Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Wednesday proposed holding an additional three Democratic debates, as the jockeying among the party’s candidates continued over how often they should face off in the weeks ahead.
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In a television interview Wednesday, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton called on Sanders to agree to participate in a debate next week in New Hampshire that hasn’t been sanctioned by the DNC and said she hoped the DNC would agree to sponsor it.
In a statement issued Wednesday night, Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager said that Sanders has long been interested in more debates.
“Secretary Clinton has not,” Weaver said. “Now she is asking to change the rules and ask for a debate next week that is not sanctioned by the DNC. Why is that? The answer is obvious. The dynamics of the race have changed and Senator Sanders has significant momentum.”
Weaver said Sanders would be “happy to have more debates” but added: “We are not going to schedule them at whim of the Clinton campaign.”
He said Sanders would like to see additional debates in March, April and May -- and none of them on Fridays or Saturdays or holiday weekends, as has previously been the case.
Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders said he met with President Obama at the White House on Wednesday for a discussion to “get himself updated” on current events, but the Vermont senator told reporters that he did not use the meeting as an opportunity to get an endorsement.
“Of course not,” Sanders said, when asked if he had sought the President’s support during their meeting. “I think [the President] and the vice-President have tried to be fair and even-handed in the process and I expect they will continue to be that way.”
Sanders said he and the President discussed a range of issues during their private sit down in the Oval Office and talked “a little bit of politics” ahead of the primary voting season. The Vermont senator also said he spoke with Obama about the war on ISIS, the approach to which he called a major difference between himself and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Sanders stressed that he hoped to emulated President Obama’s ability to promote high turnout in the upcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. “We are right now, as everybody knows, in a very tough campaign in Iowa and going on to New Hampshire,” Sanders said. “I think what the Iowa campaign ends up being about is one word and that is turnout.”
“I’m not saying we can do what Barack Obama did in 2008, I wish we could but I don’t think we can. If there is a large turnout I think we win,” Sanders said
Bernie Sanders critiqued fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a rally in Mason City, chastising her for fundraising instead of campaigning in Iowa on Wednesday night.
"My opponent is not in Iowa tonight. She is raising money from a Philadelphia investment firm," Sanders said. "Frankly, I would rather be here with you."
At the Music Man Square, Sanders fired against Clinton, saying that her campaign is "in trouble" as his poll numbers rise before the Iowa caucus Monday. The latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll shows Clinton and Sanders virtually tied, with Clinton slightly leading. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows Sanders 4 points ahead.
“Needless to say, our opponents are not all that enthusiastic about that reality,” Sanders said, about potentially winning the Iowa caucus. “One of the things they say, 'Bernie Sanders, nice guy, interesting ideas, but he just could not win a general election.'”
He then cited polls from Iowa and New Hampshire that shows him ahead of Clinton in a battle against Donald Trump, saying he would be electable in a general election despite criticisms.
Another prominent African-American woman is feeling the Bern.
Natalie Jackson, the civil rights attorney who represented the family of Trayvon Martin alongside Benjamin Crump during the George Zimmerman trial, is endorsing presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt).
She joins former Ohio state senator Nina Turner in a small but growing number of black women who are throwing their support behind the senator in hopes they can begin shifting African-American support away from former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, endorsed Clinton earlier this month.) Black women outvoted every other racial and gender demographic in 2008 and 2012, making them one of the most important voting groups in the 2016 election; they overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama in both elections. Jackson hopes she can help galvanize similar support for Sanders.
TJS: So, why are you throwing your support behind Sen. Bernie Sanders?
NJ: I’ve been supporting him from the very beginning. I like the fact that he is anti-establishment and pro-economic justice. My initial support of him was around his refrain that “We have to take money out of politics.” Then he came out for us when he hired Symone Sanders [as his national press secretary]. It really reinforced that I made the right decision. After the Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle, a lot of people were upset that they interrupted Bernie Sanders. But I thought that he did what a president should do: Instead of taking the criticism as an insult, he saw it as an opportunity to improve his campaign and that’s what we want our leaders to do.
Growing up, Bernie Sanders followed the path of many young American Jews. He went to Hebrew school, was bar mitzvahed and traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz.
But as an adult, Sanders drifted away from Jewish customs. And as his bid for the White House gains momentum, he has the chance to make history. Not just as the first Jewish president — but as one of the few modern presidents to present himself as not religious.
“I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders said in a recent interview.
Sanders said he believes in God, though not necessarily in a traditional manner.
“I think everyone believes in God in their own ways,” he said. “To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”
Sanders’s religious views, which he has rarely discussed, set him apart from the norm in modern American politics, in which voters have come to expect candidates from both parties to hold traditional views about God and to speak about their faith journeys.
