Sanders Aims To ‘Radically Transform’ Democratic Party

Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who was independent, ran for president as a Democrat and then switched back to independent.

Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez arrive at the State Theatre tonight, David Bright would be there.

But now, a year after that bitter primary, Sanders and his team are now working closely with the newly-elected party chair, allowing him and other local Democrats to appear before crowds that only he can draw – and deciding on the look and feel of events around the country. In November, Trump won 118 of Kentucky’s 120 counties, including Elliott County, which had never voted for a Republican presidential candidate in its 147-year history.

Sanders earned almost two-thirds of the ballots cast in Maine’s Democratic presidential caucuses to beat Hillary Clinton.

But it had the opposite effect for Torp, who has changed her party registration from Democratic to independent. So I think a big part of this tour is Perez kind of gritting his teeth and taking advantage of Sanders’ star power to have a chance to also speak his case to these skeptical progressive voters.

During his speech, Perez impersonated Trump, mocking the president’s about-face on labeling China a currency manipulator, and slipped in colorful language to hammer Republicans on their failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. “We were monitoring the election very closely with the state party”.

On their first stop in Portland, Maine, the crowd was clearly feeling the Bern, and not so much the Perez. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to arrive at a rally for Omaha Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello, Thursday, April 20, 2017, in Omaha, Neb. But what worries Sanders, and what worries the French left, is that even a victory of a neoliberal candidate over a right-wing populist will allow populism to grow on the right while the left is boxed out. It’s not exactly clear why Sanders is there ― as he said in an MSNBC interview, he’s not a Democrat ― but presumably because Elizabeth Warren is on her own book tour and nobody knows who Chuck Schumer is, Bernie’s out on the road.

It takes more than being a younger Democrat for a candidate to gain Sanders’ support. She supported Sanders in last year’s primary.

“We’ve talked a lot about the need to compete everywhere, and when we talked about a 57-state-and-territory strategy, we meant it”, Perez said.

That Perez and Sanders would diverge on these questions is not surprising.

Some Democrats say Sanders is headed in the right direction, but must do more.

Over the last few days, Sanders’s has at times offered some odd comments for a guy pushing for Democratic unity.

Perez, who has criticized Democrats for the same sins, took more shots at the Trump presidency. When asked if the DNC backs “Medicare for all”, Perez said his party believes “healthcare is a right, not a privilege”. Sanders’s popularity continues to be a thorn in the Democratic establishment’s side, and turning him into an asset has proven a hard balancing act. “You’ve got some billionaires coming in who think it is OK to push out tenants, to push out small business people who have been there decades in order to build fancy condominiums”.

“We invested in the following ways: When people were out there knocking on doors, they were using the DNC’s voter file”, he said. “People might see their mistakes in not supporting him last time”, the community college student said.