Lgbt Rights Activists

"The big corporate Democratic Party donors made it clear that if Bernie Sanders became the presidential nominee, they would support Trump. The donor class has created a system where they cannot fail. If it's Trump or Biden, Goldman Sachs doesn't lose, ExxonMobil doesn't lose, Raytheon doesn't lose, Citibank doesn't lose. There is no way that they can lose. They have rigged the system so that their interests are always served."

"Two of Sanders’ top advisers — pollster Ben Tulchin and speechwriter David Sirota — told Sanders that he should pointedly take on Biden at the Feb. 25 debate in South Carolina, which the former vice president saw as his firewall state. They also said Sanders should use billionaire Mike Bloomberg as a foil, and attack him over his record of supporting stop-and-frisk, in order to deflect from the onslaught he would no doubt face as the newly anointed frontrunner. The stakes were high: In an email to senior staff, Tulchin said that moderate voters were beginning to unify behind Biden and that the consolidation would intensify if he won South Carolina, according to people familiar with the message. But on the stage that night, Sanders didn’t take his aides’ advice. Instead, he largely gave Biden a pass, bashed Bloomberg sometimes — but not over stop-and-frisk — and mostly stuck to his standard talking points. It wasn’t the first nor the last time Sanders eschewed his staffers’ suggestions to be more aggressive with his top rival. Their warnings proved prescient: Biden went on to sweep the day in South Carolina, unify moderates, and then carry Super Tuesday. "Knocking out Biden was job No. 1. And even when he was down, no one went for a knockout blow," said a top aide. "That was the problem." Sanders’ unwillingness to go for Biden’s jugular is just one of the decisions campaign aides are wrestling with since he exited the primary Wednesday. Despite being the best fundraiser in the Democratic field, having near universal name ID, and leading a massive volunteer army, Sanders performed worse in many ways in 2020 than in 2016. He badly lost among African-Americans yet again, and the rural and working-class white voters who were with him four years ago abandoned him."

"...even now, Bernie Sanders, the senator who has relentlessly campaigned for healthcare for all, is considered an outlier in his bid for the White House, even by his own party."

"Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders received the most votes in the first three primary elections. After centrist Joe Biden scored his first primary win, the DNC consolidated the Democratic Party establishment around him. Candidates... immediately dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden... The party bosses likely wanted to ensure that Sanders would not upend the corporate order... At the March 15 debate with Biden, Sanders asked the rhetorical question: Where is the power in America?...“Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise the minimum wage? Why do we pump up the oil industry while a half a million people are homeless in America?” Sanders criticized the bipartisan $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill. It mandates temporary paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave. But it exempts companies with more than 500 employees from the obligation to provide leave, excluding about 6.5 million workers. Moreover, the exemptions disproportionately hurt low-wage workers. And it contains no limits on the ability of the pharmaceutical companies to profit from the coronavirus... When he defines himself as a democratic socialist, Sanders said, he means “Economic rights are human rights.” The core of his Medicare for All plan is, “Health care is a human right.”"

"Many of us vividly recall the hotly contested 2016 primary race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, whom I strongly supported. Sanders’ message of fighting income inequality and pushing for Medicare for all resonated with many Democratic voters, as it does now, and after winning the New Hampshire primary he seemed to have momentum on his side. But the race inevitably shifted to the South and its heavy contingent of black voters. Clinton benefited from her husband’s popularity with black voters and pulverized Sanders in South Carolina by 47 percentage points. Sanders next got crushed on Super Tuesday, losing the southern and southwest states of Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. In 2020, Sanders was determined to avoid repeating that history. He tried to increase his percentage of the black vote by blanketing Facebook with ads that highlighted his long-standing commitment to civil rights. He also talked up issues of paramount importance to the black community – criminal justice reform and social-economic injustice. Sanders enlisted the help of influential black surrogates such as Harvard Professor Cornel West and rapper Killer Mike. He began airing a TV ad that features former President Barack Obama’s past praise of him, even though he has positioned himself as the anti-establishment candidate. Former Obama aides like David Axelrod questioned the ad given that Sanders and the former President were not particularly close. In Mississippi, his campaign funded an ad campaign on black radio. But despite all this, Sanders once again failed miserably with black voters. He got crushed, again, in South Carolina and then suffered a blowout loss on Super Tuesday. And Tuesday night, he suffered perhaps a fatal blow by losing the three Ms – Mississippi, Missouri, and Michigan. So, what did Sanders do wrong this time? Well, it didn’t help that on the Sunday before Super Tuesday he failed to appear at a Bloody Sunday ceremonial event in Selma, Alabama, that honors the civil rights leaders who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Sanders compounded that mistake by canceling a rally in Mississippi. Perhaps unknown to him is that many African Americans from my hometown of St. Louis hail from the South and have deep ties to blacks in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Sanders’ actions were an affront not just to those southerners, but to blacks in Missouri."

