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TIME Has A Piece About NH:
It was the grand opening of the Bernie Sanders campaign office in Concord, the capital of a state that could decide the fate of Sanders’ presidential campaign. As part of the campaign’s rapid expansion in New Hampshire, Sanders had come here to say his movement’s goals—such as universal healthcare, a $15 minimum wage and paid sick leave—were attainable.
“I’m not advocating for pie in the sky,” Sanders said.
There was cake, however. The next day was the upstart Democratic candidate’s birthday, and the crowd surprised him with a birthday cake and a round of “Happy Birthday to You.” “I’m cutting the first slice here,” Sanders said to cheers.
Sanders’ campaign is growing at a breakneck pace in New Hampshire as his new staff struggles to catch up to his popularity in the state. Drawn by Sanders’ message of economic fairness and calls for campaign finance reform, support has swollen for the Vermont senator in the last two months.
In early August, Sanders had just four paid staff members in New Hampshire; the campaign now has 37. The campaign has five offices as of Monday, but by the end of the week, there will be eight offices where volunteers can come phone bank, learn canvassing tips and get organized.
Recent polls show the Vermont senator with a sizable lead in the state over Hillary Clinton, who is still the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
Driving Home Their Message:
Locals have long participated in the Labor Day tradition of standing atop overpasses to wave goodbye to tourists as they inch slowly down congested highways toward the Bourne and Sagamore bridges.
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"We are certainly using this summertime tourist traffic to capitalize on an audience," said Aileen Jensen, a volunteer with Cape Cod for Bernie Sanders, which held a rally for Sanders on Monday on and around the Bourne Rotary . "Because it's a holiday weekend and it's Cape Cod, we have such a great opportunity to capture a lot of people's attention."
At around 11 a.m., seven supports of Sanders, a Vermont senator and contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, were standing at the rotary holding signs and waving to the constant stream of passing cars. Many drivers waved back, cheered and honked in support as they passed. A few shouted "Trump!" out their windows, a likely reference to billionaire Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
Jensen, who stood at the rotary from 9 a.m. to noon, said the reaction from drivers was overwhelmingly positive.
"Lots of honks, lots of thumbs up," she said. "I think that there's a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters out there, and they're just happy to see other supporters."
The Parties Are Split:
The 2016 White House race barrels into the fall feeling at times more like a reality-television spectacle than a presidential campaign, with a crop of unconventional candidates upstaging their politically pedigreed rivals.
This split between the outsiders and their more traditional counterparts reflects a deeper rift in the country between those who continue to trust government and the elected officials who run it, and the ever-growing share of Americans who don’t and pine for someone new.
Both parties enter the post-Labor Day phase of their primaries with lineups that have taken on an unexpected shape. The 2016 field was billed as one of the most accomplished in a generation, particularly on the Republican side, so the rise of celebrity real-estate mogul Donald Trump in the GOP contest and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race have come as a surprise to some party insiders and voters.
Yet the underlying dynamics spurring some form of a voter revolt took root years ago and they continue to spread through a dissatisfied electorate.
Sanders Stumps For Labor Equality:
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders brought fiery warnings of corporate greed and income disparity to Manchester on Monday, calling on workers nationwide to help restore equality by sending him to the White House in 2016.
Speaking before a sea of supporters at the New Hampshire AFL-CIO’s annual Labor Day breakfast, the Democratic presidential hopeful vowed, if elected, to more than double the federal minimum wage, institute paid family and medical leave, close tax loopholes for wealthy earners and provide young people with the tools to succeed in tomorrow’s workforce.
“Brothers and sisters,” he barked, “it is not a radical idea to say that when somebody works 40 hours a week that person should not be living in poverty. It is not a radical idea to say that every working person in this country should earn enough income to take care of their kids, to feed their kids.”
Sanders, the event’s keynote speaker, began his address by thanking the union movement, noting its role in securing a 40-hour workweek, improving workers’ safety, combating discrimination in the labor force and ushering in federal benefits like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
BBQ & Bernie:
Johnson City’s Loren Chapman and Kay Robbins, both grassroots organizers for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, recently made their way up to Burlington, Vermont, the native city of their candidate of choice, and while taking part in campaign-related tasks were overjoyed to learn that Sanders was on site and would eventually come through and shake their hands.
As nice as it was to make the acquaintance of the Vermont senator, it was the a plaque on the doorway to Sanders’ office that stuck in the memory of Chapman.
“Honor labor,” is what it read — something Chapman wholeheartedly believes in doing.
“I’m doing this because I’m seeing young people who’ve had the rug slipped out from under them,” he said. “And I want to see more money in working people’s pockets.”
With that Robbins and Chapman helped organize the “Labor Day Barbecue for Bernie” rally at The Acoustic Coffeehouse Monday afternoon. Robbins’ reason for supporting Sanders were numerable, but what struck her most was that she had never come across a candidate quite like Sanders. She said Sanders has always held honorable and common-sense positions on the issues and hasn’t wavered.
Bernie Parades Past Foes:
Bernie Sanders, riding a wave of momentum after bounding past Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire polls, roared into this small Granite State town yesterday and said his grassroots effort to take down the Democratic front-runner is starting to pay off.
