Bernie Sanders is ready to fight for California — or at least the Golden State’s wealth of delegates.
The Democratic presidential candidate came out swinging during a Saturday stop in Santa Maria, where more than 7,500 people rallied at Ralph Baldiviez Stadium to hear him speak. Sanders, a Vermont senator, was greeted by a mix of people, from middle-schoolers to seniors. Many wore T-shirts and accessories emblazoned with “Feel the Bern,” Sanders’ unofficial campaign slogan, or phrases disparaging Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
“It looks to me like all of you in Santa Maria are ready for a political revolution!” Sanders yelled to a cheering crowd at the start of his speech.
He stuck close to his typical stump speech and focused primarily on a few key themes: economic equality, cheapereducation, universal healthcare and alternative energy sources.
He encouraged large corporations, such as Wal-Mart, to pay workers fair wages so that employees don’t need to resort to food stamps and other public aid. Providing young people with jobs and opportunities for education is key to keeping them out of trouble and reducing the prison population, Sanders said.
“The truth is, 45 years ago here in California, and in states all over the country, tuition at your universities was virtually free,” Sanders said. “Well, if we could provide virtually free tuition to the state universities 45 years ago, we damn well can do it today.”
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Sanders said the federal government could help Californians manage the drought by pushing for “sensible water conservation practices” and helping in any way possible. Drought is a byproduct of global warming, Sanders said, so the most important way the federal government can address the problem is by being “aggressive” in phasing out fossil fuels and pushing for alternative energy sources.
“We have got to acknowledge that climate change is already doing devastating problems in this country and around the world,” he said. “You’re already on the cutting edge of that. Some parts of this country don’t perceive that.”
The only thing burning through the mid-morning fog blanketing the sweeping grassy knoll at City College’s West Campus this Saturday was the voice of Democratic presidential candidate — and Vermont Senator — Bernie Sanders, still vying for his party’s nomination. Sanders made it clear he was not going into the good night of historical and mathematical inevitability ascribed to Hillary Clinton’s eventual victory. About 6,000 people showed up to help celebrate Sanders’ 28th wedding anniversary with his wife, Jane — back in Vermont with the grandkids. Strikingly, Sanders didn’t utter a single critical word about Clinton — other than to hope she’d see fit to change her positions on a couple issues — and not that much even about putative Republican nominee Donald Trump. But as Sanders zigzags throughout the State of California, making campaign pit stops at community colleges as he goes, he made it clear he was still very much in it. Despite overwhelming odds, Sanders noted he’d won 20 state primaries and caucuses and was gunning for California’s pot of political gold— 475 delegates — up for grabs in the June 7 primary. “We’re going to go into the Democratic convention with a lot of momentum,” he vowed. “And we’re going to go back out with the Democratic nomination.” After that, Sanders predicted he would not merely defeat Trump, but “demolish” him.
Sanders dispensed with Trump in almost a desultory fashion, describing how he’d challenged Trump to a debate only to be told it was on, then off, then on again, and most recently off. If and when Trump changes his mind, Sanders said he would demand an explanation of how Trump could be so insulting to Mexicans, Latinos, women, veterans, and African Americans. He highlighted the fact that Trump had helped lead the “birther bandwagon,” which for years questioned if President Barack Obama was in fact an American citizen. “He was trying to de-legitimize the presidency of the first African American in the history of the United States.” Sanders said.
Mostly, however, Sanders, seemed intent on banging the gong of his “bottom-up” revolution and preaching the gospel of economic, racial, and environmental justice. It was not enough to tinker at the edges, he told the crowd, and consider it a victory if only 15 million people went without health care as opposed to 25 million. “Health care” he thundered, “should be a right, not a privilege.” There were no hecklers, and the crowd responded warmly to Sanders’ message. Sanders vamped on the shortcomings of the American medical system, using the word “crazy” as a point of departure for an extended riff. “’Crazy’ is one out of five Americans getting medical prescriptions that they’re unable to pay for,” he said. “’Crazy’ is that last year the top five pharmaceutical companies made $55 billion in profits, and ‘crazy’ is the United States spending more on health care than any other country and having so little to show for it.”
