WaPo: ‘Single-issue’ candidate Bernie Sanders touches on 20 issues during a Michigan campaign stop

This, of course, comes on the heels of the latest meme by the Clinton camp, that Bernie is a single issue candidate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/16/single-issue-candidate-bernie-sanders-touches-on-20-issues-during-a-michigan-campaign-stop/

You cannot legislate whether or not someone is racist.

But you *can* legislate the institutional mechanisms in which that racism is allowed to permeate. For example, you can pass laws that hold police officers responsible for targeting black people. You can create jobs programs that focus on lifting poor minority communities out of poverty. You can offer educational opportunities to everyone regardless of their or their family's income. You can change drug laws so that minorities don't become imprisoned at a disproportional rate. None of these things will change the fact that people are racist, but at least they close some doors on ways racism can be expressed.

I, for one, do not believe that people are born racist. I think racism is something that is learned either through personal experiences or societal upbringing. This is something that cannot be solved over night nor by any politician. It takes an entire country to say enough is enough, and it will take time.

With the passing of Justice Scalia, the need to nominate Bernie is more urgent than ever.

He has promised that any nominee to the Supreme Court must be willing to overturn Citizen's United. His campaign is the one with the momentum. He's inspiring people to register and vote for the first time. And he's doing better than Hillary against all Republicans. This is our chance.

Forum on Race and Economic Opportunity in Minneapolis (Video)

Contrary to another thread, this was actually a great forum for everybody involved. The crowd had a chance to air some grievances and ask some great questions. Bernie did well answering them. My heart goes out to the Native American guy at the end who clearly has had a rough go of things. Questions start at about 14 minutes into the video.

Clinton Wall St funded SuperPAC to buy air time in South Carolina

I honestly thought Hillary would try to put in a positive debate performance tonight. I was wrong.

When, as a candidate, you are one of the least trusted people in either party and your campaign has no clear message the last thing you should do is go on the attack against an opponent who is well liked by the majority of people and is rapidly catching you in the polls. Hillary needed to be positive tonight. She needed to define her issues in a clear and concise manner. What she did instead is try to undermine Bernie at every turn and misrepresent his views. It was a sad and pitiful performance, and I don't use those words lightly. Kudos to Bernie for taking the high road.

BERNIIIIEEEEE!!!!!!!!

WWWWOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!



Thanks New Hampshire

Experience canvassing in NH yesterday and some advice

So let me start off by saying that yesterday was my 2nd time ever canvassing, the first being a couple of weeks ago in Conway. This time, the campaign needed people in the Durham area, so I drove down from Bangor, Maine with my girlfriend and one of our other friends to do what we could.

The campaign office was situated in someone's home that they generously offered up for use. We parked down the road and went inside, surprised to see such an organized campaign effort taking place in someone's living room. But this is where some of the problems began.

We were briefly greeted by several campaign workers and without any formal introductions asking about us or where we came from we were each handed a manila folder containing a list of addresses to visit. Three people, three folders. Now, I'll remind you this was only mine and my girlfriend's second time canvassing, and our friend hadn't canvassed since 2008. We were over a hundred miles from home and completely unfamiliar with the area. It was never in our plans to split up for the day.

When I tried to explain that to the guy working the desk with the folders, I was basically ignored. We were given 2 walking routes and 1 driving route, which would become problematic later on, and were told to do the best we could. So after a brief overview of canvassing strategy we were released into the wild, so to speak.

The three of us decided that since we were all fairly inexperienced as canvassers that we would stick together for at least one of the planned routes. Since the driving route was closest (and difficult to do on your own anyhow) we decided to complete that one first.

It took us 4 hours.

There were *a lot* of houses on that list, more than we had expected. I won't go into much detail about the actual canvassing other than to say we encountered a lot of great people who were enthusiastic about voting for Bernie. There was one guy who refused to answer my knocks even though his door was open, we had made eye contact, and he was sitting on his living room couch staring at me. I made sure to leave a couple Bernie pamphlets on his door. Anyway the actual canvassing went great, but it just took so...damn...long to get one route completed.

So here's my unprofessional and inexperienced advice first to canvassers and then to the campaign.

Canvassers: If you're going in a group, try to get a walking route if you can. This will allow you to split up and hit more doors in less time while staying close enough to each other in case something weird happens. A driving route is great for a single canvasser or two with a car.

Campaign: Please get to know your volunteers better. This will allow you to give them tasks that they can complete more efficiently based on their experience and skills. In my example above, had we been given all walking routes instead of one of them being a driving route, we wouldn't have been tempted to do the driving route together, wasting valuable time. It just so happened that the last few houses on the driving route were on roads that we could park the car and walk to, which was not the case for the vast majority of the list. Those houses went very quickly because we figured out we could split up within the neighborhood without feeling our safety was threatened. Perhaps more experienced canvassers wouldn't have had this problem, but we're new and so our method was not as efficient as it could have been.

All in all, I thought yesterday went well, but it could have gone a lot better. I feel like we could have visited more houses had we been given better routes, but that really comes down to our lack of experience and lack of communication with the campaign.

I hope this helps anybody who's thinking of canvassing for the first time or any campaign workers hoping to improve canvassing performance of their volunteers.

At the request of my girlfriend in response to Albright and Steinem: #betrayedbymyrolemodels

She asked me to create this thread after reading what Albright and Steinem had to say about young women today. Needless to say she's a little upset about those comments. She has looked up to both women for guidance and has felt genuinely betrayed by what she heard. Therefore, she wants to start a new hashtag on twitter. #betrayedbymyrolemodels

Spread the word.

DesMoines Register Editorial: Something Smells in the Democratic Party (Caucus results)