Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders is calling on Guam voters to rally behind him for tomorrow’s Democratic caucus. PNC had the opportunity to interview the senator from Vermont.
We asked Sanders why Guam was important in his presidential campaign. "Well it’s important in the same way that every state and every territory is important. There are delegate votes there and hose votes will determine who the next president of the United States is and we’re gonna do everything we can to win as many delegates’ votes as possible. So I hope that we can have good support from the people of Guam," explains Sanders.
The presidential hopeful explains how he expects to win the nomination.
"Where we are, right now we have won about 45 percent of what we call the pledged delegates ... we have won 18 states. [Hillary Clinton] has won 23 states. I would go in the next six weeks, including Guam, is to win 65 percent of the votes. If we can do that, we will go into the convention with a majority of the votes," says Sanders. "It’s gonna be a tough uphill fight; no question about it. And that’s where Guam can be of help. We need to win as many delegates as possible in Guam."
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We also asked the presidential hopeful what kind of issues pertaining to Guam he would fight for.
"One of the issues that I know that is a concern to Guam is the earned income tax credit, which is very, very important for that state and I believe that they are. I support the president in making sure that the federal government picks up its fair share of the cost for that. Also, I think that not only does the federal government have the responsibility to comepensate Guam for the program but it also has got to make sure that Guam receives adequate federal resources to fund its hospital, schools, and the other services that it provides for its people. That is the issue that we will fight for," says Sanders.
When considering Guam's future, we must look back at our history. In 1776, the United States of America rebelled against England, the most powerful nation in the world, to ensure that its people were heard in government. Our nation was founded on the principles of equal representation.
It is long past the time for Guam to receive the same rights for which our founding fathers fought.
My husband believes that the people of Guam have the right to self-determination. He supports the efforts of Guamanians to hold a binding referendum on their desired political status. The people of Guam are the people who are affected by their lack of representation, by their lack of ability to vote for president. And it is the people of Guam who should make the decision on their own political standing, without government intervention.
It is unthinkable that the people of Guam, who have done so much for our country, are deprived of the ability to vote for president and denied fair representation in the Congress. Without representation, the people of Guam are being left behind.
Over a quarter of Guam’s land is covered in U.S. military bases and one out of every eight Guamanians is a veteran. Guam has the largest number of military recruits per capita, yet ranks dead last in per capita spending on veterans’ medical care. How has our country let this happen?
The people of Guam have lost land for this country. They have laid their lives on the line for this country. They have lost sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters for this country. It is time we supported them as the heroes that they are.
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After 27 years of marriage, I continue to be amazed at Bernie’s tireless efforts to make this country a better place. Bernie is the best choice for the people of Guam and for a future all Americans can believe in.
Here’s one reason Bernie Sanders is reluctant to give up the fight: May is shaping up to be a pretty good month for him.
On the heels of his Indiana victory Tuesday, Sanders is well-positioned for wins in the upcoming West Virginia and Oregon primaries. That might explain his it’s-just-a-flesh-wound approach to the nearly insurmountable delegate math confronting him, and his dogged insistence that he’s taking his long-shot presidential campaign all the way to the July Democratic convention.
Sanders points to his record of winning 18 states and the narrow margin separating him and Clinton in national polls as cause for remaining in the race. He contends that he’s the strongest Democratic candidate against presumptive GOP front-runner Donald Trump, and holds out hope that more super delegates in the states where he won will ultimately line up in his camp.
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“We’re going to fight in West Virginia. I think we’ve got a shot to win there — we’ve got a good shot to win in Oregon, and I think we’ve got a good shot to win in some other states so…. We’re in this race till the last vote is counted,” said Sanders.
West Virginia, where Sanders led Clinton in a recent automated Public Policy Polling poll, appears well-suited for the Vermont senator. With its large union presence, small African-American population, and high level of poverty, Sanders' campaign officials see the state’s May 10 primary as a ripe target for the Vermont senator's message of economic inequality.
"Yeah I think we'll do well there. Just 30,000 feet up, I see very good public polling and we usually run ahead of the public polls," said Pete D'Alessandro, Sanders' Indiana state director, adding that Sanders’ focus on inequality would be a potent argument in the state. "It's been resonating in West Virginia for even longer than it's been resonating in Indiana, so I think those are just working people that are going to be ready for that message."
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Friday he plans to keep fighting for the Democratic nomination all the way to the convention in Philadelphia, but did not slam the door shut on possibly joining Hillary Clinton's ticket.
Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if he would accept a hypothetical offer to be Clinton's running mate, Sanders said he would talk about it with her after the convention.
"Right now, we are focused on the next five weeks of winning the Democratic nomination. If that does not happen, we are going to fight as hard as we can on the floor of the Democratic convention to make sure that we have a progressive platform that the American people will support," Sanders said on "The Situation Room." "Then, after that, certainly Secretary Clinton and I can talk and see where we go from there."
"We're going to be in this until the last ballot is cast," Sanders said Friday. Clinton's delegate lead relies in part on the help of more than 500 super delegates -- state party officials and other elected Democrats who can vote for whoever they want -- who support her.
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Asked if he would focus his fire on Donald Trump, with the hopes of helping whoever the Democratic nominee is, Sanders said he would focus on both of them.
"I will continue to run an issue-oriented campaign," Sanders said. "Will I be taking on Donald Trump? Absolutely. Will I be discussing the differences of opinion Secretary Clinton and I have? Yes I will."
Bernie Sanders chastised Hillary Clinton for soliciting Republican donors for her presidential campaign, saying those tactics would turn off his supporters.
“Those are the kinds of things that make not only my supporters, but millions of Americans, nervous,” Sanders said Friday on PBS “NewsHour.”
Sanders was referring to a Thursday Politico report that claimed Clinton’s supporters have targeted Bush family donors for funding, trying to convince them she represents their values better than presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
“By the way, as I understand it, [Clinton] is now reaching out to Jeb Bush’s fundraisers in order to raise money from them, and that really casts a doubt on the parts of millions of Americans,” said Sanders, who currently trails Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Are you really going to stand up for the middle and working class when you’re collecting millions from Jeb Bush supporters?”
A few days before the Georgia primary, influential Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed published a column on CNN.com praising Hillary Clinton and ripping her opponent, Bernie Sanders. Reed attacked Sanders as being out of step with Democrats on gun policy, and accused him of elevating a “one-issue platform” that ignores the plight of the “single mother riding two buses to her second job.”
But emails released from Reed’s office indicate that the column, which pilloried Sanders as out of touch with the poor, was primarily written by a corporate lobbyist, and was edited by Correct the Record, one of several pro-Clinton Super PACs.
Anne Torres, the mayor’s director of communications, told The Intercept this week that the column was not written by the mayor, but by Tharon Johnson, a former Reed adviser who now works as a lobbyist for UnitedHealth, Honda, and MGM Resorts, among other clients. The column’s revisions by staffers from Correct the Record are documented in the emails.
Johnson, Torres told us, is a “capable writer,” who managed Reed’s first campaign. Reed “provided verbal edits and feedback to Tharon, but other than that, no one from my office or the mayor’s office wrote this op-ed,” Torres said.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Friday threatened a floor fight over rules and platform planks at the party’s summer convention on Friday, warning the Democratic National Committee not to stack the convention’s standing committees with supporters of Hillary Clinton.
The prospect of a procedural wrench thrown into the party’s flagship event is likely to cause headaches for Democratic leaders trying to forge a united front against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.
Sanders has amassed some 9 million votes during the nation’s primaries and caucuses, and has said even if he fails at getting the final nomination, he wants to shape the party’s agenda on issues like wealth disparity, financial reform and the role of big money in politics. He says the standing committees that consider the party’s platform and rules should reflect the number of votes he’s received in the 2016 primaries and caucuses.
“I will not allow them to be silenced at the Democratic National Convention,” Sanders wrote of his supporters in a letter to Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The platform committee considers the party’s stance on a wide range of policy issues while the rules committee sets the guidelines governing the convention. Sanders’ letter came after the candidate spoke with the chairwoman by phone earlier this week.
“If the process is set up to produce an unfair, one-sided result, we are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention,” Sanders wrote.
Bernie Sanders’ decision to stay in the Democratic presidential race until the end has complicated what is typically one of the first orders of business for any new presidential nominee: taking over the party apparatus ahead of the national convention.
Donald Trump will soon begin co-opting the Republican National Committee while Democrats wait anxiously in the limbo between the effective end of their primary and its formal conclusion. If Hillary Clinton assumes control of the Democratic National Committee now, that would declare the primary over, which would likely not sit well with Sanders supporters, whom Democrats need in November.
The delay is a nuisance for now, Democrats say. But it would be a catastrophe if they waited until after after the Democratic National Convention, which is the earliest Sanders says he’ll withdraw.
