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In N.H. stop, Sanders says he’ll run for Senate re-election as an independent

Bernie Sanders said he’ll run for re-election next year as an independent candidate.

The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and independent senator from Vermont made the news in an interview with the Monitor on Sunday evening after energizing Democratic activists packed into the American Legion hall in Rollinsford, along the Maine border. Sanders’s trip to the first-in-the-nation primary state was his second in less than two months, sparking more speculation that he just may run again for the White House in 2020.

But before any potential 2020 White House run, the former Burlington, Vt., mayor and congressman must deal with his 2018 re-election for a third term in the U.S. Senate.

“I am an independent, and I have always run in Vermont as an independent, while I caucus with the Democrats in the United States Senate,” Sanders said. “That’s what I’ve been doing for a long time and that’s what I’ll continue to do.”

While running as an independent next year doesn’t prevent Sanders from making another bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, pundits said running as a Democrat in 2018 may have been a signal of his 2020 intentions.

Earlier, Sanders received repeated standing ovations as he headlined a Strafford County Democratic Committee fundraising dinner.

Sanders to run as an independent in 2018

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has confirmed that he will run for re-election in the Senate as an independent in 2018, despite recent pressure from some Democrats to join the party.

Sanders told Fox News of his decision to hold onto his independent status during an interview Sunday night.

“I am an independent and I have always run in Vermont as an independent, while I caucus with the Democrats in the United States Senate. That’s what I’ve been doing for a long time and that’s what I’ll continue to do,” Sanders told Fox News.
Sanders had been facing pressure from some Democrats to officially run as a member of the Democratic party. Sanders caucuses with Democrats in the Senate.

One Democratic National Committee (DNC) member, Bob Mulholland, had introduced a resolution at the party’s fall meeting that would have demanded Sanders and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) run as Democrats in the future.

However, the resolution failed, falling short of the simple majority it needed to pass.

Bernie Sanders is coming to rally with candidates in Somerville and Cambridge

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is planning to rally with candidates running for city council, school board and the board of aldermen in Somerville and Cambridge.

Monday’s visit is meant to highlight candidates running in elections nationwide in November who have been endorsed by Our Revolution, an offshoot of Sanders’ unsuccessful presidential campaign.

Our Revolution Somerville member Rand Wilson says the group has been organizing for months to continue the revolution started by the Sanders’ campaign by focusing on more local political contests.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont, will be campaigning with 17 candidates endorsed by Our Revolution Somerville and Our Revolution Cambridge.

This is a shame as he was one of my favorite candidates to keep an eye on:

Paul Perry Drops Out of Primary in Pennsylvania Race

Democrat Paul Perry is dropping out of the crowded primary against Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Pat Meehan, even after garnering attention for a campaign video highlighting his personal story.

Perry had a background in education and worked for a nonprofit supporting children of LGBT parents. Perry was raised by gay fathers, both veterans (in his campaign video, Perry joked, “I had gay parents before it was cool”).

In a statement about his decision shared first with Roll Call, Perry said he was discouraged by the fundraising demands of a congressional campaign.

“As I depart this race, I leave with grave questions about the sustainability of our democracy,” Perry said. “It is awash in money and influence-peddling on both sides of the aisle. The barriers to entry for everyday citizens (most of the middle class) and true public servants are far too high.”
In the most recent fundraising quarter, Perry raised the third highest amount of money in the field of seven Democrats, raking in $62,000.

But that paled in comparison to state Sen. Daylin Leach, who raised $403,000. Dan Muroff, who worked as a House chief of staff and a Philadelphia Democratic ward leader, raised nearly $117,000. Muroff ended the quarter with $20,000 more in cash on hand than Leach.

Perry had the backing of New Politics, a bipartisan group that supports candidates with public service backgrounds, and Brand New Congress, a group formed by former campaign staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

DNC creates new restrictions for corporate donations

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Saturday passed a resolution banning donations from corporate contributors whose areas of interest come into conflict with the DNC’s stated values.