"Sanders’ relentless attacks on millionaires and billionaires didn’t resonate with a large segment of the black community that takes pride in the successes of black billionaires such as Robert Smith, who paid off the student loan debt of the entire 2019 graduating class at Morehouse College. Sanders doesn’t seem to understand that although many African Americans suffer from an economic system stacked against them, we are economically aspirational. Many African Americans applaud the high achievement and success of billionaires like Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z and Michael Jordan. But Sanders’ biggest mistake, undoubtedly, was his failure to understand the mindset of middle-aged and older African Americans. For many of these voters, Trump’s relentless attempts to dismantle Obamacare and destroy the entire legacy of the first black president – Barack Obama – has been an unending nightmare. The unyielding assault and systematic attack on other prominent African American leaders, like Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and the dismantling of safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for seniors made removing Trump from office a pivotal issue for many black voters."

"For many voters, the 2016 election was their first introduction to the Vermont senator with the unkempt hair and radical ideas. He knew more people would know his name if he ran again in 2020, but he needed to do more: He needed to hire a more diverse staff, attend events at historically black colleges and universities, speak to black media and black people directly, and, perhaps more than anything, listen to black voices. He did all that. But despite his efforts, the support never quite materialized. From the South Carolina primary through Super Tuesday, among black voters, Sanders was trounced by former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders offered a revolution; voters rebuffed it. The black people who did support Sanders tended to be younger—and young people tend to vote at lower rates than older people do."

"The Super Tuesday results reveal a serious flaw in Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign: his lack of support among African Americans, whose votes are critical not only for winning the Democratic primary, but for defeating President Donald Trump in the fall. Democrats who wish to beat Trump but prefer Sanders to former Vice President Joe Biden, must ask themselves the following question: Can a campaign that rests primarily on class warfare and economic justice, one that largely relegates race to a concern simply encompassed by economic reform, attract enough black voters to prevail?"

"Let’s face it, Biden isn’t so great on race, either. His support of the controversial 1994 crime bill, as well as his opposition to busing in the 1970s, should give pause to anyone who thinks of him as a committed racial progressive. But Biden has some built-in advantages over Sanders: He was vice president to the first black president, and his moderate politics are generally seen as making him more electable than Sanders. Black folks, given Trump’s threats to racial progress, want him out of the White House in the worst way. The map doesn’t get much easier for Sanders in the next round of primaries; in several upcoming states, the black community is key. No one expects him to abandon his long-held economic message, but if he wants to increase his support from black voters, he needs to pay more attention to race and racism. Otherwise, his revolution will soon fail again."

"Bernie's particular brand of socialism is probably better described as 'grandparent envy.'"

"And Black voters over 45 have lived long enough to see the history made by Obama, but also have an even longer memory of the disappointment and shortcomings of candidates who failed. They’ve surveyed the polarized political landscape and bitterly divided Congress, and they doubt that a Sanders’-style political revolution is even a remote possibility in an age when just voting to fund the government is regularly up for debate. Many of them admired the grit and talent of Warren but had no faith that white men in any significant numbers would support a woman for president, even if she was the best choice. The entire black constituency is not unified behind Biden, however; there’s a significant generational split, with many younger voters backing Sanders. These younger voters grew up in the shadow of new possibilities presented by Obama’s victories. For them, the first election they participated in or can even recall was an election of phenomenal change, where a black candidate defied all expectations to win back-to-back terms as president. These are voters who know that hope has worked and believe it can work again, so they are open to Sanders’ critiques of the high costs of college and income inequality, and they agree there’s an urgent need for change."

