Bernies Big Ad Buy:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' first television ads started airing Sunday morning in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, a $2 million buy that will last for 10 days.
"Thousands of Americans have come out to see Bernie speak, and we've seen a great response to his message," said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver. "This ad marks the next phase of this campaign. We're bringing that message directly to the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire."
The ads give voters a fuller look at the Vermont senator's biography, as a longtime fighter against injustice and inequality, his humble upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, and his attendance at Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963. There's his work as mayor of a Vermont city and in Congress and his pledge to take "on Wall Street and a corrupt political system," and mention of the 1 million contributors to his campaign and footage of his large rallies around the nation.
The ads are also a not-subtle dig at the Clinton political brand. "People are sick and tired of establishment politics, and they want real change," Sanders says in the spot.
Sanders is competitive with Clinton in the first contests of Iowa and New Hampshire, and his fundraising has been stronger than expected — more than $40 million raised, mostly online.
A ‘President Bernie Sanders’ could end the federal marijuana ban without Congress:
When Vermont senator Bernie Sanders called for an end to federal marijuana prohibition this week before an audience of college students, he went further than any major national presidential candidate before him.
“It’s the first time a presidential candidate has made such a forthright statement on legalization,” said Michael Collins, deputy director at Drug Policy Action. “[It’s a] a fairly big nail in the coffin of prohibition.”
But that’s not the only reason his declaration was significant. While many proposals from Sanders and other candidates may not actually come to fruition under any president because they rely on the cooperation of Congress, ending federal prohibition is something a President Sanders could achieve.
That’s because a process exists that requires only the executive branch of government.
“In a nutshell, administrative rescheduling begins when an actor – the secretary of Health and Human Services or an outside interested party – files a petition with the attorney general or he initiates the process himself,” John Hudak, a Brookings Institute fellow in Governance Studies, and research assistant Grace Wallack wrote earlier this year.
After this petition has been filed, it is considered by the Food and Drug Administration, but could also be examined by the Drug Enforcement Administration. After receiving one or both reviews, the attorney general can recommend rescheduling marijuana or removing it entirely from the federal government’s control. If she decides such a move is warranted, the federal rule-making process is initiated, in which public input is sought and the president makes a final determination on whether to execute the proposal.
The Brazen Return Of Socialism:
In a few days, when the three remaining Democratic candidates for president gather in South Carolina for a forum hosted by Rachel Maddow, none will be using “socialist” as a slur. One of them, of course, adopts it as a proud identifier. Bernie Sanders has not turned the Democratic Party socialist — nor even, technically speaking, joined it, choosing to remain nominally independent. But Sanders’s campaign has made socialism relevant to the national political debate for the first time since Eugene V. Debs garnered 6 percent of the vote in 1912. It is looking increasingly likely that the 2016 election will mark a historical turning point in the relationship of socialism to mainstream politics in the United States.
In most democracies, socialism does not connote something horrifying or alien. The United States is unusual among democracies in that it lacks a true mainstream political party with roots in the labor movement. American liberalism developed in the 20th century mostly out of policies implemented by the Democratic Party, which had its strongest base in the South, a deeply segregated, heavily agricultural region with a traditional suspicion of centralized power. The Democrats have never been a labor party; unions have always had to jostle with business for influence. The Cold War further served to identify socialism with communism. But this deep and very American hostility may be breaking down. Recent polls have shown that voters in their 20s think just as highly of socialism as they do of capitalism.
That socialism is no longer a dirty word has freaked out conservatives. As Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute worried in 2010, “The young sympathizers of socialism today may be the grown-up defenders of socialism tomorrow.” Rand Paul, who prides himself on his hipness, has warned young people to stay away. “I’ve been trying to point out — because I’m on a lot of college campuses, we have a big following in college campuses — that there’s nothing sexy and there’s nothing cool about socialism,” he told Glenn Beck.
Sanders urges a political “revolution,” but he means the term metaphorically. If you drill down into his platform, it’s mostly the same stuff Democrats support, but more of it — higher taxes, more infrastructure and social spending, tougher regulations on Wall Street. He’s not even demanding economic equality — just less inequality. In the most literal sense, Sanders’s socialism seems hard to distinguish from regular liberalism.
