a press conference at the Institute for Research on Labor and Unemployment at UC Berkeley Friday evening.
he senator, who was introduced by Professor Robert Reich, kept his prepared comments to economic issues. Reich, formerly the U.S. Secretary of Labor, has endorsed Sanders for president but clarified that the press conference was not an endorsement from the Institute or Berkeley.
Sanders echoed his comments from the campaign trail about making tuition free at public universities.
“Right here at the University of California at Berkeley, I believe that in the year 2016, public colleges and universities should be tuition-free and we should lower student debt,” Sanders said. “Are these radical ideas? These are not radical ideas.”
During the question and answer portion of the conference, Sanders returned to his tuition plan. His frustration with Wall Street and some of his colleagues in Washington surfaced as he detailed his plan to cover those tuition expenses.
“We pay for it through a tax on Wall Street speculation,” Sanders said, raising his voice. “What the conventional wisdom is about Wall Street’s greed and illegal behavior that destroyed the economy — of course we’re going to bail them out. Why would we not bail them out?
“But young people who desperately need a good education — off course they should leave school $50-or-$70,000 in debt. Why would we help them?”
Tuition at public institutions across the country, including UC Berkeley, continues to rise as job growth begins to falter.
One day after protesters brawled with supporters of Donald Trump outside of a rally in nearby San Jose, Sen. Bernie Sanders condemned political violence and anyone who committed it while backing his campaign.
"Violence is absolutely and totally unacceptable," said Sanders, after a press conference on the jobs market with former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. "If people are thinking about violence, please do not tell anybody you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, because those are not the supporters that I want."
The scattered riots, which broke out late Thursday evening and were played back all day by news outlets, had nothing to do with the Sanders campaign. The crowd filmed giving chase to Trump supporters, and pelting one with eggs, included anarchists and unaffiliated activists.
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The question to Sanders today, from a local reporter, was prompted by clips of some protesters chanting "Bernie" as they hectored Trump supporters.
"I understand how reprehensible and disgraceful Donald Trump's positions are; how ignorant they are," said Sanders. "I can understand the anger, I surely can, because I feel it. The bigotry that is coming out of his mouth. The insults to the Mexican community, the Latino community, the Muslim community, and women, and African-Americans and veterans. I understand the anger. But we are not going to defeat Trump by throwing eggs or getting involved in violence of any kind. We defeat Trump when we stand together as one people and fight for a progressive agenda. Educate. Organize. Bring out large numbers of people."
Bernie Sanders checked an essential box in California today as he continued his mad dash across the state before Tuesday’s primary: he ate an In-N-Out Burger along Highway 80 in the town of Pinole
A pint-sized patron who met Sanders in the restaurant earlier, Cobe, offered the senator a fry while he waited for his food. Sanders returned the favor later, sharing his food with Cobe and his friends
Sanders was a hit inside the California-based restaurant chain, especially with the restaurant’s young wait staff.
He told reporters travelling with his campaign that it was his first time at the California staple before walking up to a booth of diners and introducing himself.
‘How are you doing?’ Sanders asked a little boy, identified by his mother Bettina Taylor told reporters as Cobe. Sanders spoke to Cobe and sister Nacha’ and their two friends before taking his seat.
His server told him, ‘I’m not old enough to vote but I hope you enjoy your food,’ eliciting a laugh from the presidential candidate.
As he finished his cheeseburger Cobe and his pals approached the senator at his booth, and Sanders offered them a few of his fries. A few minutes later, they came back for more, eventually eating most of his side dish.
Four years ago, African-Americans voted in record numbers to help seal President Obama’s re-election. But as they consider the Democrats seeking to follow the nation’s first black president, the choice between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders isn’t so clear.
A new Field Poll this week finds that while 57 percent of African-Americans likely to vote in Tuesday’s primary election support Clinton, Sen. Sanders still attracts 36 percent of those voters.
And there’s a huge difference in support among older and younger African-Americans. That generational divide was evident among the voters we talked to recently.
Luna Malbroux attended a Clinton rally at the old Hibernia Bank building in San Francisco last week. At age 30, she’s already a political veteran. She volunteered with the Obama campaign, but so far this time around Malbroux is undecided.
“I’m still just really appreciating what both of the candidates are bringing, honestly,” Malbroux said.
“Bernie is taking that message that Obama brought and pushing it even further,” Malbroux said. “On the other [Republican] side, they’re trying to take that legacy away. So there’s a lot at stake.”