"I am supporting Bernie Sanders for president because I believe that his campaign and his understanding of politics complements the priorities that women of color defined decades ago...At the same time that I was growing up in Cleveland, Bernie Sanders, who was a few years older, was growing up in Brooklyn. He noticed some of the same paradoxes and injustices that I did and came to a similar conclusion: that he needed to get involved...Sanders has devoted most of his life to social movements. He has shaped them and been shaped by them. He understands that the most substantial and meaningful change comes from the bottom up, not the top down...Sanders has said that as president he will be “organizer-in-chief”. He is committed to fighting for regular working people, which is most of us, and he has the advantage of connection with an existing broad-based social movement. As president he can implement policies that give those who are most harmed by the current system full access to opportunity and a decent human life...In 2016 I served on the LGBTQ steering committee for the Sanders campaign. I am even more excited to support him now...Four of the most dynamic women of color in Congress – representatives Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – have endorsed Bernie...The stakes could not be higher. Before the 2016 election I dreaded a return to the Jim Crow era signaled by the slogan “Make America Great Again”, which obviously meant white. Tragically that is exactly what happened. Four more years is unthinkable. That is why I am working to elect President Bernie Sanders."

"No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we’re up against: A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins. A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted façade. Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy."

"On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a “news” article about Sanders. Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a “distortion of history.” Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn’t surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee. Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign -- and the grassroots energy behind it -- to melt away. That’s not going to happen. Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul -- as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that’s saying something.)"

"For a brief moment last Tuesday after the Democratic presidential debate, past the hallways that snaked from the spin room to the exit near the back of the Gaillard Center in South Carolina, two of the candidates ended up stuck together in a small room, unable to leave. There was a problem with the door — security needed to unlock it — and so they stood together waiting. Had chance put them there with anybody else, it might’ve been a moment of awkward silence. Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders dislike plenty of people, but not each other. The fact of their friendship, based on a little-discussed, yearslong mutual respect, is all at once entirely unexpected and intuitively obvious. As candidates, they shared a stubborn force of will and a fierce distaste for their enemies — both of them salty, but in vastly different ways. As senators, they work together all the time, but in matters of ideology and political sensibility, they agree on very little. He, for example, will hate this article — see: "political gossip," personality-driven media, etc. She already loves it."

"Indeed, Sanders’s biggest threat is not any one of his opponents but a party establishment that remains nervous about his potential nomination. Within minutes of the polls closing in South Carolina tonight, pressure was building for some of the lagging candidates to drop out and rally behind Biden. “I’m hoping some of the candidates tomorrow get out,” former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a previous chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on CNN as he endorsed the former vice president. Sanders, however, would rather most of his rivals stay in for now—even if that means he takes a few losses on Super Tuesday."

"In a sign of the increasing urgency of the calendar, Sanders devoted part of his speech to imploring young people to vote and to rebutting critiques of his electability in a race against Trump. Sanders needs a larger turnout among young voters to hold off his rivals and convince Democratic skeptics that he can win in the fall. His double-digit defeat in South Carolina was a shellacking. If his landslide in Nevada suggested that Sanders had made deep inroads among the Latino community, the result in South Carolina is a reminder that he has a much tougher challenge in winning over African Americans, and particularly older voters. More important, however, Sanders must hope that South Carolina is not the first sign of a broader national reconsideration of his candidacy. The answer to that question could be clear by Tuesday night."

