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Bernie Is Not Howard Dean:
Yet for all the obvious similarities, there are striking differences between the two — in their campaign appeals, ideologies and skills as candidates — which may go far in determining whether Mr. Sanders follows Mr. Dean’s trajectory: a once-hot comet who quickly burns out after Iowa.
Both men are New York natives who live in Burlington, Vt.; they avoid talk of themselves or their biographies, and display irritation with many of the conventions of the way campaigns are conducted and covered. Both call for universal health care, though the appeal has less resonance now than it did before the Affordable Care Act was passed. Both have seemed to strike a chord that suggests impatience with the more establishment Democrats in the contest, whether Hillary Rodham Clinton today or John Kerry and John Edwards, senators from Massachusetts and North Carolina, in 2004.
And both have drawn fervent crowds who embrace their philosophy and celebrate their candidate-as-fighter styles.
“He is telling the truth, and not giving political speeches,” said Gwen Harvey, 67, a retired insurance manager who saw him speak here. Maggie Rawland, 86, a self-described Democratic activist who said she has been attending political rallies in Iowa for 40 years, said Mr. Sanders was “firing up audiences — and better than Dean did.”
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“In terms of Dean’s politics and mine, they are different,” he said. “I look at issues much more from a class-based perspective than he does. He did health care stuff. My perspective is a little bit different. I say we do need a political revolution.”
The differences go beyond the two men.
Mr. Dean, in 2004, broke out of a fractured pack of Democrats and took command of the contest. Mr. Sanders has, essentially, one strong opponent, Mrs. Clinton, and a longer-shot rival, Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor.
“I understand why people are making the comparisons,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant who managed Mr. Dean’s campaign. “But in a lot of ways Sanders is not as strong as Dean was. We coalesced the left and the progressives, with a split field.”
I took the time to cherrypick this quote out of the peice too:
“Sanders gives me a sense of déjà vu, not just the level of excitement that he generates among people who desperately want an alternative to the establishment status quo, but also the irrational cherry-picking of news to convince themselves that victory is just around the corner,” said Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal blog Daily Kos and the organizer of the first Netroots Nation convention, as it came to be known.
“I was knee-deep in the Dean movement, so I remember those big exciting crowds, but I also remember ignoring the fact that they were almost exclusively made up of young, white, fairly affluent and educated people,” Mr. Moulitsas said. “And Sanders’s are no different, ill reflecting a modern Democratic Party that is at least 40 percent minority and overwhelmingly female.”
Yet Mr. Sanders’s appeal shows no sign of fading. And in a sign of self-confidence — and a tribute to Mr. Dean’s signature argument, when he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, that the party had to compete in all 50 states — Mr. Sanders is campaigning in such unlikely Democratic states as Louisiana and Texas. It appears to be working: He walked out to a rally in Arizona to find 11,000 people waiting to hear him on a Saturday night.
More:
Bernie Sanders came to Seattle on Saturday for two events. His first, a rally on Social Security in downtown Seattle, never happened.
Seconds after Sanders took the stage, a dozen protesters from the city's Black Lives Matter chapter jumped barricades around the stage and grabbed the microphone from the senator. Holding a banner that said "Smash Racism," two of the protesters -- Marissa Janae Johnson and Mara Jacqeline Willaford, the co-founders of the chapter -- began to address the crowd.
"My name is Marissa Janae Johnson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Seattle," she said to sustained boos for an audience that had waited an hour and a half to hear Sanders. "I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you already did it for me, thank you.
"You are never going to hear Bernie speak if I don't hear silence now," said Johnson, adding later, "Now that you've covered yourself in your white supremacist liberalism, I will formally welcome Bernie Sanders to Seattle."
To sustained boos from the audience that assembled to see Sanders, Johnson demanded that the senator take action on saving black lives and called on him to release his plans to reform policing.
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Sanders stood just feet away off stage, chatting with his wife, Jane, and the three aides that came to Seattle with him. Sanders' aides said the senator had no plans of leaving during the protests, but once Johnson did not appear willing to give up the mic after the moment of silence, organizers effectively shut down the event.
"I think it is unfortunate because, among other things, I wanted to talk about the issues of black lives, the fact that the American people are tired of seeing unarmed African-Americans shot and killed," Sanders told CNN after the event. "But there are other issues as well that we have to talk about, and that is the fact that the middle class of this country is disappearing and most importantly, we don't bring change in this country... unless all people stand together. That is what we have to do."
Sanders never addressed the crowd. After the event was ended, he waved at his supporters from the stage and then made his way through the crowd, shaking hands and taking pictures with people that came to see him speak.
"We need to hear your message," said one man as Sanders walked through the crowd.