Santa Barbara County was not exempt from Sanders’ critique. The City of Santa Barbara, he noted, was one of the 10 most expensive places to live, while the county ranks fourth in statewide poverty rates and one-half of public school students qualify for free and reduced meals.
The wage gap between men and women, Sanders decried, still exists, with women making 79 cents on average for every $1 their male coworkers take home. “Today women want the whole damn dollar.”
A town that votes solidly Republican turned out in the thousands Saturday to hear Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders proclaim that after talking to locals, “It sounds to me we need a political revolution where government works for all of us and not the few.”
Sanders rallied a raucous, diverse group of more than 3,000 at the Kern County Fairgrounds, laying out his priorities and making the case for why his campaign is still alive and well despite Hillary Clinton’s lead in the delegate count.
He knew his crowd and spoke to it directly, hitting not only his traditional campaign themes of fighting for the powerless and against wealthy special interests but also ensuring farmworkers are treated well, people have access to clean drinking water, and children are protected from pesticides.
“The American people understand that the greatest strength we have as a nation is our diversity,” he roared, getting huge cheers from the mix of white, brown, black, young and old in the crowds that stood in grandstands, on the ground below and behind the candidate.
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Voters may have gotten the best sense of what a Sanders administration would mean for Kern County during a town-hall-style gathering geared toward the Latino community held before the larger rally.
Audience members had a slew of questions about what he’d do about immigration reform, water quality and police shootings. Sanders had many for them, too.
The discussion turned particularly passionate as audience members complained thousands of local people can’t drink their tap water, including 20,000 in Arvin, due to contamination.
“I don’t think anybody in America knows this stuff,” an astounded-sounding Sanders said.
Sanders spoke to KSBY one-on-one about his campaign goals in California, immigration reform, and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
When asked about the real estate mogul, Sanders responded passionately, insisting that a Donald Trump presidency would be catastrophic for the United States. He said, regardless of the outcome of the election, the Democratic party and the nation must unite to ensure that Trump is not sitting in the White House at the end of President Obama's second term.
"I think there is a widespread understanding within the Democratic party and within the United States that Donald Trump and his bigotry would be a disaster for our country and for our children. It is absolutely imperative that we come together to defeat him," Sanders said. "We do not need a president that insults Latinos and Mexicans, Muslims, women, African Americans... We need bringing people together, not dividing us up. As president, that would be one of my main goals."
When asked about immigration reform, a topic that is controversial, yet extremely important to many on the Central Coast, Sanders made the bold statement that he would do everything in his power as president to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
"I think we need comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship. If Congress does not do what it should do and pass immigration reform, I will use the executive powers of the presidency to do all that I can," Sanders stated vigorously.
Analysts and experts have long debated whether Sanders' path to the presidency is feasible considering the difference in delegates secured so far by the Vermont senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Sanders told KSBY he believes California is a big step toward the nomination. He hopes his grassroots approach to campaigning will bring him a win in the single state in the nation with the most delegates.
"We think we are going to do well in California because we are doing something kind of unique. We are holding dozens of rallies in every part of the state: north, south, central, east, and west," Sanders said. "We are going to bring out over 200,000 people to those rallies and it looks like we have a really great turn out here today."
"Donald Trump said he wanted to go forward, then he changed his mind, said no, then he changed his mind and said yes, then he changed his mind and said no," Sanders told "Face the Nation" moderator John Dickerson in an interview taped for Sunday's broadcast. "Maybe we'll get a call in five minutes and he'll say yes again. I think that is who Donald Trump is, and I think the American people should be very concerned about somebody who keeps changing his mind not only on this debate, but on virtually every issue he's been asked about."
In a press release declining the debate, Trump suggested the Democratic primary is "totally rigged" to prevent Sanders from winning, and that it would be "inappropriate" for him to debate a "second-place finisher."
Dickerson asked Sanders, who trails Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates as the end of primary season approaches, whether he agrees with Trump's characterization.
"Well, I've been very touched by Donald Trump's love for me," Sanders replied sarcastically. "But John, you know, with all due respect, I think there may be some aspect of this which he thinks will advantage himself. So I do appreciate his love and his compassion for me, but I don't really accept his words."