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Across the park, 36-year-old Erica Quinn says she’s also watching the election carefully. She likes the idea of having the first woman president, but it’s Sanders who’s really got her attention.
“For me, it’s student loans,” Quinn says. “So, I’m listening. I’m all ears. So it’s personal for me.”
Imagine this. You’re a poll voter in California, who has spent all day at work, excited to show up at the polls and cast your vote for Senator Bernie Sanders. You leave work at 5PM, quickly turn on the TV before you head over to your polling location, and on the muted TV, you see a marquee that says “Clinton clinches Democratic nomination, declares victory.”
You un-mute the television, and hear the talking heads discussing that the Democratic primary campaign is over.
This could be the reality many late poll voters face this Tuesday, June 7th in California, if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plays her cards right.
Bernie Sanders has a hurdle few have talked about in his effort to win California— time zones— and how the difference between when polls close on the East Coast vs. the West Coast could impact turnout in the Golden State and possibly depress Sanders’ vote.
On Tuesday, Clinton is favored to win New Jersey by a huge margin, while California’s primary is too close to call as polling shows a razor thin margin.
This is where it gets interesting.
New Jersey’s polls will close at 5 PM Pacific time on Tuesday - a significant three hours before polls close in California. In those three hours, cable news, social media, and the world will be abuzz with the news that Clinton is the presumptive nominee.
Once framed with this narrative, the four additional and non-California or New Jersey states that vote next Tuesday - North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and New Mexico - could potentially start to be framed as simply adding to Clinton’s delegate tally, rather than being perceived as losses.
President Barack Obama’s surprise call to expand Social Security highlights a populist shift in the U.S. political landscape that has been propelled by the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Just five years ago, Obama called for reducing future Social Security benefits -- an idea that at the time was in vogue for many Republicans and some Democrats, who treated it as a badge of fiscal responsibility.
No more. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, says Social Security benefits shouldn’t be cut -- a departure from other Republican leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Sanders, as part of his Democratic presidential campaign, has been calling for an expansion of benefits, and the party’s likely nominee, Hillary Clinton, took a similar position earlier this year. Obama joined the chorus on Wednesday.
"It is a much different universe today," said Warren Gunnels, policy director for the Sanders campaign. "Go back to 2011, when the debate was not whether Social Security would be cut, but how much it would be cut. Now the debate is not whether we’re going to expand Social Security but how much we’ll expand it."
Obama’s change of heart reflects changes in both the economy and politics. Budget deficits have plunged since 2012, reducing pressure to cut entitlement spending. A 2014 Federal Reserve survey published last year found that 42 percent of American workers earning under $40,000 a year, and a quarter earning between $40,000 and $100,000, have no retirement savings. Years of partisan warfare have meanwhile killed appetite in both parties for painful political compromises.
Though Sanders is unlikely to win the Democratic presidential nomination, the emerging orthodoxy of his party calling for an expansion of Social Security owes as much to him as anyone.
In March 2015, as the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders pushed for a vote on an amendment by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren proposing expanded Social Security benefits. Forty-two Democrats voted for the amendment and only two were opposed.
"That certainly was a very significant moment," Gunnels said of the budget vote. "It really has been a drumbeat and a snowball that’s gotten much larger through the Sanders campaign and through these many years of grassroots efforts."
Democrats in Washington have begun discussing how to encourage Sen. Bernie Sanders to end his campaign without alienating his legions of supporters, as party leaders grow eager to unite the party behind Hillary Clinton and provide a more robust defense for her candidacy.
In private conversations on Capitol Hill, senior Democrats are weighing how to persuade Sanders to step aside without appearing as if they are trying to strong-arm him out of the race. In a phone call last month, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid made the case to Sanders why it would make sense for him to leave the race after New Jersey and California vote on June 7, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
The widespread view, according to interviews with senators, House members and senior party officials, is that Sanders needs to see the writing on the wall himself: That he has no mathematical possibility to win the race and would be better-served to see his agenda enacted if he urged his backers to support Clinton.
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Senators and aides say they've felt reassured after recent discussions with Sanders and his advisers that he won't be a destructive force once voting concludes in mid-June. But Sanders has publicly vowed to take his fight to Philadelphia, something that could deprive the party of a critical month of healing and has spawned fears of unrest at the July nominating convention.
If he doesn't drop out, the options on how to persuade him to quit boil down to this: Propose potential process reforms, including gutting the role of superdelegates in choosing the next nominee, give him a prime speaking slot at the Democratic Convention and even dump the head of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a controversial figure among Sanders' supporters.
