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Taking On The TPP:
It didn’t take long for Sen. Bernie Sanders to bash the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal the United States reached on Monday alongside 11 other countries in the Pacific Rim.
“I am disappointed but not surprised by the decision to move forward on the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that will hurt consumers and cost American jobs,” Sanders said in a statement Monday morning shortly after the deal was announced. “Wall Street and other big corporations have won again. It is time for the rest of us to stop letting multinational corporations rig the system to pad their profits at our expense.”
Sanders’ statement follows the Obama administration joining with the 11 other countries in coming to an agreement on phasing out a number of tariffs and trade barriers. The Vermont Independent senator and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate has taken his opposition to the trade deal to the campaign trail where he bashed Hillary Clinton in June for not quickly taking a stand against the deal.
In his Monday statement, Sanders vowed to fight the deal in the Senate. The deal is expected to be a flashpoint for heated debate in Congress over the next few months.
New Hampshire Is Bernies To Lose:
In early September, in the small New Hampshire town of Berlin, there were two Bernie Sanders signs along Main Street. Meanwhile, down the block, a sign on Hillary Clinton's Berlin office announced it would be fully operational six days a week.
Sanders had just surpassed Hillary Clinton in the polls and was drawing crowds as large as 1,000 people in the state, much larger than his four-person New Hampshire staff had ever seen before.
Five weeks later, the Vermont senator drew more than 3,000 people at an event held at the University of New Hampshire -- five times Clinton's audience on the same campus.
A week after that, an empty storefront on Main Street in Berlin was blanketed with Sanders signs and volunteers were inside, busy putting up decorations, phone-banking and inputting data after canvassing the neighborhood. The majority of the posts on BernieSanders.com no longer listed events involving only the senator: There was a volunteer rally in Littleton, door-knocking in Nashua and canvassing in Claremont, Hudson, Salem and Berlin.
Why Is The Media Not Talking About Bernies Record Crowd?:
Eight years ago, 10,000 people packed Boston Common to see then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. On Saturday, twice that number turned out at the Boston Convention Center to hear Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders speak.
Sanders's crowd was the largest in the modern history of presidential primary fights in Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe, although it was only his third largest crowd of the campaign. Here's what it looked like:
Let me just make sure you take this in: TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE CAME TO SEE BERNIE SANDERS ON A CHILLY OCTOBER DAY IN 2015 THAN DID THE SAME FOR BARACK OBAMA IN 2007.
That's stunning — even given Sanders's demonstrated ability to bring in big crowds throughout the early period of the campaign. And yet, by and large, the crowd size at Sanders's rally wasn't seen as a massive story by mainstream media outlets.
Sanders To Put Together A Plan On Guns:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said Monday that his campaign is assembling a “comprehensive package” of measures to address gun violence and that he believes there is a way to bridge the country’s deep political divisions over the issue.
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“The status quo clearly is not working and people on both sides of this issue cannot simply continue shouting at each other,” Sanders said in a statement Monday. “Nobody wants more mass killings and serious people are going to have to engage in serious discussion.”
As he has in recent days, Sanders cited several measures he can support, including a strengthened system of instant background checks, closure of the “gun-show loophole,” a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons “designed strictly for killing human beings” and far greater investments in mental health.
“Like the rest of the nation, I am appalled by gun violence in our country and the mass shootings in our churches and colleges,” Sanders said. “While there is no simple fix, that does not mean we should do nothing.”
Bernie Hires Organizers:
The York County Democrats' onetime field organizer is returning to national politics to work for presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders' campaign.
S. Prescott Harris II will head to Charleston, South Carolina, later this week to begin work as a field director on the Democrat's campaign.
"I feel Sen. Sanders is more in line with what I believe," Harris said Monday. "I believe in what I'm doing."
Harris came to York in late 2014 when he was hired as the Democratic Party of York County's field organizer. He left that job for a position with the state's Democratic Party in June.
Parallels: Harris, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, left the private sector in 2008 to work as a field organizer for Obama for America in New Mexico.
Ebony Magazine Interviews Sanders:
BONY.COM: And where does the African American voter fit into that plan?