Turning to the underlying question, Sanders explained, "We knew when we were in this, that we were taking on the entire Democratic establishment. No great secret about that. And yet we have won twenty states, we're in California right now, I think we have a good chance to win here. I think we have an uphill fight, but there is just a possibility that we may end up at the end of this nominating process with more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton. "
"What has upset me, and what I think is -- I wouldn't use the word 'rigged' because we knew what the rules were -- but what is really dumb, is that you have closed primaries, like in New York State, where three million people who were Democrats or Republicans could not participate," Sanders added. "You have a situation where over 400 super delegates came on board Clinton's campaign before anybody else was in the race, eight months before the first vote was cast. That's not rigged, I think it's just a dumb process which has certainly disadvantaged our campaign."
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is seeking to bar allies of Hillary Clinton from leading the powerful rules and platform committees of the Democratic National Convention in July, escalating his battle with party leaders.
In a letter sent on Friday to party officials, lawyers for Mr. Sanders said that the appointments of Barney Frank, the former Massachusetts congressman, and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut violated party rules. Mr. Frank is to co-lead the rules committee, and Mr. Malloy the platform committee.
In the letter, Mr. Sanders’s lawyer Brad Deutsch said that both men have been “harsh, vocal critics of Senator Sanders, and equally active supporters of his challenger, Hillary Clinton.” Mr. Frank has called Mr. Sanders “outrageously McCarthyite” for his suggesting that Mrs. Clinton would be influenced by her speaking fees from Wall Street; Mr. Malloy has led efforts among Clinton allies to attack Mr. Sanders’s record on gun control.
Under convention rules, Mr. Deutsch said in the letter, their open criticism of Mr. Sanders made them unfit to co-lead the committees.
“Their criticisms of Senator Sanders have gone beyond dispassionate ideological disagreement and have exposed a deeper professional, political and personal hostility toward the senator and his campaign,” Mr. Deutsch wrote. “The chairs therefore cannot be relied upon to perform their convention duties fairly and capably while laboring under such deeply held bias.”
Democratic officials replied on Saturday morning with a letter from Jim Roosevelt, a retired health insurance executive, and Lorraine C. Miller, who head the party’s permanent rules and bylaws committee. They said the appointments did not violate party rules, and that Mr. Sanders had not demonstrated otherwise. The question of Mr. Frank’s and Mr. Malloy’s qualifications had been settled in January, when they were first appointed, Ms. Miller and Mr. Roosevelt wrote, and there is no mechanism to revisit it. “We are compelled to dismiss it,” they said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has begun pushing the Democratic Party toward a platform fight over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a departure from his core focus on domestic economic issues that would put pressure on Hillary Clinton to handle a growing divide within her party.
The Democratic Party has long had a policy of support for Israel and its government, but consensus on that subject has frayed in recent years.
Four years ago, the floor of the Democratic National Convention erupted into boos after delegates, acting at the behest of President Obama, restored language to the party platform sought by backers of Israel. The language had been left out of an earlier draft, but White House officials wanted it restored to avoid alienating pro-Israel voters.
Since then, tensions between the administration and Israel have grown and so has unease among liberal Democrats about Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.
Many Democrats, including Obama, were angered last year when Republican lawmakers scheduled an address to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he denounced the administration's nuclear deal with Iran. The scale of civilian casualties in Israel's attack on Gaza in 2014 also alienated many liberals.
Despite those tensions, Clinton and many party leaders are loath to show any signs of weakening support for Israel, an ally that has long been central to America’s Middle East policy and that has deep political support in the top reaches of both political parties.
Sanders, in an interview with The Times on Wednesday, declared himself “100% supportive of Israel’s right to exist.” Israel, he said, has a right “to take all actions that are needed to protect itself from terrorism.”
“But I believe that for too long our country and our government have not given the Palestinian people the respect that they need,” he added. “Long term, if there’s going to be peace in the Middle East, a lasting peace, the Palestinian people are going to have to be treated with respect and dignity."
California is a sprawling state. And Hollywood actress Shailene Woodley, a die-hard Bernie Sanders supporter, had access to a motor home.
