Bernie Sanders' Momentum Shows He Can Win

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

07 June 15

t was no surprise when several thousand people packed the waterfront in Burlington, Vermont, for Bernie Sanders’ kick-off rally. “Bernie,” as he is known in Vermont, has been winning political campaigns there for decades. But when the crowds continued in New Hampshire, Iowa, and Minnesota, Democratic party insiders took notice. Concerned Clinton supporters in Iowa started calling campaign officials, warning them that she’d better get out here fast, that the view in the rear view mirror was shrinking, and that Bernie was closing fast.

The first sign that the Sanders campaign had momentum was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Burt Cohen, a former state senator from New Hampshire, said he was amazed when 700 people showed up for an event he helped pull together for Sanders at a church in Portsmouth the day after the formal launch in Burlington. “I’ve been involved in New Hampshire politics for 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cohen said. “It was electric, from start to finish.”

The first overflow crowd was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (photo: Bernie Sanders for President)

Then came Davenport, Iowa. I arrived a few hours early and the organizers were debating how many chairs they would need. They had 500 set up, and decided to tell the host to take down some chairs and they would reset them if they needed them. It turned out that 500 was not enough. The venue was a ballroom on St. Ambrose University.

The room can be divided into three sections. The campaign was using two sections of the room. As the room filled, they first set up the chairs they had taken down, bringing the count back to 500. That was not enough, so the wall divider was removed and another 250 chairs went up. They were soon filled with enthusiastic supporters of Bernie Sanders. Over 100 people couldn’t find a seat. As I moved around the room to get good angles for photographs, I found sections where young people had given up their seats for people who needed them more and were sitting on the floor. The New York Times called the Davenport crowd the largest campaign-organized event in Iowa this year. To give some perspective, two days later Martin O’Malley flew to Davenport following his announcement in Baltimore. He drew 50 people.

The photo above shows two thirds of the over 750 people who showed up to see Bernie Sanders in Davenport. (photo: Evan Burger)

The next day, in Muscatine, Iowa, after a rally at a community college drew twice the expected audience of 50, Bernie seemed giddy. “Be amazed at what you saw here,” he said. “I want to win this.” At another event that day, a backyard party in West Branch organized by State Senator Dave Johnson, over 200 people showed up and heard Sanders’ message. West Branch is a town of just over 2,000 people.

The crowd in the backyard of State Senator Dave Johnson in West Branch, Iowa. (photo: Bernie Sanders for President)

Bernie’s Iowa surge continued on Saturday in Iowa City. The event was held in the social hall of the Robert A. Lee Recreation Center. Three hundred people packed the room that was equipped with 200 seats, and another 100 listened to the speech from the hallway and stairs that led to the venue. When Bernie arrived, he shouted his appreciation to those not lucky enough to get into the room. He thanked them for turning out, then went inside to hold a town hall meeting. The Town Hall meeting style has been the chosen format for Sanders. He delivers his remarks and then takes a lot of questions. Many campaigns take a few questions and then off the candidate goes, but even with his tight schedule Sanders took many questions in Iowa City.

In order to comfortably listen to presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders, some in the crowd of over 300 people resorted to sitting on exercise balls from the Robert A. Lee Recreation Center Saturday morning in Iowa City. (photo: Zach Berg / Press-Citizen)

The Sanders Express rolled out of Iowa City, home of the Hawkeyes, and headed to Ames, Iowa, the home of the Iowa State Cyclones. Hundreds of people packed into the main room of the Torrent Brewing Company on a Saturday afternoon for what was billed as a grassroots organizing event. Once again, the venue was too small for the crowd, and many who came to see Sanders had to settle for looking in the window.

This is not the first time Bernie has had a large crowd in Ames. Back in February, the Story County Democrats held their annual soup and chili supper. Hundreds attended and the treasurer said they had their best fundraising haul ever. Something is clearly happening in Iowa, and the even better news is it’s not just Iowa.

The crowd inside the Torrent Brewing Company in Ames, Iowa (photo: Bernie Sanders for President)

Those on the outside watch through the windows. (photo: Bernie Sanders for President)

The final stop in Iowa was a town that had a population of 266 in 2010. But on Saturday, 300 people filled the community center to hear Bernie Sanders. The Tri-County Democratic party chair introduced Bernie before calling Hillary Clinton’s campaign and warning them that Bernie was on their tail. Kurt Meyer, the county party chairman who organized the event, sent a text message to Troy Price, the Iowa political director for Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Objects in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear,” Meyer warned Price, adding that Hillary had better get back to Iowa soon.

