Sen. Bernie Sanders let go of the mic for the better part of a Saturday morning campaign stop focused on issues of criminal justice and race.
A crowd of about 200 people packed into the cafeteria of Strawberry Hill Elementary — a setting intentionally picked for its proximity to Anamosa State Penitentiary. Sanders moderated a panel that included two ex-convicts and Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who took a leave of absence from the Ohio Democratic Party to campaign for Sanders.
"I've got a long speech, but I ain't gonna give it," Sanders told the nearly all-white crowd early on. "Because these guys know a lot more about this than I do."
One panelist, Ruben Johnson, said he was released from prison with $75 in an envelope and little direction or support. He said he was waiting for the "next step."
"There are no next steps," said Johnson, who said he has been incarcerated three times in Iowa and Illinois. "I didn't know what to expect, but I expected something."
Sanders likened the lack of support and programming for released prisoners to veterans returning home from war.
"If that's the case, why is it not surprising that so many people end up back in jail?" he said.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Saturday criticized the global climate change accord adopted after two weeks of negotiations among diplomats in Paris, saying the agreement goes "nowhere near far enough."
The landmark 31-page agreement includes a pledge to curb climate change by reducing carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions, calling on countries to support each other in adapting to the environmental challenges resulting from climate change, such as devastating droughts and rising sea levels.
Sanders said he didn't think the accord went far enough to demand action from those countries to lower carbon emissions.
"While this is a step forward it goes nowhere near far enough. The planet is in crisis. We need bold action in the very near future and this does not provide that,” Sanders said in the statement.
"In the United States we have a Republican Party which is much more interested in contributions from the fossil fuel industry than they care about the future of the planet. That is true all over the globe," he said. "We’ve got to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and fight for national and international legislation that transforms our energy system away from fossil fuel as quickly as possible.
While the Sanders campaign is hardly writing off Iowa, where the candidate is spending this weekend, and whose Feb. 1 caucuses kick off the presidential contest, his aides are increasingly talking about Iowa as a place they need to make a strong showing or to outperform expectations – not necessarily to win.
In New Hampshire, however, which holds its primary on Feb. 9, there is only one option. “I wake up every morning and tell myself that New Hampshire is a must-win,” Sanders’ New Hampshire state director Julia Barnes told MSNBC. “I think strategically there is a great amount of importance for us to do well here … No one is going to say that it’s not a must-win.”
Sanders may need to win both Iowa and New Hampshire to pose a clear, mortal threat to Clinton. But a win in either state will keep him and his message alive to fight another day.
A win in neither would be the end of the line.
While the two contests that come immediately after – Nevada and South Carolina – are demographically challenging for Sanders, his team is eyeing primaries and caucuses in Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and his native Vermont, all of which occur on March 1, as possible victories.
They are also keeping an eye on Georgia and Texas, where Sanders was the first Democrat to open campaign offices. But a win New Hampshire is crucial to Sanders’ overall strategy. “I think we have an excellent chance to win here in New Hampshire,” Sanders said in Plymouth last weekend. “And if we win here in New Hampshire, and we win in Iowa – I think we’ve got a strong chance to win in Iowa, as well – we have a path toward victory.”
Bernie Sanders made his animosity toward what he called the "corporate media" clear on Saturday here in Iowa, blasting the media companies as more interested in ratings and profits than truly reporting what is going on in America.
Sanders, speaking to roughly 1,000 people at a convention center on the banks of the Mississippi River, opened his speech by casting his campaign as "not a very fancy type of operation" that is focused on trying to "discuss the most important issue facing the American people."
The media, Sanders said, doesn't want to do that.
"The problem is that a lot of these issue are more complicated than a six-second sound byte and a lot of the issues we choose to raise end up in conflict with corporate America and the corporate media," Sanders said to applause. "But you know what, we are going to talk about those issues anyhow."
"This campaign is trying to be honest and lay the issues out on the table," Sanders added, arguing that media rarely talk about "the reality of America, the pain of America, what people are really going through."
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On Saturday, Sanders echoed that message in Dubuque, telling the audience that while it may be a "radical idea," he feels "the campaign should be about the American people and not Donald Trump."
Behind in the polls, but not lacking in energy. Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders looks to gain supporters in cities like Clinton, and he wants to do that by getting more people invested in politics again.
"Come back in and say that in our great country, our government belongs to all the people and not just a hand full of billionaires," Sanders said.
Sanders didn't spend a lot of time addressing the person ahead of him in the polls, Hilary Clinton. He focused his attacks on Republicans, specifically Donald Trump, saying that he's getting attention because of short, controversial statements.
"We`re talking about the real issues facing the American people. Yes, I can get up here and say my goal is to ban this or that person from coming into this country. A very simple statement, a very stupid statement," Sanders said.
He continues to push his plans for a minimum wage of $15 an hour and free college education, but he's also focused on how to address the threat of terrorism. He told the crowd in Clinton that there needs to be a cooperative effort with countries like France and the U.K. against ISIS, but the troops on the ground need to come from countries in the Middle East.
In discussing the minimum wage, Bernie Sanders hit back at Trump for asserting that a low minimum wage is necessary to make the country internationally competitive. He told MSNBC‘s Morning Joe in August that a low minimum wage is “not a bad thing.”
Sanders vehemently disagreed.
“Well, it may not be a bad thing if you’re a billionaire. But it’s sure as hell not a good thing if you’re a working person trying to survive.”
At a town hall meeting in Anamosa, The Des Moines Register reports that Bernie answered questions from a variety of people, but mainly served as a moderator for a panel discussion about prison reform. One of those panelists is former Ohio state legislator Nina Turner, who recently turned away from Hillary Clinton to throw her full support behind Bernie Sanders.
“What this campaign is about is not sound bites. It is attempting to address some of the most important issues facing our country. It is an attempt to force discussion on issues that are often swept under the rug.”
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said he doesn't make many promises, but he made two of them Saturday while in Dubuque.
Those two promises about criminal justice and campaign finance reform drew cheers from the about 800 people gathered at Grand River Center.
"Here's the promise I make -- I don't make a whole lot of promises, but write this one down and hold me accountable," the senator from Vermont said. "If elected president, I will end the international disgrace of the United States having more people in jail than any other country on earth."
Sanders said the nation must address a "broken criminal justice system," something that was a large focus of his full day of campaigning in Iowa. Earlier in the day, Sanders stopped in Anamosa, near Anamosa State Penitentiary, for a panel discussion on criminal justice.
Sanders' second promise was to address what he calls the "disastrous" U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. In that landmark decision, corporate spending was ruled protected under the First Amendment
"American democracy must never be about billionaires being able to buy elections," he said. "My second promise to you is that no nominee of mine to the United States Supreme Court will get that position unless he or she is loud and clear in saying they will vote to overturn Citizens United."
The Bernie News Roundup is a voluntary, non-campaign associated roundup of news, media, & other information related to Bernie Sanders' run for President.
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