So far, Sanders has not suggested publicly that his fight could be over after California, a state he has barnstormed in recent days as he tries to pull off an upset against Clinton.
"Our campaign has been dismissed and written off more times than I can count," Sanders said Wednesday in Palo Alto, California. "We're going to leave California with enormous momentum going into the convention. And I believe we've got a real shot to come out of that convention with the Democratic nomination for president of the United States."
Sanders' support among young people is nothing short of stunning, especially given where he started when the contest began.
More than a year ago, when the Harvard Institute of Politics conducted its first presidential poll of millennials, Sanders' support stood at 1%.
Now, with the primary almost over, Sanders has won more than 70% of the 17 to 29-year-old age demographic, and carried the group in all but one of the 27 states where CNN conducted exit polling over the course of the primary cycle.
The one state where he lost younger voters was Mississippi, where he garnered just 37%. One other state — Alabama — had too small a turnout among 17 to 29-year-olds to register on the exit poll.
Experts say part of the reason Sanders was able to clean up with young voters is his message spoke to their generation. That included his forceful admonition of the crushing student debt many face, as well as his fiery anti-Wall Street rhetoric — a group many young voters associate with the financial struggles their parents faced during the recession in 2008.
"This group of millennials came of age with their parents struggling and a Washington that was tone-deaf to their struggles," John Della Volpe, the director of Harvard's millennial poll, said in an interview. "And that's the toxic combo that has created such negative feelings of this generation related to the institutions in Washington, D.C., with Congress, the federal government, Wall Street, the media, etc. And those are the elements in which Sanders is railing against."
Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will host A Future to Believe In San Francisco GOTV Concert on Monday, June 6. The free event will include live music provided by Dave Matthews, Fishbone, Fantastic Negrito and John Dexter Stewart.
Monday’s GOTV (get out the vote) Concert will be held at 3:30 p.m. PT at Crissy Field in the Presidio in San Francisco. Also appearing in support of Sanders will be author and activist Dr. Cornel West, actress Shailene Woodley and actor Danny Glover.
Last year Matthews spoke with Rolling Stone about his support for Sanders, telling the outlet:
When I hear someone speaking in terms of the workers rising up and the working people feeling like they have a voice, when I hear someone like Bernie Sanders talking, I think there’s a hope. And I have no party affiliation [laughs]. I’m not saying with his half-a-million donators and supporters that have committed 30 bucks on average to his campaign, he can win without a Super PAC. But that’s a guy who is talking about something real and that isn’t insulted by being called a liberal. Someone could call me a liberal, and I’d say, “Thank you.” Someone could call me a socialist, and I’d say, “I wish I was a socialist.” I should get a shirt that says, “Tax me! Tax the fuck out of me!” At least we’re hearing more of a voice from him by having him out there and speaking in complete sentences rather than a bunch of slogans that don’t mean anything. So I feel like there’s hope as long as some people are speaking to the real problem in this country.
Small-dollar contributions have been the fuel that has propelled Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, making it one of the most successful insurgent campaigns in Democratic party history, but little has been known about those donors because campaigns don’t have to publicize the names of people who give $200 or less.
Now, a Times analysis of nearly 7 million individual contributions has provided unprecedented detail about the army of people behind the $27 donations Sanders mentions at virtually every campaign stop.
Many resemble Emily Condit, 40 of Sylmar, who has contributed three times — $5 each — to the Vermont senator’s campaign.
Condit, who has several physical disabilities, is among the largest single group of Sanders’ donors — those who don’t have a job. Of the $209 million given to the Vermont senator’s campaign, about one out of every four dollars came from those not in the workforce, who include the unemployed or retired.
“ Bernie Sanders is running on a platform to lift up the have-nots and to improve the system of government we have, so that no one will ever be left behind. ” — Emily Condit, a Sanders donor from Sylmar Share this quote
For the last 15 years, since Condit left a job at NASA, her ailments have kept her from working. She depends on Social Security and lives on a tight budget but has found money for Sanders because she was drawn to his populist message.
“I know very well now what it's like to be a have-not, both financially and physically, and to fall through the cracks of society,” she said. “Bernie Sanders is running on a platform to lift up the have-nots and to improve the system of government we have, so that no one will ever be left behind.”
Small-dollar donors such as Condit have allowed Sanders to out-raise his rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in the Democratic primary. Clinton had received $190 million through the end of April. (A separate super PAC backing her bid raised an additional $76 million.)