Thursday, February 4, 2016
“Democrats win elections when there is a large voter turnout. Republicans win elections when people are demoralized and give up on the process,” he said. “I think I can drive a large voter turnout, bring in new energy into the Democratic Party.”
Sanders, who is in a surprisingly close race for the Democratic presidential nomination with Hillary Clinton, emphasized their differences without ever losing his cool or getting thrown off message.
The forum, televised nationally from Derry, N.H., came less than a week before that state hosts the first-in-the-nation presidential primary and hot off Clinton's narrow win in the Iowa caucuses Monday. Wednesday's event wasn’t a debate between the two candidates, but back-to-back interviews with CNN host Anderson Cooper, with questions from the audience.
The two will debate Thursday in Durham at an event hosted by MSNBC, and the Democratic National Committee agreed Wednesday to add further debates later in the campaign.
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Wednesday, February 3, 2016
The committee is working on a bill that would create an enhanced penalty when people in the family services division of DCF are assaulted, and would also establish a new offense — criminal threatening.
“I personally have been threatened to be killed,” said Patricia Casanova, who has worked at DCF for a dozen years. And she said she had found people waiting at her car for her.
Casanova and two other state workers urged the committee to expand the proposed enhanced penalty to cover all state workers. Margaret Crowley, chair of the Vermont State Employees' Association’s legislative committee, said people under stress because of government actions often lash out at the first state worker they run into.
Crowley recounted how a man threatened her when she handed him paperwork concerning his court case. He called her “a cog in the machine” that had wronged him.
Tags: Sen. Dick Sears , Vermont State Employees' Association , Lara Sobel , DCF , Image , Web Only
Monday, February 1, 2016
Late Monday morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a final assessment of his chances in that night’s Iowa presidential caucuses.
“We got a tie ballgame,” he told volunteers assembled in his Des Moines headquarters. “That’s where we are.”
Twelve hours later, when Sanders emerged onstage at his campaign’s watch party, the score hadn’t changed a lick. With the vast majority of precincts reporting, he and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton remained neck-and-neck.
“Tonight, while the results are still not known, it looks like we are in a virtual tie,” Sanders said to ecstatic cheers. “It looks like we’ll have about half of the Iowa delegates.”
It took the Iowa Democratic Party until 3:30 a.m. to declare that Clinton had prevailed by the slimmest of margins — 49.9 to 49.5 percent — and claimed 23 national delegates to Sanders’ 21.
Still, for a man whom few took seriously when he joined the race last April, the result amounted to nothing short of a home run.
“Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state,” he said Monday night. “We had no political organization. We had no money. We had no name recognition. And we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America.”
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"We got a tie ballgame. That's where we are," he said. "We will win tonight, if the voter turnout is high."
Watch the (shaky) video here:
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“There is a lot of work to be done, and this country faces a lot of very, very serious problems,” he said Sunday night in Des Moines. “But I believe that, as Americans, when we come together, when we are prepared to stand up to the powers that be, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.”
With a touch of nostalgia, Sanders thanked the 1,700 supporters, volunteers and staffers who filled a Grand View University gymnasium — and “the people of Iowa for welcoming us into their beautiful state.”
“Iowa has shown my family and my staff incredible hospitality and warmness, and we appreciate it very much,” he said. “This is a beautiful, beautiful state — and it’s been an honor to campaign in it.”
On Monday night, the efficacy of all that campaigning will be put to the test when Iowans trudge to 1,681 precinct caucuses in more than 1,100 schools, libraries, community centers and fire stations. There, they will deliver impassioned speeches to their neighbors and then sort themselves by candidate.
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Sunday, January 31, 2016
In the month preceding Monday's Iowa caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) raised a jaw-dropping $20 million, his campaign announced Sunday afternoon.
The money came in the form of mostly small-dollar donations. Since joining the race last April, according to spokesman Michael Briggs, Sanders has collected more than 3.25 million individual contributions. Briggs called that a record for a presidential candidate at this stage of the race.
"The numbers we’ve seen since January 1 put our campaign on pace to beat Secretary [Hillary] Clinton’s goal of $50 million in the first quarter of 2016," campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in a statement, referring to Sanders' chief rival for the Democratic nomination. "Working Americans chipping in a few dollars each month are not only challenging but beating the greatest fundraising machine ever assembled."