The resolution, which was introduced by California member Christine Pelosi, passed unanimously. Pelosi is the daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Pelosi has introduced similar resolutions before that were shot down over concerns over which industries the measures would target.

The move was celebrated on Twitter by progressive members of the Democratic Party who have been pushing to reduce corporate influence in the party.
An online petition started by Pelosi indicates that the resolution was designed to target “gun, tobacco, payday lender, and other corporate donations counter to our values.”

“Thnx Pelosi for taking a stand. Admire that you have always been for eliminating these positions of cronyism,” wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on Twitter.

The resolution’s strength in the DNC is unclear. Hours after the resolution passed, Pelosi warned that DNC officials were whispering that the vote is not legally binding, allowing DNC Chair Tom Perez to ignore it. Pelosi issued a call on her Twitter account, challenging Perez to uphold the vote of DNC members.

If anyone is sitting around waiting on ideas from centrists… they will be waiting quite a while.
Centrist Democrats’ biggest dilemma: Where are the big ideas?

Moderate Democrats are increasingly wary of their party’s ascendant liberal wing, which has grown louder and more influential since Donald Trump’s election.

But in at least one key way, Democratic centrists say they’d benefit from imitating their progressive counterparts: Coming up with — and then relentlessly promoting — big policy ideas.

In a party desperate to find its way back to power after last year’s electoral wipeout, economic populists in the mold of Bernie Sanders have thus far dominated the conversation, using far-reaching plans such as single-payer health care or tuition-free college to pull the Democrats’ center of gravity to the left.

Their agenda has drawn pushback, but leaders of the centrist Democratic faction say mere objections aren’t enough —they need their own marquee proposals to truly compete for the party’s heart and soul.

“There are a lot of really big ideas and changes, and there need to be more,” said Will Marshall, who runs the new centrist Democratic group New Democracy. “We’re not at the end of this quest. We’re embarking on it.”

Centrist Democrats generally differ rhetorically from their liberal counterparts in their focus on economic opportunity instead of economic inequality, on working with business instead of expanding government programs. But the rhetoric, party strategists say, has to be buffeted by serious, attractive proposals that can win converts and drive conversations.

“You gotta have a bunch of big ideas that support your vision,” said Matt Bennett, senior vice president at the centrist Democratic group Third Way. “It’s not enough to say, ‘We’ve gotta tackle opportunity.’ We’ve gotta have ideas to do that.”

This fight isn’t over James J Zogby

Having come through a difficult 2016 primary campaign and a hotly contested 2017 race for party chair, what Democrats desperately need is to unify their ranks to confront the challenges they will face in the 2018 mid-term elections and beyond. What happened over the last three days of Democratic National Committee (DNC) meetings not only didn’t contribute to unity, it added to our division. It hasn’t been an easy three days.

There were a few personal setbacks. The new chair removed me and a few other colleagues from the party’s executive committee. What we all had in common was that, earlier this year, we had been supporters of the losing candidate in the contest for chair. To make matters worse, someone started an ugly rumour that attempted to implicate me and two of my close associates from the Sanders’ campaign in an effort to challenge the presence of three prominent African American women who had just been nominated to serve on the DNC.

Both the removals and the rumours were not only wrong and hurtful, they were political blunders in that they deepened divisions and became negative news stories that cast a pall over the proceedings.

Despite the upbeat tone of the speeches delivered by party leaders at public sessions, the reality is that Democrats face serious problems. Over the past nine years, we’ve lost more than 1,000 state legislative seats, 12 governorships, and nine seats in the Senate and 62 in the House, resulting in our loss of control of both houses of Congress.

As a first step to secure unity, Democrats must make a determined effort to engage supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Dismissing or ignoring this imperative can be fatal. The two camps are real and the wounds left from the 2016 contest are still open sores. The charge made by Clinton during her recent book tour that Sanders cost her the election only served to fan the fires of division.