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Bernie Denounces Carson:
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Sunday denounced the assertion by Republican candidate Ben Carson that he would not support a Muslim for president, saying Carson’s comments reflected antiquated thinking.
“You know, this is the year 2015,” Sanders told reporters following the opening of a new campaign office here. “You judge candidates for president not on their religion, not on the color of their skin, but on their ideas on what they stand for. … I was very disappointed in Dr. Carson’s statement.”
During an interview that aired Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has risen rapidly in the Republican field, said, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”
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Throughout the campaign, Sanders has been loath to criticize his Democratic rivals. But he has been less reserved when it comes to taking aim at Republicans, including the party's front-runner, Donald Trump, whose comments about Mexicans Sanders has called racist.
Sanders IN NH:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D, Vermont) is touring the Granite State a day after the New Hampshire Democratic Convention.
The Democratic presidential candidate opened an office on West Road in Portsmouth Sunday. Later in the evening he held a town hall meeting at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
The Vermont senator greeted supporters outside his new campaign regional site. Sanders promoted an anti-Super PAC and anti-billionaire message familiar to his campaign.
He said not only is he trying to win an election, but also transform the country.
“There is nothing that I am talking about in this campaign which is outside of mainstream ideas. These are the ideas that the American people want to hear and want to see implemented,” Sanders said.
Behind The Scenes With Bernie:
I spent three days following Sanders across Iowa—driving past corn fields and silos and hay bales and Casey’s General Stores, and thinking about the accidents of electoral politics that made this state of 3 million people so important. Eager to embrace the moment, the Sanders die-hards were aching to tell their stories, and some of them even approached me before I could seek them out.
I met Hannah Austin, a 28-year-old elementary school music teacher from Ames, Iowa, with $20,000 in student debt. She grew up in Chicago with a Korean mother and a Navy veteran father, and relates to the message that wealth inequality is hampering the middle class. She doesn’t trust Hillary because of the way she’s changed her mind on important issues, and also believes she’s trying to hide her mistakes in the email scandal.
Caleb Humphrey, 30, an Iraq War veteran living in Boone County and attending school on the GI bill, has regained a sense of his old Army camaraderie volunteering for Sanders—he told me proudly that he’d placed 2,016 phone calls in the past week. He sees Sanders as the only anti-billionaire candidate, and because he lives in a county with a Monsanto corn production plant where fertilizer runoff has frequently raised nitrates in the water supply to levels that can be fatal to infants, he has a good reason to mistrust the economic upper class. And as you’d imagine, Iran is no small issue in his mind; he appreciates Sanders’ record on Iraq, which he saw as an avoidable war.
“I tell everyone, I’ve been to war, I’ve seen war, and it’s hell,” he told me. “I don’t want anyone else to see it.
June McGowan is a retired bank teller and substitute teacher, 70 years old, who realized there was actual hope for Sanders when she went to a rally in Ames and saw young people engaged in the message. She fears Republicans who speak about taking away Social Security and Medicare, and she sees Hillary Clinton as a politician, not a “caring person.”
Sanders Draws A Crowd In Seabrook:
Bernie Sanders was in the New Hampshire Seacoast yesterday, but a big chunk of the audience that packed the elementary school auditorium was from neighboring Massachusetts.
Sanders is the Vermont U.S. senator who is running a progressive campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Spotted at the 12:30 p.m. rally were two Massachusetts town or city Democratic committee chairpersons and a Salisbury Democratic Town Committee member, Walter Sidley, a frequent Democratic state convention delegate. There were many Bay State license plates in the parking lot of the school on Walton Road.
Most of the 600-plus folks who turned out were in their seats by noon, and the candidate walked in to a standing, cheering crown at 12:44, clad in a blue blazer that he quickly shed as he began his one-hour speech.
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Rebecca Jordan, Amesbury City Committee chair, who volunteered at the event, said “I am here because I want to see him live. He represents my practices.” Husband Scott, who was directing traffic, said, “Well … Bernie Sanders is saying important things that need to be said in this country.”
Bernie Opens A Portsmouth Office:
The Bernie Sanders campaign opened its Portsmouth office Sunday afternoon at 235 West Road, Suite 10, with a visit from Sanders who spoke to a crowd of several hundred behind the building.
While waiting for the Democratic presidential primary candidate to appear, Joan and Bill Chandler of Stratham, said Sanders was not distracted by people with non-issues.
“He has good platforms for things like social issues, education and health insurance,” Joan said. Bill said that Sanders was pulling ahead in the polls.
Michael Dignon of Hampton said he came to listen as his biggest concern right now is what the country is going to do for returning military troops.
“I have family and friends overseas and the Veterans Administration is really bad right now,” he said.