Team Sanders made the announcement hours before the campaigns were due to file end-of-year fundraising and spending data from 2015 with the Federal Election Commission. The Vermont senator had previously disclosed raising $33 million in the last quarter of the year, bringing his campaign total at that time to $73 million.
Though news of Sanders’ January haul spread like wildfire Sunday in the national news media, the candidate himself didn’t even mention the number later that afternoon during a rally in Waterloo. Instead, he focused on how many donors had contributed to his campaign.
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“We don’t see people like this all the time,” the Vampire Weekend frontman said as he introduced the headliner of a Saturday night concert in Iowa City.
The clean-cut rock star had just busted out a version of “Unbelievers,” prefaced by a sheepish acknowledgment of the irony of the song selection. He pointed to large, blue banner hanging to his right, behind another, bigger stage. “A future to believe in,” it read.
“So I want to say that, maybe when the song was written it came from a place of frustration or nihilism about the world,” Koenig explained. “But we’re so excited to be here, because we feel the same way that you do about Bernie: He’s a man we believe in.”
After imploring his audience of 3,800 to check out the next act on YouTube — “it’s not boring; it’s amazing” — Koenig asked them to “make some noise for Sen. Bernie Sanders!”
The crowd complied. Throughout the University of Iowa athletic complex, students roared with approval — fists raised and cellphones held high.
“Whoa,” Sanders said when he reached the podium. “There’s a lot of people here.”
Then he got down to business.
Tags: Bernie Sanders , cannabis related , Dirty Projectors , Foster the People , presidential campaign , Senator , University of Iowa , Vampire Weekend , Image , Recommended Reading , Video , Web Only
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Republicans, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told the New York Times this month, "can’t wait to run an ad with a hammer and sickle."
“He’s entitled to his positions, and it’s a big-tent party, but as far as having him at the top of the ticket, it would be a meltdown all the way down the ballot," added Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon.
Tom Fiegen disagrees.
"Just the opposite of what the corporate Democrats, the old-guard Democrats are saying," the former Iowa state senator said. "Rather than dragging the ticket down, he's the only way the Democratic Party is gonna survive."
Now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, Fiegen stood sentry outside a Sanders rally Saturday morning in the eastern Iowa town of Manchester, proudly sporting a Sanders sticker and handing out his own campaign literature. Fiegen endorsed Sanders at the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner last October and, these days, he sounds an awful lot like the candidate he supports.
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In a brief appearance in Manchester, Iowa, Sanders did manage to lump the media in with his other favorite bogeymen.
“Some people say, well, ‘This is an ambitious agenda. Can’t happen.’ Really? Really? Why not? Why can’t it happen?” he asked a small crowd gathered at the Delaware County Fairgrounds. “Because we don’t have the courage to stand up to the insurance companies and the drug companies and Wall Street and corporate America and the corporate media? Is that why it can’t happen? I don’t believe that. I think we can do that.”
The Times was the latest in a series of newspapers to pick Clinton over Sanders. Last week, the Des Moines Register, Concord Monitor and Boston Globe all endorsed the former secretary of state.
“Hillary Clinton is the right choice for the Democrats to present a vision for America that is radically different from the one that leading Republican candidates offer,” the Times wrote. “A vision in which middle-class Americans have a real shot at prosperity, women’s rights are enhanced, undocumented immigrants are given a chance at legitimacy, international alliances are nurtured and the country is kept safe.”
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Sanders quickly turned his attention to a favorite subject: the role of wealthy campaign donors in the American political system.
"I do not believe people fought and died for democracy so that billionaires could buy elections!" he shouted.
On Friday night, Sanders returned to Dubuque. This time, he arrived in a bus bearing his logo, trailed by another one filled with reporters. And this time, his audience in a cavernous hall at the Grand River Event Center numbered closer to 1,300.
But some things — such as Sanders' age-old message — never change.
"Democracy is not a spectator sport. Professional football is a spectator sport," he told his rapt audience Friday night. "Democracy is a system that people fought and died for — to make sure that ordinary people could control the destiny of their country and not just kings and queens and billionaires."
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