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Sanders On Relaxed Mail Standards:
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that the Postal Service caused a “disaster that is negatively impacting Americans all over this country” when it shuttered more than 140 mail-sorting plants and slowed delivery times to cut costs.
“I have heard from people all over this country who have reported serious delays in receiving life-saving prescription drugs, and the bills that they need to pay to keep the lights and electricity on in their homes,” the senator from Vermont wrote in a letter to Postmaster General Megan Brennan, urging her to reinstate overnight delivery for regional mail.
Sanders wrote that he has heard from veterans and seniors in his rural state who are not getting life-saving prescriptions in the mail for nine or even 11 days.
“This delay means that some of the most vulnerable people in the country are going without the medications they need, or they are being forced to travel long distances because they cannot rely on the timely delivery of mail.”
Sanders, who has opposed proposals by postal officials to close rural post offices and eliminate Saturday delivery, was responding to an urgent alert to the Postal Service this month from the agency’s inspector general that the number of letters arriving late has jumped by almost 50 percent since the start of the year.
From the New Yorker, Feeling The Bern With The Youth Vote:
The oddest thing about the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator seeking Democratic nomination for President, is not his distaste for fund-raising, his insistence that he is a “democratic Socialist,” or even his unofficial slogan, “Feel the Bern,” a phrase that vividly recalls Jane Fonda at the moment of her disentanglement from the New Left. It is his popularity with kids. Since tossing his worn cap into the ring, in April, Sanders has racked up a disproportionate share of the youth vote: thirty-seven per cent of voters twenty-nine or younger, compared with Hillary Clinton’s forty per cent, in one poll. Why? Outwardly, he does not seem like a particularly hip or youthful guy. Sanders is nearly seventy-four, dresses like Willy Loman, and can name, from direct memory, the Dodgers’ lineup in the year 1951. When he shows up at events, his fleecy hair, or what remains of it, looks ravaged, as if he had puttered all the way there in a drop-top Model T. He wears a watch; it’s not by Apple. And yet, today, Sanders boasts a larger Facebook following than Clinton and Jeb Bush combined.
It’s on Facebook that Sanders fandom, and a language associated with it, has flourished. Followers post about the way he “slayed” in this or that speech, how he seems “so logical” compared with other politicians, how he motivated them to vote, for the first time, in their late twenties. As Sanders, an independent, throttled into a strong second place for the Democratic nomination, Bern-ers on Twitter praised him as “clever” and “trustworthy.” In the magazine last week, Daniel Wenger reported on an eighteen-year-old kid’s attempt to organize a Sanders YouTube viewing party in his parents’ living room.
“Open” is a reasonable description of Sanders’s campaign, which has worked to underscore the candidate’s ideological consistency over the decades. From 1981, in his first elected post, as the mayor of Burlington, he fought for corporate regulation and against big-money fund-raising. He sought to lift the minimum wage. Recently, his supporters have produced old footage from his early years, as if to show that, in a field of opportunists, Sanders has held firm to his beliefs. The anachronism of his world view proves both his authenticity and his lack of hidden baggage as a candidate. For young voters, who approach the booth with shallow political memories, this “open” attitude toward Sanders’s past can come as reassurance: they don’t have to worry about being pinioned by a history that they don’t know, because history, for Sanders, is a backward projection of the behavior that they saw last week. The approach is striking in an era when even personal life is preconceived, polished, performed. Sanders is exceptional because he seems, demonstrably, the same guy who he was before the iPhone cameras first appeared.
A NY Times Letter To The Editor:
I’m 57 years old and have voted in every presidential election since 1976, and for the first time I’m inspired enough by a candidate to donate money and volunteer my time. Last time I checked, the approval rating of Congress was at 15 percent, so I don’t think your readers put much stock in what Mr. Sanders’s colleagues think of him.
Maybe more relevant reporting would be on the thousands of us in the middle class who support Mr. Sanders’s positions, like a $15 per hour minimum wage; access to a college education without crushing debt; overturning the Citizens United decision that allows corporations to buy elections; and taxing the financial transactions of Wall Street speculators.
Maybe we aren’t all grumpy, disaffected outliers; maybe we recognize someone who could give this country the new direction it so desperately needs. Maybe we are what democracy looks like.
On Sanders & Corbyn:
If you watch virtually any major American news channel right now, you could be forgiven for thinking that the only political development worthy of note was the on-going presidential campaign of Donald Trump. But you would be wrong.
Key sections of the American press are currently playing Trump's main calling-card for him by giving excessive amounts of coverage to his bombastic rejection of the intelligence and policies of the rest of the political class. By doing so, they are helping him to frame the national political conversation in a frightening and reactionary way, for which one day I hope they will be held accountable. But they are doing more than simply trumpeting Trump. They are also failing to recognize and report on the fact that it is not just ultra-conservative voters who are mobilizing behind new and unexpected candidates. That kind of unexpected and unprecedented mobilization is currently happening on both sides of the political divide. It is happening not just among the Tea Party right but also among the Progressive left; and in the case of the left at least, it is happening not just here at home but in the United Kingdom as well.
For Donald Trump is not alone in drawing substantial crowds to each of his election rallies. So too, in the United States, is Bernie Sanders; and so too, in the United Kingdom, is Jeremy Corbyn.
An Interview With Cornel West:
ic: How did you decide to endorse Bernie Sanders? How do you think of him vis-à-vis Hillary Clinton or Martin O'Malley or the other candidates on the Democratic side?
Cornel West: In a way, it was not too hard because we've got so many mediocre candidates, both in the milquetoast Democratic Party and the decrepit Republican Party.