“I think that people are being energized because they’re hearing the message that means something to them,” said Sanders, surrounded by dozens of supporters. “It’s resonating with them because they understand there is something fundamentally wrong when the middle class continues to disappear.”
Sanders drew the biggest crowd at yesterday’s Milford Labor Day Parade. Republican presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Lindsey Graham also joined their supporters at the parade, but Sanders’ following dwarfed the others and at one point took over the space where Graham’s volunteers had set up to march.
“If it weren’t for New Hampshire, I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell,” an undaunted Graham said, as Sanders’ supporters chanted “Bernie” nearby. “This is a place where I can break through.”
LaborFest:
Two months after drawing nearly 10,000 for a rally at the Dane County Coliseum, enthusiasm appears to remain high for presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders among Madison’s liberal base.
Hundreds of union members and liberal-leaning allies celebrated Monday’s holiday at the Madison Labor Temple, where live music, grilling goods and beer marked the South Central Federation of Labor’s annual LaborFest. But amid the solidarity fists, sarcastic “union thug” T-shirts and liberal campaign signage, one thing was noticeably absent: Hillary Clinton garb.
Despite skeptics, Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, has made significant inroads against Clinton for next year’s Democratic nomination.
That trend was mirrored at Monday’s event, where most 2016 conversation revolved around Sanders.
“I’m for Bernie so far because it’s not as simple as gender,” said Jenny Marquess, 56, of Madison. “People think women my age should be in favor of Hillary just because she’s a woman. But she’s a hawk.”
Aside from foreign policy, Marquess said, she was turned off by Clinton’s use of private email for government business while she served as secretary of state. The secrecy, she said, reminded her of a scandal that embroiled Gov. Scott Walker, whose staff in his Milwaukee County executive’s office exchanged thousands of messages with top campaign staff over private email during normal business hours during the 2010 election cycle.
Sanders Can Revitalize The Labor Movement:
The Democratic primary candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for president of the United States provides progressive labor activists with a unique opportunity to enhance the independent political capacity of a besieged labor movement. Reflecting his political roots in the American socialist movement, Sanders is the most consistently pro-labor member of the United States Congress. Just this Friday he walked the picket line in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where workers are protesting the anti-union practices of the new owners of Penford Products, a potato starch manufacturer.
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The Sanders effort is the most explicit pro-working class major campaign for president since Jessie Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition 1988 presidential run. His campaign insists that working people must fight back against the unceasing class war waged by corporate elites over the past 40 years. (Sanders is so focused on class injustice that he had to be pushed by #Black Lives Matter activists to explicitly address racial justice issues, such as mass incarceration and police brutality. He has now done so in a recent major addition to his campaign platform.)
Sanders’ platform differentiates him clearly from the centrist, pro-corporate candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Sanders supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour; he opposes “free trade” agreements that empower corporations and weaken labor rights and state regulation of corporate behavior; and he supports a “Medicare for All” health care system that would abolish the private health insurance sector. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has refused to unambiguously embrace any of these positions.
More Grassroots Support:
UCF students are working to help Bernie Sanders become the next U.S. president with the Knights for Bernie club, slated to have its first meeting Tuesday.
Since the club became a registered student organization at the end of the summer, it has gathered 600 Facebook follows and registered almost 150 voters, according to a press release.
The goal of the first meeting is to familiarize students with the organization, while discussing the election and registering voters.
"We've been blown away by the level of support the club has gotten. Every time we set up a table, we get crowds of students eager to take part in the movement," club president Daniel Koster said in the release.
Bernie Draws In Blue Collar Workers In Iowa:
A picketing president? Bernie Sanders said it could be him.
“Yeah, I might. That’s right. Why not?” Sanders said after addressing AFSCME union members on Saturday in Altoona, Iowa.
The day before, Sanders picketed outside a Cedar Rapids plant that produces specialized starches alongside union workers engaged in a battle with the plant’s parent company, Ingredion, over new contract negotiations.
To a crowd of 400 last Thursday in Burlington, Iowa—an old, union town hit hard over the last three decades by shuttered factories—Sanders emphatically stated: “The bottom line is: For millions of American workers, wages in this country are just too damn low.”
Since announcing his candidacy, Sanders has zeroed in on blue-collar voters, consistently addressing low wages, unemployment issues and the country’s trade policies in stump speeches—pushing back against the notion that the economic recovery is as strong as often touted.
“I assumed I would be a Hillary supporter—and rightly or wrongly, probably because I feel like in the last 20 years, the greatest time we had between financial stability was during Bill Clinton’s run,” said Ron Lowe, 52, of Grinnell, Iowa.
But Lowe said he will caucus for Sanders in February. He drove 45 minutes with his mother-in-law last Thursday to see the Democratic candidate at a rally.
A Reminder That Sanders Will Be On Colbert Next Week:
Jeb Bush starts the parade, followed by Joe Biden. Now word arrives that another high-profile politico is booked for “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert: Bernie Sanders is due Sept. 18.
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Vermont Sen. Sanders was quoted by The Washington Post as saying: “I love Stephen Colbert. I’m sure that Colbert will have a large viewing audience, and I think it’s a good thing to be seen by people outside of the normal political context.”
Sanders, who turns 74 on Tuesday, was on “The Colbert Report” several times, including last November.
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