SEN. SANDERS: In America today, we have a middle class, which has all but disappeared over the last 10 years. We have almost 47 million people living in poverty or working for tremendously low wages. When I say we need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, that’s going to impact the country but it will impact African Americans even more. When I talk about pay equity for women workers, it will impact all women but it will impact African American women even more because they are more discriminated against and their wages are even lower than White women. Since the Great Recession of 2008, the African American community has fallen back even further economically. The proposals that I talk about are actually more relevant to the Black community.
EBONY.COM: How do you plan to appeal to the Black voter when you’re a Senator from a state that’s mostly White?
SEN. SANDERS: Yes, it’s true, I am from a state that is overwhelmingly White. I am also aware that I am running against somebody whose husband is very popular in the African American community. But, we plan to take our message to the community and so you will see me getting out soon around the country speaking in Black communities, telling people about my life history and my message like the fact that I have one of the strongest civil rights voting records in the Congress. I believe once we explain, it will all make sense.
Ellen Books Bernie:
The Ellen DeGeneres Show has booked Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders for its broadcast on Thursday October 15. It’s a bit of a booking coup, being the first TV talk show appearance his camp has booked so far to follow CNN’s first Dem debate on Tuesday, October 13. The dancing should be interesting.
Some Tucson News:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is set to come to Tucson for a rally at Reid Park on Friday, Oct. 9.
The 74-year-old Vermont senator will speak at 7 p.m. at the Reid Park DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center, according to campaign organizers. Reid Park is on South Country Club Road at East 22nd Street.
Sanders attracted about 11,000 supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center in July, said Jenise Porter, an organizer of Progressive Democrats of America in Southern Arizona. Organizers expect about 7,000 at Reid Park.
“He has a wide range of supporters from 18-year-olds on up,” Porter said. She described Sanders as a progressive who wants to “regenerate the middle class, have the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, make college tuition-free, protect Social Security and create a national health plan through Medicare.”
The local, grassroots organization supporting Sanders has about 2,000 members in Southern Arizona, about 5,400 statewide and is growing, she said.
Sanders Outperforms Clinton In This Poll:
Hillary Clinton has always been viewed as the Democrats’ best general-election candidate. But new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls of Iowa and New Hampshire show that Bernie Sanders outperforms Clinton in those two general-election battleground states.
In Iowa, Republican Jeb Bush leads Clinton by 10 points in a hypothetical general-election match up among registered voters, 50 percent to 40 percent, and Donald Trump is ahead of her by seven points, 48 percent to 41 percent – essentially unchanged from the poll’s results a month ago.
And Carly Fiorina leads Clinton in the Hawkeye State by 14 points, 52 percent to 38 percent.
But when Sanders is matched up against these same Republicans, his numbers are stronger: Sanders leads Trump by five points in Iowa (48 percent to 43 percent). And he narrowly trails Bush (46 percent to 44 percent) and Fiorina (45 percent to 42 percent).
The Socialist Mayor:
In 1985, when Bernie Sanders was in his second term as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a writer named Russell Banks published his breakthrough novel, Continental Drift. It would earn Banks the John Dos Passos Prize, and make him a finalist for the Pulitzer for fiction. Sometime after the book came out, Banks accepted an assignment to profile the self-described socialist mayor. He followed Sanders around the city, watched him interact with constituents, and recorded his candid views. He produced a remarkable and compelling portrait of a distinctive politician, but it never found its way into print. Instead, it was filed away for three decades. With Sanders leading in the polls in New Hampshire, though, we now offer it to our readers, as a look at the senator before he became a national figure.
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The mayor says, “It’s not welfare. It’s money that never should have been taken from you in the first place, for God’s sake.”
The old woman looks at him and smiles indulgently. She clearly likes the mayor. “I shouldn’t say this,” she tells him, “but I saw you on TV the other night, with my son, when they finish fixing North Avenue? And my son says to me, ‘That Mayor Sanders, he’s a communist, you know.’ And do you know what I say to him?”
Sanders shakes his head no.
“I say to my son, ‘Don’t go around saying such things where intelligent people can hear. They’ll think you are stupid.’”