"Biden cleaned house, earning over 60 percent of the African-American vote according to exit polls—a dynamic that suggests a familiar challenge ahead for Sanders. In 2016, his insurgent campaign against Sec. Hillary Clinton saw its momentum blunted repeatedly by her overwhelming support among African-Americans. Sanders very well may have won that nomination if he could only have drawn more black support. After licking his wounds, Sanders learned his lesson and did the hard work of establishing more of a sustained presence in black and brown political life. He dramatically diversified his campaign at the top and made inroads with younger, more progressive up-and-coming community leaders and politicians of color who tend to be more open to his ambitious agenda than more moderate, older African-Americans. For some time now, it appeared as though Sanders’ work was paying off. He handily won Latinos and held his own with African-Americans in Nevada, the first truly diverse state to participate in the 2020 primary to date. And until recently, polls showed him surging in South Carolina, even threatening to take the lead. Pundits will have a field day trying to diagnose what went wrong for the 2020 frontrunner in South Carolina. Was it the Clyburn endorsement (which felt dramatic and inevitable at the same time)? The impact of the most prolonged attacks on Sanders by his competitors since the race began? Sanders continues to show strength with black voters under 40, which is more than can be said for Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and arguably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who have all garnered almost no support from African-Americans to date."

"The Democratic Party's officials are going to do everything they can, as they did four years ago, to block that independent vote. That vote is Sanders' vote. Those against Sanders in the Democratic leadership are also going to do what they can to reduce the Hispanic vote. It's strange to me that we always talk about Biden and the black vote. What's not talked about is that Sanders really owns the Hispanic vote, and in California that's decisive. They're doing everything they can to block Hispanic voters, young voters and independent voters who support Bernie Sanders."

"Like father of the conservative movement Barry Goldwater, Sanders is a factional candidate of the true faith, the representative of those who believe his party has lost touch with its ideological moorings. His brand is consistency and sincerity, which wins him affection if not support even from some opponents. But those very same qualities make it easy for the opposition (both within and outside the party) to tar him as a radical and an extremist. Sen. Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential election badly — but he was running against Lyndon Johnson, a legislative titan whose approval rating was over 75 percent that February. And Goldwater transformed his party nonetheless. His opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act began the process of ideological realignment that turned the South solidly Republican, a key factor powering Ronald Reagan's victorious quest for the presidency in 1980 and Newt Gingrich's capture of the House of Representatives in 1994. How did Goldwater's thrashing ultimately lead to a Republican majority? The answer is both ideological and demographic. Goldwater realigned the Republican center toward the South and West, the fastest-growing regions of the country. Increasing dominance in these regions led to a substantial electoral college advantage that wasn't broken until 1992. Ideologically, meanwhile, he gave Republicans something to be for rather than merely against. That's why they were able to define a new political era when Reagan won. That's the promise that Sanders holds even if he loses: that he opens the door not only to a return to power, but a transformation of the terms of the debate, something neither Clinton nor Obama — nor Eisenhower, Nixon, or Bush — achieved, but that FDR, Johnson, and Reagan did. But what's the demographic basis of Sanders' rise? And could it actually point to a dominant coalition, whether it manifests in 2020 or a subsequent election?"

"Could Sanders be more than a harbinger, though, and achieve something like Ronald Reagan's breakthrough? There are tempting parallels. Reagan challenged the incumbent Gerald Ford for the nomination in 1976 and nearly took the nomination from him, much as Sanders gave Hillary Clinton a far tougher run for her money than anyone could have imagined. And like Reagan, Sanders has demonstrated the ability to be far more pragmatic in government than he is often given credit for, working within the system and demonstrating an admirable institutional conservatism with his support for the filibuster and opposition to court packing. His historic support for gun rights even has a parallel in Reagan's support for abortion rights as California governor."

"Like Trump, Sanders comes from outside the institutional party he seeks to lead, and a substantial portion of his appeal rests precisely on that independence, and on pent up frustration with the party leadership. Like Trump, Sanders is leading a movement deeply bound up with his own persona, something hard to imagine sustaining itself in his absence. And like Trump, were Sanders to achieve victory, he could face persistent resistance within the party to promoting his agenda, and he would certainly have difficulty staffing his administration with people associated with his movement rather than the institutional party. That's a fact that will surely affect the actual course of policymaking in a Sanders administration as it has in Trump's. But there are two crucial differences between Sanders and Trump. First, Sanders is a sincere ideologue like Goldwater and Reagan, not an opportunist. He is running to transform his party ideologically rather than simply conquer it and make it his plaything. There's a reason why Trump has done so little to actually turn the GOP into a worker's party and to repudiate the wealth-favoring policies backed by its donors: Because he is not actually that interested in policy. Sanders is. That difference cuts both ways, however. It makes it easier for Sanders to get between Trump and his lies, and separate him from that portion of his supporters who believed he was a relative moderate in 2016. But it also makes it easier for Trump to retain the loyalty of his party's regulars, and to separate Sanders from the portion of his coalition that is worried about him not because he might lose but because he might win. Cynicism has its advantages as well as its drawbacks."