So this week, Woodley decided to take the RV on the road to campaign for Sanders ahead of California’s June 7 Democratic primary. She invited a few celebrity friends and fellow Sanders fanatics, including actors Rosario Dawson and Kendrick Sampson.
They didn’t hire a driver, instead taking turns at the wheel for a 12-city tour of the state.
They started Thursday, with stops at the U.S.-Mexico border and San Diego. On Friday, more than 500 miles later, the big tan motor home rolled into a quiet residential neighborhood in the Bay Area suburb of Hayward, where a couple dozen Sanders supporters were preparing to spend the afternoon knocking on doors.
“It’s easy to feel isolated and to feel lonely in this movement,” said Woodley, known for her starring roles in “The Fault in Our Stars” and the “Divergent” film series. “But there’s millions of us around the country who are doing this.”
“This is about our future, our collective future, and we can’t be told we have to vote out of fear,” said Dawson, who has starred in films including “Rent” and “Men In Black II.”
The DIY nature of this weekend’s road trip is a bit different than typical endorsement tours, and it seems in tune with a campaign that has prided itself on small individual donations and other grassroots support.
Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke fired up the crowd at a Bernie Sanders rally here on Saturday, because, as he put it, he likes “to give promising young politicians like Bernie a break.”
Sanders, who turns 75 in September, would be the oldest person ever elected president. But he is a whippersnapper compared with the 90-year-old Van Dyke.
And, in a way, Sanders is an honorary millennial, given his strong base of support among young voters.
So Van Dyke used his brief time onstage at Santa Barbara City College to make the case for why older voters should back the Vermont senator, too.
“Mostly I want to be here to talk to my generation,” the actor said. “I have a really important message for them. I was born in the Coolidge administration. Can you believe that? So I’ve seen a lot of politics. I was 5 years old when the stock market crashed; I lost everything.
“What I want to say to my contemporaries is, as Bernie says, in the ’50s and ’60s, real democracy was really working from the bottom up, like it’s supposed to. There were no economic crashes during those decades because regulations were in place.”
Bernie Sanders showed up at exactly 4:40 p.m. His appearance was between stops in San Jose in the morning and Vallejo in the evening. He made time for the hotel workers, and in one fell swoop proved he’s the candidate he claims to be: one for the proletariat, not the well-heeled minority.
But Sanders didn’t accomplish that just by showing up. He also knew where he was and who he was speaking to. He supported the workers’ quest, saying unions are important vehicles for dignified workplace treatment. He told the crowd he was shocked by the sight of so many people living on the streets of San Francisco. His wife, Jane, stood off stage, snapping pictures of her husband during his brief remarks before greeting the audience after the senator did the same.
It was as if they were just like the rest of us, because, well, they are.
It’s easy to write off Sanders and his continued candidacy as a waste of time. With Donald Trump being the presumptive Republican nominee, some argue Sanders is damaging the Democratic Party’s chances of retaining the White House. But that ignores the fact that the people who came to the union rally in The City — the legions of folks who’ve packed venues nationwide to see the man in person, the millions more who’ve donated their money and time to get him elected — are, for the most part, doing something they’ve never done before. And particularly here in California, many Sanders supporters are engaged in a primary process that has not been this important in their lifetimes. There’s life after Bernie, many say.
Frank Gamboa, 39, and his wife, Liz Martinez, 33, said after the hotel workers rally that watching Sanders in the early going made them “get off their ass,” as Martinez put it, and join the campaign as volunteers. They live in Alameda and volunteer out of Sanders’ Oakland office. They, like other Sanders supporters, believe this is the beginning of something new in U.S. politics, whether or not their guy wins. Gamboa said it’s the same way with Trump — even if you despise him, it’s undeniable that Trump, like Sanders, has galvanized people who long ago became disenchanted with politics.
The couple mentioned Tim Canova, who’s challenging Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. Sanders recently came out in support of Canova, and it’s no secret that the DNC’s primary and caucus rules, not to mention superdelegates, have not always favored Sanders in his race against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination.
One of the most stinging criticisms of Sanders supporters is their perceived worship of the man like he’s some kind of deity. Late-night television jokes aside, it’s obvious some folks are wearing rose-colored glasses, but others are dead serious in their convictions. Jennifer Bair, a touring musician who attended a volunteer drive in the Mission District recently, did not mince words in her assessment of Sanders’ base.