More from the WSJ:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was shoved aside by several Black Lives Matter activists and eventually left a Saturday afternoon event in Seattle without giving his speech.
Mr. Sanders was just starting to address several thousand people gathered shoulder to shoulder at Westlake Park when two women took over the microphone. Organizers couldn’t persuade the two to wait and agreed to give them a few minutes.
As Mr. Sanders stepped back, the women spoke about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown and held a four minute moment of silence.
When the crowd asked the activists to allow Mr. Sanders to speak, one activist called the crowd “white supremacist liberals,” according to event participants.
After waiting about 20 minutes, Mr. Sanders himself was pushed away when he tried to take the microphone back. Instead, he waved goodbye, left the stage with a raised fist salute and waded into the crowd. He shook hands and posed for photos with supporters for about 15 minutes, and then left.
The rally at Westlake Park was organized as a birthday celebration for Social security, Medicare and Medicaid.
And then this happened:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke to a packed crowd Saturday night at the University of Washington campus about his commitment to criminal justice reform as well as addressing income equality.
Sanders gave his talk to a cheering audience of about 12,000 inside a university pavilion a few hours after he was shoved aside by several Black Lives Matter activists who are calling for changes to the criminal justice system. Sanders eventually left the Saturday afternoon event at Westlake Park in Seattle without giving his speech.
At the University of Washington rally, Sanders addressed the issues raised by the protesters.
"No president will fight harder to end institutional racism and reform criminal justice system," he told the cheering crowd at Hec Edmundson pavilion, according to the King5-TV station. "Too many lives have been destroyed by war on drugs, by incarceration; we need to educate people. We need to put people to work."
Largest Washington Rally Since Obama:
The cheering for Sen. Bernie Sanders began outside the UW’s Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Saturday night, as Sanders talked to the 3,000 supporters who couldn’t get in, before giving a rip roaring populist speech to the 12,000 supporters inside the basketball arena.
Sanders was blocked from speaking at a Social Security anniversary celebration earlier in the day at Westlake Center, due to a disruption by Black Lives Matter protesters similar to one that greeted him at NetRoots Nation in Phoenix three weeks ago.
If the boorish, disjointed protest had not blocked him, the Westlake crowd would have heard Sanders talk knowledgeably about unemployment among African American youth, raising wages for the working poor, America’s high incarceration rate and the need for prison reform. He held forth later at the UW
“Too many young lives are being destroyed by the so-called ‘War on Drugs’,” the Democratic presidential candidate declared. “Too many lives are being destroyed by our system of incarceration.” And, pledged Sanders, “No President will fight harder to end the stain of racism and reform our criminal justice system. Period.”
This is the largest crowd we’ve had so far,” said Sanders, addressing the overflow outside. He drew almost as many people, inside and outside HecEdmundson Pavilion, as President Obama did five years ago in a rare Seattle public event. The Sanders crowd record is likely to stand for just 24 hours: An even larger throng is likely when Sanders speaks in Portland on Sunday night.
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Sanders is a rousing orator. He was mighty rough on Republicans. (A leading GOP candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, is doing a pricey private fundraiser in Bellevue on Monday night. Rubio said, in the Thursday candidate debate, that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest.)
“They (Republicans) believe that women in America should not have the right to control their own bodies,” Sanders cried. “They believe that women in America should not have the right to buy the contraceptives they need.”
Again and again, however, Sanders returned to the theme of economic injustice. “No person should work 40 hours a week for poverty wages,” he said, drawing his biggest ovation of the night.
In advocating the $15-an-hour minimum wage, Sanders did a shout-out to his host city. “You did it in Seattle,” he said. “We are now going to do it for the entire country.”
Dean went down. But Sanders is picking up steam. State Rep. Luis Moscoso, a warmup act, endorsed him. State Sen. Pramila Jayapal mocked those who underestimate Sanders, saying, “What they don’t know is the power of the people is never defeated.”
Examining The Rise Of Sanders:
No one is more amazed about the buoyancy of his presidential candidacy than Bernie Sanders himself, which only adds to its charm. The Vermont independent and proud democratic socialist got into the race mainly to remind the country what a progressive agenda actually looks like. You can’t keep calling President Obama a socialist once you’re confronted with the real thing.
Then magic struck: Sanders started surging in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states that are demographically well set up for him and that also happen to hold next year’s first two contests. A poll this week from WMUR-TV in New Hampshire showed Sanders within six points of Hillary Clinton. The survey had a relatively small sample size and a rather large margin of error, but the trend it measured is consistent with other polls.
