March 10, 2019

Sanders sets sights on Trump in first New Hampshire campaign rally

By Kit Norton
Mar 10 2019, 5:06 PM

Excerpt:

Ray Buckley, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said Sanders has a significant advantage in the state compared to other candidates because of his history of working with and for people in New Hampshire.

“Sen. Sanders has a decades long relationship with New Hampshire Democrats and New Hampshire progressives. He has been here throughout the years campaigning for our candidates and the party,” Buckley said. While the Sanders campaign has no staff currently on the ground in New Hampshire, Buckley said the Vermont senator does have a contingent of about 75 “uber-activists” that have been meeting monthly since 2016 in order to formulate a grassroots campaigning strategy.

“He has that level of strong support in the state,” Buckley said. “He starts out with a level of enthusiasm and energy that other candidates are just building.”

While visiting a state where Sanders already has a strong base of support may seem a strange strategy, it is, according to Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir, part of a larger “five-core early state” plan put together by the Sanders campaign to target all the early primaries—Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and California. Sanders will be making stops in South Carolina on Thursday and Nevada on Saturday, after already visiting Iowa last week. There are also plans for him to stop in California.

Shakir told VTDigger last week the campaign plans to build on strong support in the early primaries and then to move Sanders’ attention to historically Democratic states that Trump won during the 2016 national election.

“The first track is making it clear that Bernie Sanders has the strongest national electability to beat Donald Trump,” Shakir said. “States that have been historically blue but Trump turned red, like Michigan and Ohio, Bernie has a strong ability to turn those states back to blue.”

https://vtdigger.org/2019/03/10/sanders-sets-sights-trump-first-new-hampshire-campaign-rally/

March 10, 2019

🔥 LIVE: Bernie Rallies Supporters in Keene, New Hampshire

Started streaming 87 seconds ago
Bernie’s in Keene, New Hampshire to rally supporters and continue building the strongest grassroots movement in American history. Together, we will defeat Donald Trump and complete the political revolution we started.

March 10, 2019

Levi Sanders: Bernie, Just before leaving to go to another event in New Hampshire.

https://twitter.com/Celentra/status/1104810351516925958

March 10, 2019

Ari Rabin-Havt: Concord Rally Photo

https://twitter.com/AriRabinHavt/status/1104786781596196865

March 10, 2019

🔥 LIVE: Bernie's Back in New Hampshire to Complete the Political Revolution

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Watch Bernie speak live in Concord at the first rally in New Hampshire of our historic campaign. We are not only going to defeat Trump—we're going to transform the United States of America.

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❤️ I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck and I protested housing discrimination.

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1104759200461262849

March 10, 2019

Bernie Sanders - When We Are In The Whitehouse

Published on Mar 9, 2019

Not Me. Us! When "WE" are in the White House!

March 10, 2019

Video Clip: Bernie mentions his mother's health problems and financial worries

https://twitter.com/HootHootBerns/status/1104713622691942402

March 10, 2019

Progress - Bernie Sanders - 2015

Published on Jul 25, 2015
Bernie Sanders outlines a progressive agenda for America.

March 10, 2019

'A major player': Sanders gets props from the Democratic establishment

Democratic senators are surprisingly open to the Vermont independent as the nominee if he manages to emerge from the crowded primary.

By BURGESS EVERETT and MARIANNE LEVINE 03/10/2019 06:55 AM EDT

Excerpts:

He’s a major player in the party in a way that he wasn’t. He looked like a quixotic candidate. It’s not like people are sitting around thinking about how to keep the nomination from him” this time.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) experienced the Sanders phenomenon firsthand in the waning days of his deliberations to run for president as he flew with Sanders and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to Selma, Ala., this month.

“There were a lot of people that wanted selfies with Bernie. A lot more than wanted selfies with me,” he quipped. “There’s a lot of affection for him.”

“He’s demonstrated that he is a serious, formidable candidate. And I think that the field will narrow very quickly,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), predicting Sanders will “certainly” survive the first culling of the candidates and that he’d be comfortable with Sanders as the nominee.

“He brings a dimension to our primaries," said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), "that will be helpful for us to win and take back the White House."

“There is respect now within the Democratic caucus for the movement that Bernie has built and sustained over the past four years,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “As a result, the ideas Bernie pushed in 2016 have become mainstream in the Democratic caucus and leadership has embraced his message of taking on the wealthy and powerful corporations.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/10/bernie-sanders-2020-senate-1213220


It’s clear there’s been a sea change over the past three years in how Democratic senators view their independent colleague from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images