Monday, February 1, 2016
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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.
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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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Thursday, January 28, 2016
These days, Sanders is getting pretty close to the line.
On Thursday, four days before the Iowa caucuses, the senator released a new ad ostensibly criticizing the investment bank Goldman Sachs for its role in the 2008 financial crisis. But the real target of the ad is clear: Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who has accepted $2.2 million in speaking fees from Goldman over the past decade.
"How does Wall Street get away with it? Millions in campaign contributions and speaking fees," a narrator intones. "Our economy works for Wall Street because it’s rigged by Wall Street. And that’s the problem. As long as Washington is bought and paid for, we can’t build an economy that works for people."
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Tuesday, January 26, 2016
"The President and Sen. Sanders first discussed this meeting last December when Sen. Sanders attended the Congressional Holiday Ball," White House press secretary John Earnest said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "The two will meet privately in the Oval Office, and there will be no formal agenda."
The confab comes just days after Obama threw shade at the Vermonter in an interview with Politico, dismissing him as nothing more than a "bright, shiny object" in the campaign to succeed him. The president spoke more favorably about his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who is battling Sanders for the Democratic nomination.
Though Obama campaigned for Sanders in Vermont in 2006 and Sanders returned the favor in 2008 and 2012, the two have never been close. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that in Sanders' 40 visits to the White House since Obama was elected president, visitor logs showed them meeting privately in the Oval Office just once, in December 2014.
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