Why Bernie Should Invoke Eugene Debs:
The unexpected rise of Bernie Sanders, an Independent Senator from Vermont who is proud of his Democratic Socialist label, has been almost as shocking to the American punditry as the lasting power of Donald Trump, who appears to be gaffe-proof. It has been quite a while — possibly never — since a self-proclaimed socialist has become this popular in the United States. Indeed, the government and the capitalist class have always been quick to shutdown any movement that could threaten their control, and during the Cold War, just being a socialist was a major liability to one’s career and even one’s freedom. Capitalist propaganda and the red-scare (a hysteria that was embraced by both liberals and conservatives) turned the word into a terrible slur, and the socialist movement declined rapidly.
In American history, however, there is one socialist who experienced a similar kind of popularity, and he happens to be one of Sanders’ political heroes, Eugene V. Debs. Indeed, back in 1979, Sanders made a documentary about Debs, who was the Socialist Party of America’s presidential candidate for the first two decades of the 20th century (managing to get 6 percent of the popular vote in the 1912 election), and it has also been reported that he has a plaque of Debs in his office.
While Debs may have never held office like Sanders, his influence on American politics was great. Before being arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison in 1918 for opposing the first world war and encouraging resistance to the military draft, the socialist party was a major force in America, along with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a radical labor union that Debs had founded along with other labor leaders, including “Big Bill” Haywood, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Daniel De Leon, and others
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Eugene V. Debs is to Bernie Sanders what Abraham Lincoln is to Barack Obama. It is easy to see why Sanders admires the old Socialist leader. He was a tireless champion of the working class, who went to prison before sacrificing his integrity, and made the capitalist class (or as Sanders calls it, the billionaire class) shudder with fear. Last week, Sanders announced that he is planning a “major speech” on Democratic Socialism, and while providing examples of modern European countries like Denmark and Norway is no doubt important, it would be remiss to leave out America’s own radical past and one of its foremost leaders.
5 Messages Bernies New Ad Sends:
The ad lays out the familiar message of fighting income inequality and climate change that voters have often heard from Bernie Sanders.
Here are five other messages the ad is sending:
1. Life story: Sanders is known for his message of income inequality and his ideology as a democratic socialist, but he has not played up his own personal story much. Last week, he notably mentioned his Jewish faith at a rally of college students. The first line of this ad reads, “The son of a Polish immigrant who grew up in a Brooklyn tenement.” Part of this “new phase” for Sanders’ campaign could be creating a more three-dimensional image of the man. As the ad says, “Bernie Sanders. Husband. Father. Grandfather.”
2. Civil rights activism: The ad notes that Sanders participated in the 1963 March on Washington, and lingers for a moment on an image of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sanders has struggled to appeal to African-American voters, and has had clashes with activists from the Black Lives Matter movement. Activists have also interrupted Clinton events, including a speech in Atlanta on Friday at a historically black college. But her support among African-Americans appears much more solid.
12 Things We Know/Dont Know About Sanders Pot Proposal:
There is a bit we know about what this proposal could mean, and there is much we don’t quite yet know. Let’s break down each.
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3. It would transform the marijuana industry
By descheduling marijuana, marijuana enterprises would see substantial economic benefits. They would no longer run into challenges accessing financial tools like bank accounts, lines of credit, business loans, mortgages, etc. Currently, the Federal Reserve and financial regulations bar banks from working with organizations that traffic in illegal substances.
Given marijuana’s scheduling status, those regulations hinder (some argue cripple) the marijuana industry, severely limiting growth and creating serious safety and security concerns associated with a cash-only business model.
Washington Post’s Chris Ingraham noted the importance of this change and the added benefit of marijuana enterprises being able to access typical business tax benefits, as well. It would certainly translate into growth, profits, employment expansion, and reduced costs for the industry.
Even More About That Campaign Ad:
Highlighting his message that "people are sick and tired of establishment politics" and casting himself as the only presidential candidate from either major party offering the "real change" that a majority of Americans are now seeking, Bernie Sanders released his campaign's first ever television ad on Sunday in the key early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
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The campaign spot represents a $2 million outlay and comes as Sanders continues to trail Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in Iowa while enjoying a sizeable lead in New Hampshire. As the Boston Globe notes, the ad is made possible by "the $25 million pile of cash sitting in his campaign bank account." The campaign has been remarkable for its ability to compete financially with Clinton—who enjoys the backing of elite interests, political action committees, and a well-established fundraising infrastructure— even as Sanders has relied almost exclusively on relatively small donations from many hundreds of thousands of individual donors.
As CNN put it, "The ad buy is a significant step for a campaign that started with a shoestring budget, though now the democratic socialist has a strong fundraising operation."