"So, look, the way I see this is that Bernie is winning right now because the Democratic Party is a progressive party, and progressive ideas are popular ideas, even if there are a lot of people on this stage who don't want to say so. You know, but Bernie and I agree on a lot of things, but I think I would make a better president than Bernie. And the reason for that is that getting a progressive agenda enacted is going to be really hard, and it's going to take someone who digs into the details to make it happen. Bernie and I both wanted to help rein in Wall Street. In 2008, we both got our chance. But I dug in. I fought the big banks. I built the coalitions, and I won. Bernie and I both want to see universal health care, but Bernie's plan doesn't explain how to get there, doesn't show how we're going to get enough allies into it, and doesn't show enough about how we're going to pay for it. I dug in. I did the work. And then Bernie's team trashed me for it. We need a president who is going to dig in, do the hard work, and actually get it done. Progressives have got one shot. And we need to spend it with a leader who will get something done."

"Just as Amy has shown on the debate stage, she is the best person to take on Bernie Sanders and the best candidate to beat Donald Trump. Both ​on​ and ​off​ the debate stage, Amy has highlighted the consequences of having Bernie Sanders lead the top of the ticket, including his divisive politics and health care plan that would kick 149 million Americans off their insurance."

"With his convincing victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders is solidifying his status as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination more than ever before. So how did a life-long avowed socialist and someone who’s never actually won an election as a Democrat get to the top of the party’s mountain? The simple answer is that he’s being supported by millions of younger Democratic voters, and those voters have been raised to be Sanders voters, even if their parents don’t realize it. Here’s how it happened: We convinced everyone college was 100% necessary, and then we made college unaffordable. Since the end of World War II, the chorus of educators, politicians, and journalists making it sound like college was essential for career success only became louder and drowned out any counterargument. At the same time, college tuition costs have exploded thanks greatly to government programs that produced unintended, but predictable consequences. It mostly started in 1978 when more loans and subsidies became available to a greatly expanded number of students. The cost of college tuition has risen by six times more than the rate of inflation since the 1970s. Now, millions of American young people are straddled with college loans that look impossible to repay. The total student loan debt in the U.S. now stands at more than $1.6 trillion. Is it any wonder so many of them are attracted to a candidate who not only promises to forgive their student debts, but presents their predicament as the result of corporate greed and misplaced government priorities? Luckily for Sanders, young voters supporting him for his college tuition forgiveness promises don’t seem to be too interested in his own family history. His wife Jane Sanders was president of the now defunct Burlington College and she and other administrators were reportedly the subjects of a long-running FBI probe that they misled bank loan officers about the real number of donations pledged to the college. The FBI probe of the matter ended in 2018, and Jane Sanders was not charged. But the policies she oversaw, which included pushing for major campus expansions, were indicative of some of the root causes of increased college costs in America."

"For all the policy differences and political minutiae Democrats delve into when criticizing President Trump, the most enduring attacks on Trump from the Democratic establishment remain accusations that Trump is supporting white supremacy and is controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin. These are over-the-top accusations, and it’s hard to accept that even most elected Democrats actually believe them. But pushing that message on America for the last three-plus years comes at a price for both sides. For the Democrats, the price is becoming clear: it’s made moderate presidential candidates look less viable than ever. Think about it: if you really believe the president is a traitor and supporting violent plots against non-white Americans, is this really the time to support mainstream Democrat or Republican candidates? Sanders may be a career politician, but he’s never been a mainstream politician. His persona and political brand fits much better into the current Democratic narrative that we’re living in desperate times. Establishment Democrats are reaping what they sowed. As a result, it’s looking more and more like Sanders has unstoppable momentum going into the Super Tuesday primaries and beyond. The big question now is whether that Democratic establishment will try to derail Sanders before or during the Democratic National Convention. But either way, the party would be playing with fire and risking alienating those younger voters forever."