Nicole Waldron of York, Maine, was with her daughter Anna Hickey who will turn 18 in December in time to vote in the primary.
“I want her to be informed,” Waldron said. “Taking Citizens United down and climate change are two big issues for me.’
Some Lack Of Debate News:
REPUBLICANS have scheduled 10 presidential primary debates ahead of next year's elections. Democrats, on the other hand, have limited the number of debates between their party's candidates to just six.
This has put the Democratic National Committee in a bit of a bind. Its leaders want to have fewer debates, so that the odds are enhanced of reaching the preordained outcome — a victory by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. To that end, they have not only scheduled fewer debates, but they have scheduled them mostly outside of the primary season and on days when people are unlikely to watch.
Yes, Clinton will have to face her competition, but it will happen when most Americans will be watching college football (on Saturday, Nov. 14) or shopping for Christmas (on Saturday, Dec. 19) or enjoying an
apolitical Martin Luther King Day weekend with their families (Sunday, Jan. 17).
Many rank-and-file Democrats are not happy about this. Last week, the Washington Examiner's Ariel Cohen reported that the DNC had to rope off protesters outside of its Washington, D.C., headquarters just south of the parking lots that ring the House office buildings. They were there to demand more debates. Democratic Party officials may not realize, but it is in their best interest to listen.
The Democratic Party — and for that matter, the entire nation — can only benefit from a robust debate schedule on the Democratic side.
Sanders Supporters Are A Thoughtful Bunch:
Two weeks ago, the downtown bar, The Midnight, hosted a social gathering for the Gainesville Bernie Sanders’ faithful. Being the political adventurer I am, and embracing my status as the sole conservative columnist for the Alligator, I felt compelled to attend. On that Wednesday night, a handful of Bernie Sanders volunteers were ready and willing to entertain any question a politico could ask. I, of course, took them up on it.
The principle reason I went to the Bernie Sanders social was to see if the "Feel the Bern" hype was real and to see if the Sanders crowd knew what they were talking about. Despite all of my preconceived notions about the kind of people who would support Bernie Sanders — the aged hippie, the disgruntled college student, the people who think communism is great in theory and the issues they would champion, which is pretty much any issue that has the word "free" before it — I was impressed with what I saw and the people I talked to.
Each Sanders supporter I talked to genuinely felt that the American political system has betrayed and abandoned them. They were disheartened and disenfranchised, but not disengaged with the current state of politics. Instead of throwing their collective hands in the air and accepting the inevitability of a Clinton coronation, they threw their weight and hopes of a brighter future behind an elderly senator from Vermont: A man they feel has more in common with the average Joe than any other presidential candidate.
One thing that impressed me was the hesitant rationality of each Bernie supporter; a phrase I thought I would never utter. The supporters know how difficult it is to change the political system. They know how hard it will be to defeat the Hillary Clinton juggernaut. They know that even if Bernie is elected president, things might not change. Each supporter knows this and yet still supports Mr. Sanders. They believe voters should not solely vote for Sanders. Instead, they should vote with him. One volunteer, although she thankfully cautioned against using the words "socialist" and "revolution" in the same sentence, believes a change in the political status quo must occur before anything can really happen. These volunteers believe Sanders can lead the movement.
The Sanders supporters were also more thoughtful than I anticipated
Grassroots Support In New York:
Sporting a top hat plastered with red, white and blue stars, Amos Race chanted, “Feel the Bern!” in a British accent.
“I am a cynical old git and I’m here,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of cynical old gits, frankly, who are going, ‘You know what? I will get behind this man because now we can make it happen.’”
Around 50 people gathered at the Westcott Community Center on Sunday afternoon in support of Sen. Sanders at the Westcott Street Cultural Fair. Supporters ranged from young to old, all of whom were emphatically voicing their trust in Sanders.
The event was volunteer-led and not organized by anyone in Sanders’ official campaign.
Race, who was born in England and has lived in the U.S. for 15 years, is a freelance medical writer and an avid supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is on the Democratic ticket for the 2016 presidency.
While New York state might not fully be behind Sanders, there’s a lot of excitement around the country for the candidate, Race said.
Some More On Sanders In N.H.:
Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders drew an estimated 3,000 people to a boisterous rally here Sunday night at the University of New Hampshire, about five times as many people as Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton attracted to an event two days ago at the same campus.
“You may not know this, but what you’re part of tonight is the largest turnout for any presidential candidate in New Hampshire,” Sanders said at the outset of his rally, referring to the 2016 cycle.
Most of the audience members in the university’s fieldhouse were college students, a group Sanders said had a reputation for being apathetic. “It sounds to me like you are ready to transform America,” he said to loud applause.