To paraphrase the late Robert Bork, the Sanders’ candidacy is a political analyst’s feast because it allows everyone to peddle his or her favorite preconceptions.
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Trump and Sanders do speak to a disaffection that currently roils most of the world’s democracies. But their way of doing it is so radically different — Sanders resolutely programmatic, Trump all about feelings, affect and showmanship — that they cannot easily be subsumed as part of the same phenomenon. Sanders’ candidacy will leave behind policy markers and arguments about the future. Trump’s legacy will be almost entirely about himself, which is probably fine with him.
Portland Activists Race To Pull Off Biggest Rally Yet:
The campaign came to us and said, 'We're thinking about the Moda Center — can you fill it?'" said Max Grad, owner of Watershed PDX, the industrial art "sanctuary" where the Sanders campaign is now encamped. "We said, 'yes, absolutely.'"
Almost all of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are focusing their rallies and campaigns on such early primary and caucus states as Iowa and New Hampshire. The only two other candidates to travel to Oregon this year — Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton — came here to raise money at closed-door fundraisers.
For Sanders, attracting big crowds around the country has been the oxygen driving his campaign.
It's helped spark the kind of media coverage that Clinton's other Democratic rivals — Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee — can only fantasize about.
The buzz for Sanders has also inspired thousands of small contributors to send him money. He raised $13.7 million in the last three months, with more than $10 million coming from donors who have given no more than $200.
Beyond that, Sanders' travels around the country have helped build a network of devoted activists who can be deployed in early and late primary states alike.
Emma Darden, a Portland photographer who is helping pull the rally together, said volunteers plan to stay active in the campaign once Sanders moves on.
Using their own smartphones, volunteers can do phone-banking in Iowa and New Hampshire from their Portland living rooms. Some supporters without family or work obligations, she added, can travel to the early states to campaign in person.
Most of all, Sanders appearance will give Portland's large number of left-of-center voters a cause worth fighting for.
"He's really building a lot of momentum, and that's affirming to a lot of people," said Darden.
The New Face Of The Campaign:
Hours after Black Lives Matter protesters shut down a Bernie Sanders rally here, the Vermont senator’s populist Democratic presidential campaign once again attempted to cast Sanders as the candidate of a modern civil rights movement.
Before a crowd of more than 12,000 at the Alaska Airlines Arena on the campus of the University Of Washington, a new public face for the Sanders campaign appeared. Symone Sanders, a volunteer organizer with the D.C.-based Coalition for Juvenile Justice, was announced as the new national press secretary of Sanders’ campaign and was tasked with introducing the 73-year-old senator.
Symone Sanders is a young, black, criminal justice advocate and supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. She’s also a progressive political activist right out of the Sanders mold: Her last job was at Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen. In an interview, Symone Sanders said she first connected with the senator about three weeks ago, offering him advice on how to better understand the message of Black Lives Matter activists in an hour-long chat.
“One of my suggestions, he took it and ran with it on Meet the Press, is that racial inequality and economic inequality are parallel issues,” she said. “I [told him,] you know, economic equality is an issue. It’s something we need to address. But for some people it doesn’t matter how much money you make, it doesn’t matter where you went to school, it doesn’t matter what your parents do. It doesn’t matter that Sandra Bland had a job and was on her way to teach for her alma mater. It doesn’t matter. None of that matters.”
Bernie Sanders took to the advice, Symone Sanders said. She also confronted him with one of the criticisms he faced earlier in the summer, when Black Lives Matter activists rejected his statements about his past Civil Rights Movement work.
“Educating America, the community, letting people know who Bernie Sanders is and what he’s about,” she said. “And not just, ‘Oh, I fought for civil rights and I protested and I sat at the lunch counters.’ That’s important and that’s great but that was 50 years ago and he has a lot more to stand on than just what he did 50 years ago.”
Bernies Racial Justice Platform
We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color. That starts with addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.
Physical Violence
Perpetrated by the State
Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
Perpetrated by Extremists
We are far from eradicating racism in this country. In June, nine of our fellow Americans were murdered while praying in a historic church because of the color of their skin. This violence fills us with outrage, disgust, and a deep, deep sadness. Today in America, if you are black, you can be killed for getting a pack of Skittles during a basketball game. These hateful acts of violence amount to acts of terror. They are perpetrated by extremists who want to intimidate and terrorize black and brown people in this country.
Addressing Physical Violence
It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts violence being perpetuated by police, and racist terrorism by white supremacists.
A growing number of communities do not trust the police and law enforcement officers have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of the police sworn to protect and serve our communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. We need a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and racism cannot be accepted in a civilized country.
We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.
We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.
We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.
At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.
We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.
Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.
We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.
We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.
We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.