"Donald Trump loves attacking Democrats as "far-left radical socialists." So why does Team Trump spend so much time pumping up Bernie Sanders? Spoiler alert: It’s a trap. But let’s look at the evidence. For weeks, President Trump has been rushing to Bernie’s defense and accusing Democrats of rigging the primaries against him. He accused Democrats of timing his impeachment trial to hurt Bernie Sanders’ chances, an allegation dutifully echoed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Don Jr. The President was at it again on the eve of the Iowa caucus, tweeting that the Democratic National Committee was trying to "rig the election against Sanders," even as he called Bernie Sanders a "communist" in a pre-Super Bowl safe-space interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. It’s been a repeated riff for months. Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt on Meet The Press announced that he was voting for Bernie in Virginia’s open primary – because he wanted a clear contrast between an authentic socialist and Donald Trump. This isn’t subtle. Team Trump wants to run against Bernie Sanders. If you don’t believe me, just ask them."

"But what about Bernie? Let’s give the man some credit. There’s no question he has an intense and enthusiastic following. He is an authentic ideologue – an avowed Democratic Socialist who has the courage of his convictions for decades and succeeded in changing the terms of the debate within the Democratic Party. If he wins Iowa, polls show that he could win New Hampshire – which he won in 2016 – and have a strong shot at the next caucuses in Nevada. But don’t forget that less than a quarter of Democrats call themselves “very liberal” – and in general, Democratic voters are older, more moderate and more blue collar than you might think if you gauge opinion only on Twitter, as Harry Enten has persuasively argued. Sanders’ support for ending private health insurance in favor of Medicare for all isn’t popular – while the public option backed by Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar is even supported by 41% of Republicans. And the very label "socialist" – along with Sanders’ record of defending the Castro regime in Cuba and the Chavez-Maduro regime in Venezuela – could seriously damage outreach to Hispanic voters in Florida and elsewhere. The Trump team has made it very clear that its campaign will be based on negative partisanship – demonizing Democrats as radical socialists to distract from the President’s broad unpopularity. The bottom line is that they can do that with impunity against an avowed Democratic Socialist such as Bernie Sanders. That’s why they’re pumping up his candidacy, trolling concern about a "rigged system" while also calling him "crazy" and a "communist.""

"I’m probably the last guy to defend Sanders. He is a man of the far left and I most certainly am not. But even a conservative like me can see that Sanders was cheated out of the Democratic presidential nomination the last time, with the Democratic National Committee rigging the whole thing for Hillary Clinton. And now it’s happening again. No wonder the Sanders supporters are angry. What happened on CNN in Iowa was bad for journalism. But it sure was good for Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. Sanders, the authentic candidate on the left in this cycle, as he was in the last, was surging in the Iowa polls. Warren, also on the left, was fading, desperate and in full panic. She began waving her gender card on that dangerous Intersectionality Highway where Democrats, addicted to identity politics, often crack up. Just before the debate, CNN ran a story portraying Sanders as misogynist who thinks a woman couldn’t be elected president. That’s ridiculous. He doesn’t believe that. And at the CNN debate, moderator Abby Phillip took Warren’s gender card, fashioned it into a knife and stabbed Sanders just weeks before the Iowa caucuses."

"The Democratic base is energized for 2020. Sanders, who suffered a heart attack weeks ago, looks positively vital when compared to Biden. Conventional wisdom also once said Republican Jeb Bush couldn’t be beat. How did that turn out? Joe is the new Jeb. I suppose it would be much easier to focus instead on Trump impeachment theater in Washington. But the script has been written, the Senate won’t convict Trump. It’s all posture and gesture and fundraising. I disagree with Sanders’ policies, but at least he’s honest about what he wants to do. Establishment Democrats see Sanders’ base as full of energy and know they must stop him in Iowa and New Hampshire. They feed Warren so Sanders doesn’t defeat Biden. And they’ll use friendly media to shape a stiletto and slip it between Bernie’s ribs. Sanders’ voters have seen this one before."