Bernie Sanders addresses a crowd in Kensett, Iowa, on Saturday evening, May 30, 2015. Sanders spent three days holding rallies across eastern Iowa. By the time he got to Kensett, his voice was hoarse. (photo: Emilie Stigliani/Free Press)

The Iowa momentum continued north to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The campaign originally planned to have a Town Hall meeting in a union hall. After two thousand people RSVP’d for the event, it was moved to the Native American Center. Some estimated the crowd that attended on that Sunday morning at five thousand. Bernie himself said four thousand, and I think based on the photos it could have been double that. Two thousand were inside the center while thousands of others were outside on the lawn listening to Bernie.

The crowd that was lucky enough to get a seat in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (photo: Bernie Sanders for President)

The crowd outside listening to Bernie in Minneapolis. (photo: Bernie Sanders for President)

There is no doubt that Bernie Sanders has drawn more people to his events than any other candidate for president from either party. There have been conferences, summits, and dinners that were larger, but no event organized by an individual campaign have been as big as Bernie’s events.

All of this happened before MoveOn and Democracy for America decided to end their effort to draft Senator Elizabeth Warren into the race. Perhaps the Run Warren Run folks saw many of their supporters attending Bernie Sanders events. While Martin O’Malley and Hillary Clinton have tailored their campaigns to attract Warren’s supporters, Bernie has not needed to change his. He has been fighting for the same issues as Warren his whole political life. Bernie Sanders has had the same message for 30 years. The American people are finally catching up.

I spoke to many Sanders supporters at these events. They are sick and tired of hearing how Bernie Sanders might pull Hillary Clinton to the left. They are fed up with hearing that Bernie can’t win. They are committed to getting Bernie Sanders elected President of the United States. Make no mistake about it, Bernie Sanders is in it to win, and if the early response from the American people is any indication, he may just do it.

UPDATE: Just yesterday a big crowd packed a community center in Keene, New Hampshire, and spilled outside when Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at a town meeting. The standing-room-only crowd of more than 750 cheered Sanders’ proposals for dealing with wealth and income inequality, making college tuition-free, combating climate change and getting big money out of politics. Perhaps the biggest applause of the day came near the end of Sanders’ remarks when he told the crowd he was going to tell them a secret: “We are going to win New Hampshire.” Sanders was introduced by Emily Hague, an at-large Keene City Council member. Bernie’s work on the environment was an inspiration to her, she said. It’s also why she announced at the outset of the meeting that she is endorsing Sanders in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. The big turnout was evidence of a growing groundswell of support. “This is not about Bernie Sanders,” he said. “You can have the best president in the history of the world but that person will not be able to address the problems that we face unless there is a mass movement, a political revolution in this country."

Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

USA Police State Celebrated as Defense of Freedom

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

07 June 15

USA Freedom Act replaces USA Patriot Act, sort of, and so?

ne needs a wicked sense of humor these days to fully appreciate the present moment in American history, as a supposedly free country debates which police state practices to adopt, while ignoring any thought that maybe the United States should not be a police state at all.

For a brief shining moment early on June 1, parts of the USA Patriot Act expired and, miraculously, the republic remained standing. Now the lapsed portions of the USA Patriot Act have been replaced by the USA Freedom Act, and officials from President Obama on down are saying things like “this will strengthen civil liberty safeguards,” when the real accomplishment has been an effective defense of the USA Police State. Orwell would be proud.

Quickly signing the USA Freedom Act into law on June 2, the President’s first reaction was to complain euphemistically about the brief interruption of some police state powers: “After a needless delay and inexcusable lapse in important national security authorities, my administration will work expeditiously to ensure our national security professionals again have the full set of vital tools they need to continue protecting the country.” [emphasis added]

Having the full set of vital police state tools revitalized, the President then felt free to lie about the achievement and give the people propaganda guidance as to how they should react: “Just as important, enactment of this legislation will strengthen civil liberty safeguards and provide greater public confidence in these programs.”

The danger is exactly that. The danger is that the American people, fear-mongered into accepting the USA Patriot Act in 2001, will now accept the USA Freedom Act as some sort of reform even though it comes nowhere close to defending civil liberties as the Constitution requires. More honored in the breach than in the observance in recent decades, the Constitution remains “the law of the land,” however unenforced it may be:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
          – Amendment IV, U.S. Constitution, effective 1791

Do we no longer have the courage of our constitutional convictions?

The recent argument between proponents of the USA Patriot Act and self-styled “reformers” calling for the USA Freedom Act had nothing to do with patriotism or freedom. It had nothing to do with the Constitution as written. It was an extra-constitutional argument about raw power, about which set of police state methods the government should be able to use to spy on and, when necessary, to control the American people. Adoption of the USA Freedom Act largely perpetuates the powers of the USA Patriot Act, but with a kinder, gentler image. The argument over them was as meaningless as debating whether prisoners would be happier exchanging their orange jumpsuits for lavender ones.

The mindless rush to reinstate government police powers undreamed of in the Constitution was a bitterly comic charade of American democracy. Some now celebrate the USA Freedom Act as “a cultural turning point for the nation.” Others condemn the USA Freedom Act as “a significant weakening of the tools” to protect the country. People on all sides claim to “welcome the debate” on national security.

