Donkees
Donkees's JournalBernie Sanders Accuses Liberal Think Tank of Smearing Progressive Candidates
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Sydney Ember
April 14, 2019
Excerpts:
WASHINGTON — Senator Bernie Sanders, in a rare and forceful rebuke by a presidential candidate of an influential party ally, has accused a liberal think tank of undermining Democrats’ chances of taking back the White House in 2020 by “using its resources to smear” him and other contenders pushing progressive policies.
“This counterproductive negative campaigning needs to stop,” Mr. Sanders wrote to the boards of the Center for American Progress and its sister group, the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “The Democratic primary must be a campaign of ideas, not of bad-faith smears. Please help play a constructive role in the effort to defeat Donald Trump.”
Mr. Sanders sent the letter days after a website run by the action fund, ThinkProgress, suggested that his attacks on income inequality were hypocritical in light of his growing personal wealth.
On Saturday night, after Mr. Shakir emailed a copy of the letter to leaders of the Center for American Progress groups, Ms. Tanden responded to him with an email calling the situation “unfortunate,” offering to meet to discuss it, and adding of CAP “we share the goals of unity.” That email was provided to the Times by Mr. Shakir.
The letter takes issue with ThinkProgress’ commentary on the acknowledgment by Mr. Sanders, who represents Vermont in the Senate as an independent, that he himself became a millionaire partly by writing a best-selling book. One ThinkProgress post deemed the revelation “very off-brand and embarrassing.” Another post contained a video seeking to demonstrate that, as he grew wealthier, he altered his repeated denunciations of “millionaires and billionaires” to no longer include as many references to millionaires.
“I and other Democratic candidates are running campaigns based on principles and ideas and not engaging in mudslinging or personal attacks on each other,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress is using its resources to smear Senator Booker, Senator Warren and myself, among others. This is hardly the way to build unity, or to win the general election.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/us/politics/bernie-sanders-letter.html
➡️ Facebook LIVE Link for Senator Sanders Lordstown Ohio @AFTunion Town Hall 1PM
https://twitter.com/OFTadvocate/status/1117439540438941701https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/1117448583194783746
Bernie Sanders visits Gary Indiana to listen to regional community members.
Published on Apr 13, 2019
Bernie Sanders visits West Michigan - Coopersville UA Local 174
Published on Apr 13, 2019
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders stopped in Coopersville as part of his Midwest tour on Saturday, April 13.
Photo: ''Sanders at Sweet Potato Sensations in Detroit, not on a counter or table ... ''
https://twitter.com/GregJKrieg/status/1117211410273116160
🔥 Bernie Rallies Supporters in Warren, Michigan
Join us live from Warren, Michigan, as we continue our work to win the election, defeat Trump and transform the country to make a government and economy that work for all. Add your name to say you’re with us: http://berniesanders.com
"I didn't know that it was a crime to write a good book, which turned out to be a best seller."
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1117107576183898115Gallery: Sen. Bernie Sanders meets with community leaders in Gary Indiana April 13
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, made a campaign stop at the Genesis Convention Center in Gary and met with community leaders. Sanders made a swing through Midwest locations, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Photos by Kale Wilk, The Times.
Bernie Sanders stops in Gary
More at link
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/gallery-sen-bernie-sanders-meets-with-community-leaders-in-gary/collection_7f7810ce-0006-5cf1-8e58-02a93c3bfd40.html
4 Photos: Bernie in Gary Indiana
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1117069164328439810https://twitter.com/GregJKrieg/status/1117068948372062210
https://twitter.com/fran_chambers/status/1117076491915886592
https://twitter.com/fran_chambers/status/1117075236921511937
https://twitter.com/GregJKrieg/status/1117079767604432896
Bernie Sanders Imagines a Progressive New Approach to Foreign Policy
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells 5:00 A.M.
Excerpts:
In 2017, Sanders hired his first Senate foreign-policy adviser, a progressive think-tank veteran named Matt Duss. Sanders gave major speeches—at Westminster College, in the United Kingdom, and at Johns Hopkins—warning that “what we are seeing is the rise of a new authoritarian axis” and urging liberals not just to defend the post-Cold War status quo but also to “reconceptualize a global order based on human solidarity.” In 2016, he had asked voters to imagine how the principles of democratic socialism could transform the Democratic Party. Now he was suggesting that they could also transform how America aligns itself in the world.
When Sanders’s aides sent me a list of a half-dozen foreign-policy experts, assembled by Duss, who talk regularly with the senator about foreign policy, I was surprised by how mainstream they seemed. Joe Cirincione, the antinuclear advocate, might have featured in a Sanders Presidential campaign ten or twenty years ago. But Sanders is also being advised by Robert Malley, who coördinated Middle East policy in Obama’s National Security Council and is now the president of the International Crisis Group; Suzanne DiMaggio, a specialist in negotiations with adversaries at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and Vali Nasr, the dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced Studies at Johns Hopkins and a specialist in the Shia-Sunni divide.
Few of these advisers were part of Sanders’s notionally isolationist 2016 campaign. But, as emergencies in Libya, Syria, and Yemen have deepened, the reputation of Obama’s foreign policy, and of the foreign-policy establishment more broadly, has diminished. Malley told me, “Out of frustration with some aspects of Obama’s foreign policy and anger with most aspects of Trump’s, many leaders in the Party have concluded that the challenge was not to build bridges between centrist Democrats and centrist Republicans but, rather, between centrist and progressive Democrats. That means breaking away from the so-called Blob”—a term for the foreign-policy establishment, from the Obama adviser Ben Rhodes. DiMaggio said, “The case for restraint seems to be gaining ground, particularly in its rejection of preventive wars and efforts to change the regimes of countries that do not directly threaten the United States.” She and others now see in Sanders something that they didn’t in 2016: a clear progressive theory of what the U.S. is after in the world. “I think he’s bringing those views on the importance of tackling economic inequality into foreign policy,” DiMaggio said.
The part of Sanders’s vision that I still could not reconcile to reality was his optimism. He had a clear view of the enemy, but it was hard to see much evidence for the global popular movement against the right that he hoped to ignite. When I asked about where he thought his allies might come from, he said, “Maybe I’m wrong on this, or maybe I’m seeing something that other people don’t see, but I look at climate change as a very, very serious threat—to the entire planet, to every country on earth.” Putin, he acknowledged, was an obstacle; “China is a mixed bag.” But the effects of climate change, he said, were dawning on the planet at once, and their evidence would compel cooperation.“Australia now is suffering from terrible drought. China. Russia. Every country on earth is suffering. And it’s only going to get worse,” he said. “It also is an opportunity to say, ‘You know what? We gotta work together. We have some technology you may not have in China. You are producing this and that, that we’re not producing. We gotta work together.’ ”
That is the optimistic scenario: that climate change will bring about a new spirit of international cooperation. The darker view is that we are already seeing its effects in politics. Perceiving an existential vulnerability, people around the globe have sought the reassurance of authoritarians. Perhaps the pressures of climate change will liberate us from this moment; perhaps they also created it.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/bernie-sanders-imagines-a-progressive-new-approach-to-foreign-policy
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