"Since the presidential primary race began, the two senators — who have been friends since before Ms. Warren was elected to the Senate in 2012 — have abided by a de facto nonaggression pact, rarely criticizing one another and frequently acting as something of a populist tag team on the debate stage. And as Pete Buttigieg has risen in the polls and Joseph R. Biden Jr. has proved durable, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren have been happy to demonstrate their left-wing bona fides by contrasting themselves with the more moderate contenders. Yet with Mr. Sanders enjoying a revival after his heart attack in October and Ms. Warren receding from her summer surge but wielding a formidable political organization in the first nominating states, it’s increasingly clear that their biggest obstacle to winning the Democratic nomination is each other. In Iowa and nationwide, they are the leading second-choice pick of the other’s supporters, a vivid illustration of the promise and the peril that progressives face going into 2020: After decades of losing intraparty battles, this race may represent their best chance to seize control from establishment-aligned Democrats, yet that is unlikely to happen so long as Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders are blocking each other from consolidating the left. For center-left Democrats, that’s exactly their hope — that the two senators divide votes in so many contests that neither is able to capture the nomination. Moderates in the party fear that if Ms. Warren or Mr. Sanders pull away — or if they ultimately join forces — the ticket would unnerve independent voters and go down in defeat against President Trump."

"That progressives find themselves in this situation at all is extraordinary. Perhaps not since anti-establishment Democrats were choosing between two other left-leaning senators, Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, in 1968, have there been two such liberal titans in the same primary contest. Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren have capitalized on the leftward drift of many younger Democrats and the weakening of the party’s traditional gatekeepers. Indeed, Mr. Sanders’s surprising success in the 2016 presidential primary race represented something new: a left-wing hopeful with the money and the organization to sustain a long campaign."

"For all their public praise for each other, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders are not in frequent contact. They have not explicitly discussed any hands-off agreement, let alone considered any future unity effort. The last time they spoke, aides said, was a brief conversation last month in which Ms. Warren told him about her new health care plan and he politely noted he had a different view. But with 50 days until the Iowa caucuses, some of their admirers are hoping they will begin a dialogue."

"The media largely have portrayed the dynamic... as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) rises, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) must fall... If you’re scouring campaign white papers you’re going to have trouble clearly laying out the difference between these two candidates, except by matters of degree. One is all in on “Medicare for all” and the other is all in on universal coverage, with Medicare for all as one of a range of good options. One wants to cancel all student debt; the other wants to cancel most student debt. You’ve got to look bigger-picture at their fundamental approach to politics and philosophy of political change. To state it simply: Sanders is a revolutionary and Warren is a reformer... Warren has been unequivocal that she is a capitalist and believes in markets. She identifies this as the most significant ideological split between her and Sanders."

"Sanders’ message of political revolution lands with a thud among those who are comfortable. Warren, Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and “not sure” all outperform Sanders among those earning more than $100,000... It makes sense, though, that those who have struggled the most under our system would be the most receptive to revolutionary change. Why maintain the rules of the current order when those rules have made your life a struggle?"

"The one overlap between Sanders and Warren is their relative appeal to young people. This stands in contrast to Biden, for whom the greatest predictor of support is age. The older you are, the more likely you are to be ridin’ with Biden. This suggests that the progressive tussle between Warren and Sanders is about more than a competition for Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) endorsement; it’s really about the future of the party... Already, progressives are setting the pace for new and popular policy ideas. Reformer, or revolutionary? The policies may be similar, but the results could be dramatically different."

"Eliminates tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities and makes community college tuition- and fee-free for all."