So the DNC and the Clinton campaign will have to execute the merger earlier, with one candidate still in the race and potentially over his fierce objections. But the clock is ticking on the general election, and Democrats are eyeing the day after the California primary as a likely time to end this.
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Waiting until Sanders concedes is out of the question if he makes good on his promise to go to the convention. The convention is the first major endeavor of the nominee, who carefully manages every detail of the show for maximum impact.
Democrats are instead discussing June 8. That’s the day after the California primary, when Clinton is likely to have hit the so-called magic number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
Rendell, who supports Clinton, said the former secretary of state needs to tread carefully. “I think it would be a mistake for them to begin overtly to take over the process. It would tick off the Sanders campaign, it would tick off Bernie, etc., etc. But somewhere along the line, particularly after June 7, they will come in and take over the convention,” he said.
Back-channel conversations have already begun between Clinton’s campaign and the DNC and what role the party will play in the general election. These discussions are happening out of sight for now to avoid the appearance of collusion before the party has formally selected a nominee.
Dave Miller: Are you and Donald Trump tapping into the same veins of anger and disenchantment with the political system?
Bernie Sanders: Well, maybe a little bit. But Donald Trump’s program and his views and his style are radically different than mine. What our job is, is to bring people together, not to divide them.
DM: At the beginning of this year, a few dozen armed occupiers took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. They had various demands, but the overarching ones were anger at federal management of public lands. How would you balance competing uses of these lands — conservation, ranching, agriculture, logging, recreation?
BS: Well, that’s what we’ve got to do: We have to do a balance. But at the end of the day, I think that we are very proud of the, for example, National Parks, that we own, that belong to all of the people. And I want to make sure that public lands are not simply used for private gain. I want to see them used and maintained for our children and our grandchildren.
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DM: You’ve been in elected office for 35 years, but this is your first national run. How has this race changed you?
BS: Any time you visit almost every state in this country and you speak to well over a million people, and you meet unbelievably wonderful people in every part of this country, you learn an enormous amount. And it certainly has — this whole campaign has changed me. And when I look out at crowds, like the crowd we had many months ago in Portland where we had 25,000 people, and you see the hope and the desire in the eyes of those people to do everything that we can to make sure that this country becomes the country that most people [think it] can become, it is very inspiring to me, and very moving to me. And it has changed me in a very profound way.
Some people think Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a dream of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. His supporters say that’s all he needs.
“To people who say Bernie cannot win, I say nothing has ever been done in America without a dream first,” said Georgina Shanley, who opened her Ocean City home Friday afternoon to a group of fellow activists preparing for upcoming Sanders’ events in Ocean City and Atlantic City.
“Keep the dream alive,” said Paul LeBrun, 64, of Little Egg Harbor Township, as he lettered signs to carry at Saturday’s Sanders by the Sand rally at Ocean City’s Music Pier. That grassroots event, to be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Music Pier on the Boardwalk, kicks off local events for Sanders’ campaign swing through South Jersey. The senator from Vermont will appear Monday at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.
“What moved me was seeing stadiums filled with 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds,” said Jane McCarthy, an Ocean City resident whose email to a handful of people started a swell of support in town for Saturday’s rally. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“What moved me was seeing stadiums filled with 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds,” said Jane McCarthy, an Ocean City resident whose email to a handful of people started a swell of support in town for Saturday’s rally. “I’ve never seen that before.”
With his sights set on the 475 delegates up for grabs in California, Sanders will first attend a rally Monday night somewhere downtown in Sacramento, then head to Stockton Tuesday morning.
"A lot of the progressive issues that have been cornerstones and hallmarks of the senator’s campaign platform are issues Californians have led on,” said Symone Sanders, spokesperson for the national Bernie Sanders campaign.
Symone says winning California would be crucial for Sanders heading into the Democratic Convention in July. He's coming to Sacramento and Stockton with much the same message he's carried throughout the country.
"You can expect him to talk about getting big money out of politics. Addressing inequality, we're going to talk about the fifteen dollar minimum wage,” Symone said.
Meanwhile, the local Sanders campaign office remains busy with its ground game, and volunteers say Sanders' upcoming visit is validation their work paying off.
"I know we've all been doing a ton of work. Just going out knocking on doors, doing phone banks every week,” said David Pfau, a volunteer organizer with the local, grassroots chapter of Bernie Sanders’ campaign.