What are these people talking about? Pontificating and posturing, the American leadership class pretends it’s meaningful to debate the merits of competing legislation efforts to corral personal liberty. Covering their totalitarian impulse in the rhetoric of liberty and security, what they are really talking about is how to decide which authoritarian governmental powers to adopt or expand next.

The USA Freedom Act makes no one any safer from the US government than they were under the USA Patriot Act. That law partially lapsed mainly because of the efforts of a lone US senator, Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky. His filibuster in May and stalling tactics on May 31 briefly prevented the Senate from voting overwhelmingly to maintain the “security” authorities later re-dressed in the empire’s new clothes of the USA Freedom Act. In effect, Rand Paul was pointing out that the empire has no clothes, that it’s a naked police state. But unlike the citizenry in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, most Americans continue to see only what they are expected to see.

Security agencies need more competence, not more power

The drift toward an American police state long pre-dated the 9/11 attacks that could easily have been prevented by competent national security agencies using the powers they had at the time. They had more than enough information to figure out the threat and prevent the attacks, but they were incompetent to do so. President Bush was even briefed by the CIA on the growing likelihood of an attack, but our arrogant putz of a president dismissed the CIA briefer, telling him he’d covered his ass.

Instead of calm resolve in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration peddled panic and fear to achieve unrelated political goals, like the Iraq war, based on another, deliberate intelligence failure (A CIA-authored book, “The Great War of Our Time,” quotes Bush saying in a briefing: “F—k diplomacy. We are going to war.”). Another post-9/11 failure was the USA Patriot Act, “USA Patriot” being a ten-letter backronym that stands with unintended irony for the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” Act of 2001. There is no credible evidence that the law has deterred any terrorism.

Elements of police state legislation had already been written before 9/11, after which they were cobbled together and pushed through a fearful Congress by large majorities in both houses. There were 66 NO votes in the House (including Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont), but the only senator in opposition was Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. There was enough constitutional concern in 2001, that sunset clauses were included for constitutionally dubious sections of the USA Patriot Act, but none had any difficulty being renewed until 2015.

A co-sponsor of the “reformist” USA Freedom Act was Vermont Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, the Senate’s longest-serving member and former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He voted for the USA Patriot Act in 2001 and has since supported its extensions, while attempting to tinker at the periphery. With all too unfortunate precision, Leahy calls the USA Freedom Act “the most significant surveillance reform in decades.” That’s a far cry from rolling back police state powers that the lawless NSA continues to exercise without restraint on internet users, as revealed June 4 in documents from Edward Snowden.

Fear still governs reason in considering the USA Police State

Opponents of extreme anti-terrorism laws still don’t talk in terms of a police state. They speak quietly of reform, like Leahy. More forcefully, referring to “this sort of Orwellian surveillance,” Bernie Sanders wrote in Time recently:

I voted against the Patriot Act every time, and it still needs major reform….

Let me be clear: We must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack. We can and must do so, however, in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society.

By contrast, former Florida governor Jeb Bush said May 31, “There is no evidence, not a shred of evidence, that the metadata program has violated anybody's civil liberties.” That seems to demonstrate that Bush has no understanding at all of what civil liberties are.

Polls reportedly show that the American people are less afraid of terrorism than at any time since 9/11, although what that really means is imprecise. Apparently it means that the American people are appropriately less fearful of angry Islamists, but remain inappropriately unconcerned about assassin police officers, abortion clinic bombers, campus killers, or armed and angry militias. The fearmongers continue to dominate the lack of conversation in the country, as Glenn Greenwald documents in The Intercept, and it’s bi-partisan:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC – “We have never seen more threats against our nation and its citizens than we do today.”

Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA – “I have never seen a time of greater potential danger than right now and I’ve never said that before.” [Except she sort of has, in 2013]: “I think terror is up worldwide, the statistics indicate that. The fatalities are way up. The numbers are way up. There are new bombs, very big bombs. Trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there….”

There was a time when the US was a country that took its cues from a president who told us that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” What happened to that country?

Now we have a CIA chief who lies to Congress and the American people, but keeps his job. That’s John Brennan, who was peddling fear on CBS recently:

I think terrorist elements have watched very carefully what has happened here in the United States. Whether or not it’s disclosures of classified information or whether it’s changes in the law and policies, they’re looking for the seams to operate within. And this is something that we can’t afford to do right now, because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence that’s being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe.

An FBI official warns ominously of “dark space” where terrorists lurk on the internet. In Boston, a cop-killed suspect has his character assassinated by police reports that he had some connection to ISIS. Fox News promotes the idea that ISIS has recruits in all 50 states. Does anyone mention the sad reality that the best way to reduce terrorist threats in the US is to make the FBI stop organizing plots to entrap people?

Breaking News: Fear is a big winner for the permanent USA Police State.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.