"Cancels $1.6 trillion in student debt for 45 million Americans"

"Ensures students can attend college debt free"

"Eliminates or reduces tuition and fees for low-income students at private colleges and universities that serve historically underrepresented minorities"

"Provides funding to eliminate equity gaps in higher education attainment"

"Paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation"

"The estimated $2.2 trillion cost of this bill would be paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation. During the financial crisis, Wall Street received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the United States. Now, it’s Wall Street’s turn to help rebuild the disappearing middle class. By imposing a small Wall Street speculation tax of just 0.5 percent on stock trades (that’s just 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1 percent fee on bonds, and a 0.005 percent fee on derivatives, we would raise up to $2.4 trillion over the next decade. More than 1,000 economists have endorsed a tax on Wall Street speculation and some 40 countries have already imposed a similar financial transactions tax, including Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Brazil."

"Well, I think I should say before I say that, my understanding is that Senator Sanders now supports H.R. 40. I think that’s where we are now. So I’m obviously pretty pleased about that.... I think all of the things that Bernie Sanders... listed about paying attention to distressed communities should be done. And we should also have reparations. So, I don’t see those two things as in conflict... In fact, it was never clear to me why both can’t be on the agenda, why one can’t associate themselves with the massive gaps in the wealth, that don’t just exist in the African-American community, but exist in communities across the country, and at the same time recognize that there’s something specific about the gap in the African-American community that’s tied to the specificity of American history. But, you know, as I said, I’m happy Senator Sanders now supports H.R. 40. You know, Joe Biden says that he’s been involved with civil rights his entire career. It’s worth remembering Joe Biden opposed busing and bragged about it, you know, in the 1970s. Joe Biden is on the record as being to the right of actually the New Democrats in the 1990s on the issue of mass incarceration, wanted more people sentenced to the death penalty, wanted more jails. And so, you know, I’m not surprised. I mean, this is who Joe Biden is."

"According to reports, Warren and Sanders are the only Democrats who aren’t meeting with Wall Street big wigs... They aren’t okay with bankers gambling away mom and pop pensions, and they aren’t okay with the Democratic Party being owned by the big banks, and that is a message that the American public desperately needs to hear."

"We see...Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC ... they’re all out there saying, look, we need to do something about corporate greed... the way that they were involved with loans... Over the most of the 20th century... you had caps... And then all of a sudden there was deregulation. And when deregulation took place, all of this bad stuff started occurring. You know, Wall Street stole from mom and pop. The economy crashed."

"Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders just put postal banking back where it belongs: high on the agenda of those who seek to create a just and equitable United States. On Thursday, the pair drew national attention with the announcement of their Loan Shark Prevention Act, a sweeping plan to “combat the predatory lending practices of America’s big banks and protect consumers who are burdened with exorbitant credit-card interest rates. The legislation imposes a 15 percent federal cap on interest rates and empowers individual states to establish lower limits.” ...modern-day loan sharks... work on Wall Street, where they make hundreds of millions...and head financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America... Despite what the knee-jerk anti-government echo chamber may tell you, what Americans need now is banking that serves people, not the Wall Street speculators. American Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein...says that the USPS can and should answer the call with “a nonprofit alternative to the big banks”..."

"Most Americans think that regardless of who your parents are, you should have the right to a quality higher education. To this day, most Democrat politicians disagree...their political icons intone that “there’s not anything free in America.”...Sanders has always argued that quality higher education should be a right, not just for those whose parents have buildings named after them or can doctor a water polo picture."

"Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said he thinks everyone should have the right to vote – even the Boston Marathon bomber. Asked at a CNN town hall Monday night if he thought felons should be allowed to vote – even while they're incarcerated, not just after they're release – Sanders said the country needs more people to vote."

"Days after Sen. Bernie Sanders's town hall hosted by Fox News revealed that many Fox viewers would support his Medicare for All plan, President Donald Trump's appointee in charge of Medicare appeared on the network in an apparent attempt at damage control. Seema Verma, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator, appeared on "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday to claim that Sanders's proposal would deliver worse health outcomes for Americans at a higher price than the current for-profit system—contrary to a number of studies from across the political spectrum. Media Matters labeled Verma's interview an intentional "smear" of the Vermont Independent senator's appearance and proposal."