Daily Sanders: Tuesday, August 13th

Media Recap of Sanders 2020 Presidential Campaign

Feminists for Bernie mural, location unknown — leave comment if you know!

The Bernie campaign is heating up online and in the four early primary states. Mainstream media outlets either refuse to report, or can’t even see, Bernie’s growing support. Voters are recognizing that the DNC is useless and Americans are fighting against state fascism on August 13th, 2019.

Election Coverage

From Organizers for Bernie

Corporate Media

Mainstream media is trying to present the Sanders campaign’s visit to Iowa as a failure. Below, we see the New York Times writing about how Bernie went to Iowa to…eat corndogs?

The story doesn’t offer much evidence in support of this. They talk to one voter who said they won’t vote for Sanders in the primary. If you look at pictures from Iowa, it looks like Bernie talked to a lot of people…

Iowa State Fair Rally from @BreatheNewWinds

CNN and Washington Post team up to deny Sanders claim that the Washington Post publishes more critical and unfair stories about Sanders than any other paper simply because Jeff Bezos owns it. This story deserves its own article, so follow to see that.

Polls

Common Dreams reports that a new poll from Survey USA makes this the 15th Poll showing Bernie beating Trump in the general election.

While a poll from Political Polls shows Bernie as the top choice in the DNC primary.

Poll from @Political_Polls

Polling data is starting to reflect the trends seen in online interaction numbers and individual donations.

Local coverage

In contrast to costal, pundit-driven publications, local outlets were fair in their Sanders coverage.

After this weekend, Iowa NPR wrote up his speech, and Bernie thanked The Des Moines Register for inviting him to speak at their event.

In this morning’s townhall in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders addressed health care, renewable energy, universal background checks, canceling student debt and Trump’s hateful rhetoric at town hall. Local TV station WMUR9 presents an even handed story about the event relying on footage of Bernie’s speech.

MLive, a local outlet across Michigan, covered a call with Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver discussing how the campaign is pivoting to health care.

Again, we see local coverage of Bernie fairer, better focused and much more nuanced. The coastal pundits seem to have a hard time accepting Bernie, but working class reporters at affiliate stations do not.

News Cycle

These are the stories that caught our attention outside of campaign coverage.

Voters Are Losing Faith in the DNC

The Kochs Funded A Third Way Report to Push Free Trade to Centrist Democrats

The Intercept reports that the same billionaire family who funded the Tea Party is also funding reports for centrist Democrats.

Third Way Democrats funded by the Koch Brothers just like the Tea Party

Ryan Grim reports,

According to the new book “Kochland,” written by investigative reporter Christopher Leonard, Koch Industries secretly financed a report by Third Way, a corporate-funded think tank with ties to the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. The report, titled “Why Lou Dobbs is Winning” and published in November 2007, was written to promote the free trade agenda to liberals. The white paper explained it would be the first salvo in a yearlong effort to reshape the messaging around trade policy, warning that “a new and powerful populist strain has emerged on both the left and the right of American politics that threatens to turn the nation fearful and inward.”

Young Voters are losing faith in the DNC

Is it any surprise that young voters are losing their hope in the DNC? The Washington Post reports that young voters are a key demographic to the Democrats winning the election, but many feel disillusioned about voting for a centrist candidate.

WaPo report,

But interviews with nearly 50 left-leaning young people in four battleground states — Texas, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan — reveal a deep skepticism toward party politics, and the Democratic Party. Young voters say Democrats haven’t proved they can address the major challenges faced by millennials and Gen Z. They want candidates who take them seriously — and who can offer up the detailed policy plans to prove it.

It’s only interviewing 50 young voters, but you wouldn’t have to talk to many people, young or old, who feel this way. As we see in the next story…

Why do so many working class Americans feel politics is pointless?

Salon interviews Jennifer Silva about her new book, Coming Up Short.

They explain how most working class people don’t vote…

SALON: You interviewed 108 people and only 37 of them actually voted, with 26 voting for Trump. Of the 41 black or Latino people you spoke with, only four voted. So to me, one of the major stories wasn’t necessarily support for Trump. It was a refusal to participate in politics altogether. SILVA: Two-thirds of the sample were nonvoters. They knew the election was happening but they just viewed political participation as pointless. They thought of it as a joke. And they said, “Look at what’s happened in my lifetime, it doesn’t really matter who’s been president.”