“It’s not a cult, he’s not a savior,” she said. “We are following a cause for our nation.”
America’s landmark civil rights legislation was also the product of heavy political pressure. For decades, northern liberals coexisted uneasily with southern segregationists in the Democratic Party—a coalition of convenience that John F. Kennedy continued to honor after he became president in 1960. When Freedom Riders began challenging segregation on interstate buses, Kennedy regarded them as a nuisance. “Can’t you get your Goddamned friends off those buses?" he complained to a Justice Department official with ties to the movement.
But civil rights leaders carried on. Writing from a Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King Jr. reproached “the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” After Birmingham police turned their dogs and firehoses on peaceful demonstrators, Kennedy and other Democratic leaders could no longer turn a blind eye to the abuses of their southern colleagues. “The events in Birmingham and elsewhere, have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them,” Kennedy proclaimed on national television. “A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.”
When Bernie Sanders calls for a “revolution” to reform American politics in the 21st century, he aspires to emulate these earthshaking movements that changed history. Such a movement cannot be realized in a single election cycle; it will take years, even decades, to reach maturity. And Sanders need not become president to fulfill it. Some future president who ultimately executes Sanders’s vision would likely be a late convert to the cause, much like Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and JFK.
But if Sanders hopes to see his fledgling movement take flight, he should not subordinate it to the short term electoral interests of the Democratic Party. Like any large institution, the party is subject to inertia; great force is required to redirect its course. If Sanders yields and meekly throws his support to Clinton, the nudge that he gave the party during the 2016 primary race will be for naught. His impassioned supporters will drift away, fulfilling the prophecies of his critics, and the party will roll on as before.
That does not mean that Sanders should throw the election to Donald Trump, who is anathema to his cause and a threat to the nation. But if Sanders hopes to change the Democratic Party, he must take it to the brink. He should run up his delegate count until the final primary and then demand a price for his allegiance: speeches at the convention, planks in the party platform, and progressive voices in Clinton’s cabinet. Above all, he must secure a stable foothold for his emerging faction so that it can grow into the dominant force in the party.
Such negotiations won’t be pretty. The Democratic leadership won’t budge unless they believe that the welfare of the party and the path to the White House are jeopardized. There will be howls of rage, accusations of egotism and demagoguery, just as there were during previous movements. But as they said in Theodore Roosevelt’s time, politics ain’t beanbag. To build a lasting movement that will influence the country for years to come, Sanders must force Clinton and Democratic leaders to reckon with the power of his supporters and bend to their will.
The political revolution that Bernie Sanders began may still be felt at the ballot box this November even if he's not the Democratic nominee for president.
The Vermont senator is beginning to expand his political network by helping upstart progressive congressional candidates and state legislators, lending his fundraising prowess and national fame to boost their bids.
And win or lose for the White House hopeful, Sanders's candidacy has given them a prominent national messenger and new energy they hope will trickle down-ballot in primaries and the general election.
"Bernie Sanders is really building this political revolution all the way up and down the ballot," said Matt Blizek, MoveOn.org's electoral field director. "His entire campaign, the mantra has been 'not me, us.'"
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For candidates who have received the Sanders blessing, it's changed the trajectory of their campaign almost overnight.
Canova, a law professor who's challenging Wasserman Schultz in her Southern Florida district, was driving by himself to a campaign event when his phone started buzzing last Saturday. A staffer told him they had gotten a call from a CNN producer that Sanders had just endorsed him in an interview with Jake Tapper set to air Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." The next phone call was from that producer asking for a reaction.
Canova was already attracting attention for his upstart challenge to the sitting DNC chairman, who has come under fire from Sanders and other progressive activists for her handling of the primary campaign between the two. It was a slow burn for the liberal hopeful.
But once the Sanders endorsement came, it was like a spark became a wildfire. Over the weekend, he raised $250,000 after the news broke.
"The Sanders endorsement has been like a big shot in the arm for excitement and energy and fundraising, and I'm very grateful for his support," Canova told NPR in an interview Tuesday.