Carrie Aldrich wasn’t sure whether she should speak up. The 46-year-old from Alden, Iowa, suffers from a combination of depression and anxiety, and hundreds of people filled the event hall. Dozens of members of the local and national media stood on a riser in the back of the hall, cameras trained on the stage. It was a lot to take in.
But when Bernie Sanders asked for volunteers to share their stories of living on $12,000 a year, she felt compelled to take the microphone.
What followed was one of the most emotional moments of any political event in the 2016 cycle thus far. She told Sanders -- and the crowd, and the cameras -- how she struggled to get by on “probably less” than the $12,000 figure Sanders threw out. How she couldn’t afford to buy presents for her daughter. How she worked “three, four, five jobs sometimes, always minimum wage,” despite having a college degree.
What she left unsaid at the time was that, now, she can’t work. The medication she takes for depression and anxiety affects her ability to work, and besides, working would invalidate her disability claim.
"You learn to get by with what you have," she said in an interview Wednesday. "And you learn how to fix things. You basically just learn how to survive."
Just days away from arguably the biggest moment of his political career, Senator Bernie Sanders is relatively sanguine on his chances for victory.
"We will win Iowa if there's a large voter turnout," Sanders told Lester Holt Wednesday in an exclusive interview with NBC Nightly News.
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In the interview, Sanders returned to the central tenets of his policy platforms: universal healthcare, free tuition at public universities and colleges and reforming what he calls the nation's "corrupt campaign finance system."
When asked how his ambitious proposals could get through in a gridlocked and Republican-controlled Congress, Sanders' answer was two-fold.
He first cited experience working with his colleagues across the aisle, highlighting what he called a "significant piece of legislation" providing comprehensive health care to veterans which he worked on last year with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the House Veterans Committee.
"I can work with Republicans," he said.
The second factor, he said, was bringing millions of people into the political process to demand that Washington "starts representing ordinary Americans, the middle class [and] working families — not just the billionaire class."
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders got some support Wednesday from high-profile rockers: both Vampire Weekend and Red Hot Chili Peppers have announced that they’ll be playing in support of the Vermont senator.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers announced on Twitter Wednesday that the band would play a “Feel the Bern” benefit concert in their hometown Los Angeles. RHCP bassist Flea wrote in an Instagram post that the band offered to pay for the venue, but Sanders refused.
The New York City-based Vampire Weekend will head to Iowa this weekend, minus founding member Rostam Batamanglij, also to play in support of Sanders. This will be the group’s first live concert since August 2014. Frontman Ezra Koenig confirmed the date on Twitter Wednesday and offered the show’s final roster, which will include Dirty Projectors’ lead singer Dave Longstreth.
Bernie Sanders plans to air a new flurry of TV ads in Iowa, reigniting an argument with the Hillary Clinton campaign about which of the two is waging the more negative presidential bid.
An adviser to the Vermont senator, Tad Devine, said the campaign will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on additional advertising in Iowa as part of a final push to win the caucuses and make a statement that Mr. Sanders can prevail in a state far from his home base of Vermont.
“Iowa is very important in terms of a path,” Mr. Devine said. “If we can do very well there it would sustain the advantage that we have in New Hampshire.”
Mr. Sanders and his team had not yet settled on the precise mix of ads to run in advance of Monday’s caucuses, Mr. Devine said. But the ads could include new spots drawing attention to the speaking fees Mrs. Clinton has received from Wall Street banks, he said.
“There are not going to be big, negative attacks,” Mr. Devine said Wednesday. “That’s not in the offing.”
What the campaign is considering are 30-second spots that would reinforce an argument Mr. Sanders has already made on the trail: “Cash coming from Wall Street to the politicians is causing them to not be able to make decisions that are for the good of the people,” Mr. Devine said.
They're called the "Road Berners" – the voters from Connecticut who meet at frigid commuter parking lots to make the two-hour trip to New Hampshire to knock on doors for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
Sanders, the 74-year-old self-described Democratic socialist from Vermont, has seen a groundswell of support, particularly among young voters, as he challenges the Democratic Party's standard-bearer, Hillary Clinton.
Whereas critics see Clinton as a politician who changes her tone depending on the crowd she's speaking to, supporters say the cranky septuagenarian Sanders is more genuine. To the Road Berners, he's brimming with idealism with proposals like tuition-free college education and universal health care.
"I think they have a sense that their generation isn't going to be better off than their parents' or their grandparents' generation," Carlos Camacho, 46, who co-founded the Bernie Sanders Connecticut Team, said of his support among millennials.
Leo Canty, the former chairman of the Windsor Democratic town committee, organizes the Road Berner car pools. In the past, Canty said getting people to make calls or canvass for candidates was "like pulling teeth – multiple teeth." The Sanders campaign is different and Canty hasn't had an issue finding people who want to help.
The Bernie News Roundup is a voluntary, non-campaign associated roundup of news, media, & other information related to Bernie Sanders' run for President.
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More information about Bernie & The Issues @ feelthebern.org
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