It’s hard to argue with working class voters that the president won’t do anything for them in most administrations in American history.

Farmers Hit Back as USDA Chief Sonny Perdue Mocks Those Harmed by Trump Trade War as ‘Whiners’

Common Dreams reports how Trump mocks farmers as their entire livelihoods are destroyed by his disasterous trade policy — but would the trade policy be any different under a Centrist Democrat? As we saw in our first story, the Koch Brothers don’t seem to think so.

Americans Stand Against ICE and State Sanctioned Fascism

As the Trump administration persecutes immigrants, Americans stand up and fight against state-sanctioned fascism.

Over 40 Arrested as Jewish Activists and Allies Confront Amazon for Profiting Off ICE Terror

Over 1000 protesters went to an Amazon bookstore this weekend to protest and police arrested 40 of them (including Jewish political cartoonist, Eli Valley). The protesters wanted to draw attention to Palantir Technologies, a company Peter Thiel owns and uses to create surveillance and transportation management systems for ICE.

Border Patrol Arrest Reports Are Full of Lies That Can Sabotage Asylum Claims

The Intercept reports that ICE falsifies boarder interviews to justify mistreating migrants. For example, they’ll ask if the person fears harm in returning home (making it impossible to receive refugee status).

Embedded in their story is this falsified form; the highlighted information is false.

We see ICE guards lying about migrants refugee status, their family ties and the illegal status.

ProPublica Interviews The Attorney Who Saw Firsthand How Falsified Reports Hurt Migrants

ProPublica reports,

“There has to be a mistake,” Carlos insisted that December day from behind the scratched plexiglass wall in the visitor’s room at the jail. “Please help me.” Looking at him, Peña wanted to help. But the system she’d once known, as flawed as it was, had turned into a black box she no longer understood, with an ever-shifting array of rules and policies that granted untold discretion to the government. She couldn’t even get ICE attorneys to comply with a fundamental tenet of a fair system: providing proof of their case, evidence they could fight against.”

We see a culture of abuse with ICE agents, making it deliberately hard for migrants to safely immigrate to the United States. This rising tide of state-sanctioned violence is directly targeted toward vulnerable, no-income, poor populations. Historians will define this as ethnically motivated violence.

Campaign Tracker

From Organizers for Bernie

The campaign launches ‘My Bernie Story’ and trends on Twitter Internet news vertical, Heavy, wrote an informative story about why the public launch of the BERN app is driving #MyBernieStory to trend on Twitter.

The app encourages users to record videos and write posts with the hashtag. As of this posting, the Free Social Search app records 138,600 uses of the hashtag.

The campaign plans events in all four early primary states this weekToday the campaign is in New Hampshire. Bernie spoke at a Breakfast Townhall and an Ice Cream Social in Littleton.

There are no publically posted events for Wednesday and Thursday.

Bernie is on the ground in California this weekend doing 5 Barnstormers in 3 days. at a Barnstorm in Highland Park on Friday, another Barnstormer in South LA on Saturday, another one, south in Petaluma, CA. Back near LA in Montebello on Sunday then flying to San Francisco for a Barnstormer that Sunday evening.

Sharable schedule of Bernie’s Barnstorms

Senator Nina Turner is holding round tables in Charleston, South Carolina on Friday, starting with a Millennial Roundtable, a volunteer appreciation drop-in, a roundtable on hate crimes, and a block party. Activists Shaun King and Phillip Agnew will speak at these round tables.

After that, the campaign returns to Iowa for the Field of Dreams Press and Staff Softball Game.

The campaign is hitting all four early primary states in one week, about half a year away from the primaries, then Bernie’s going to go play baseball. If you’re in these states, go see Bernie, and if you’re not in these states, get online and start volunteering!

The Daily Sanders is a hopefully-daily media recap of Sanders campaign coverage. If you like these posts, go donate a dollar to the Sanders 2020 campaign.