It's just so clear. Hillary Clinton, she's been an exemplary neoliberal opportunist for a long time. Martin O'Malley strikes me as a kind of dyed-in-the-wool liberal. What we really need is a progressive to hit issues of Wall Street domination of the government. So in a sense it was very easy to endorse Brother Bernie. But we've got to always let him know that we keep the pressure on him.
Keep in mind, we're talking about a two-party system that is just so decrepit in so many ways. Radically inadequate. I was trying to talk about the interplay between the social movements, which is where I spend so much of my energy, and how it relates to electoral and political strategies.
In your endorsement, you said that Bernie Sanders is a "long-distance runner with integrity in the struggle for justice for over 50 years." Yet a lot of Black Lives Matter activists have seen his emphasis on economic equality as either overlooking or downplaying issues of racial injustice. What do you say to those activists who have reservations about him?
CW: It's very important to put pressure on all progressive politicians, no matter what color. But we should always acknowledge that the issue of not just economic injustice, but class injustice, is so fundamental in terms of wrestling with the vicious legacy of white supremacy.
Any time we have a politician who's bringing a serious critique to bear on Wall Street domination of the government, a serious critique to bear on the role that big banks and big corporations play in shaping the nation — that is an integral part of any struggle for black freedom.
The Bring Bernie To NC Movement:
NCSU for Bernie held its first meeting in Hunt Library Wednesday at 7 p.m. on Aug. 26 in a packed-out auditorium along with fellow Sanders supporters from the group Triangle for Bernie 2016. A crowd of about 130, about half of which were college-aged, gathered in an effort to better organize and mobilize the Sanders campaign effort in North Carolina and the Triangle area, specifically.
President of NC State Students for Bernie, Alex Caudill, a sophomore studying political science, and Vice President Nida Allam, a senior studying sustainable materials technology, organized and led the meeting, in collaboration with several Triangle for Bernie members. Caudill emphasized the student-led, grassroots aspect of Students for Bernie and encouraged the students in attendance to volunteer to join the campaign effort.
Among the audience, ideas were tossed around about how to better reach voters with Sanders’ message, such as reaching out to disenfranchised voters, LGBT members, minorities, women, Republicans, non-English speakers and various religious groups.
“I was very excited to find out this club existed,” Carly McKenna, a freshman studying mechanical engineering, said. “I think it’s super important to get involved and to see Bernie become president.”
Sanders The Populist, Trump The Fascist:
Specific empirically-informed demands, such as strengthening Social Security, which Bernie Sanders has built his campaign on, can straight-forwardly contribute to building a better, fairer world, in which ordinary people can thrive. Although framed in terms of challenging a corrupt system, they go far beyond simplistically assigning blame, informed with significant concrete evidentiary support.
In sharp contrast, Trump’s shadowboxing with mythic phobias—Obama’s birth certificate last cycle, immigrant rapists this time around—is much more of a cathartic performance, aimed only at a select part of the electorate, Sarah Palin’s “real Americans.” Digging down into the details, greater overlap between the two appears on some issues—both oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare, for example—but not on others: Sanders supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, while Trump recently said, “I think having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country.”
We’ll return to the overlap in a moment. But what’s most significant is the profound difference in the very nature of their thinking. Sanders’ no-nonsense thinking is deeply informed by his engagement with reality—both the reality of decades working with constituents to help solve their problems, and the reality of how other countries have created better lives for their own citizens—universal healthcare, paid sick leave and family leave, etc. Trump’s thinking, in sharp contrast, is soaked in fantasies, both those shared with GOP base voters, and his own personal set of narcissistic fantasies expressed in trumpeting his own self-importance.
The Summer Of Sanders:
t's a packed house in Columbia, South Carolina, 2,000 clammy people in a hall better suited for half that number, with another 700 in an overflow room. They've come to hear Bernie Sanders rip the billionaires and Wall Street. He doesn't disappoint.
"The American people understand that corporate greed, this never-ending greed of wanting more and more no matter how much they have already, is destroying our economy," an angry Sanders declares.
The crowd roars.
"The American people also understand," Sanders continues, jabbing the air, "that at a time when this country faces so many enormous problems, when we need so much serious discussion, that much of the corporate media will talk about everything in the world except the most important issues facing working Americans."
This is why I came. Sure, I love a good Bernie speech, and I was curious how he'd draw in a red state in the Deep South. But mainly, I'm witness to the fact that, despite media pronouncements that this was the summer of Donald Trump, it actually belonged to the Democratic Socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.
You want a presidential candidate who decries the mess we're in? Take your pick, Trump or Sanders. You want a candidate with a clue? It isn't Trump, whose only answer is that he's a bully and he'll be your bully. (If you're a white male.) Only Sanders—Bernie—offers a coherent, almost too detailed plan to fix the economy, promote renewable energy, attack racism and sexism, and put morality and democracy back at the center of American life.
Sanders & The Establishment:
Upstart presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is about to make a direct pitch to the Democratic Party establishment: Consider me, not Hillary Clinton.
Sanders huddled with advisers at his home here Wednesday to chart what he describes as the second phase of a campaign that has exceeded all expectations but still lacks the infrastructure and support from the party elites that could help him compete with Clinton on a national level.
He said he will issue a slew of detailed policy proposals, including for a tax system under which corporations and the wealthy would pay significantly more for initiatives that would benefit the poor and middle class, and will pour resources into voter outreach in early nominating states.
The senator also will appear with other White House hopefuls this week at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee and will urge party leaders to embrace him as a candidate who can attract new voters and energy, just as President Obama did eight years ago.
“Smart members of the establishment will perceive where the excitement is, where the energy is, where the enthusiasm is, where the potential voter turnout is,” Sanders said in an interview.