Why Bernie Sanders thinks he can win California this time

Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t conceding California in the Democratic presidential primary race to home state Sen. Kamala Harris. Far from it. Top Sanders campaign officials say he’s planning to have field offices and run commercials across the nation’s most populous state.

“We’re going to have a robust campaign in California.” said Ben Tulchin, Sanders’ San Francisco-based pollster, adding that “Bernie is extremely well-positioned” in California. “It will be a well-funded media and field campaign.”

A lot has changed in Sanders’ world since his 2016 presidential campaign, when he lost the California primary — and the Democratic nomination — to Hillary Clinton. The Vermont independent wasn’t well known then outside his home territory, so his campaign was largely focused on introducing him to voters, particularly in Latino and African American communities.

Now, Sanders is topping most polls among the “announced candidates” — as in, not including former Vice President Joe Biden or former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke. Roughly half his support comes from Latinos and African Americans, some surveys suggest. Sanders’ favorability rating among Latino voters is 59 percent, according to a recent poll — higher than the rest of the announced field.

That has Sanders’ campaign predicting he will do well in the early states with large numbers of Latinos, including California and Nevada. If Sanders can corral Millennial and independent voters as he did in 2016, “we think that’s a winning coalition in California and beyond,” Tulchin said.

Combine that with the $10 million that Sanders raised in the week after he announced his 2020 campaign, and his top operatives feel they’re in a much better position than last time to compete in big states like California.

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Bernie Sanders heads back to North Charleston on Thursday

Bernie Sanders will make his second North Charleston stop of the 2020 campaign season this week.

On Thurs. March 14, the 77-year-old senator from Vermont will hold a rally at the Royal Family Life Center in North Charleston at 7 p.m. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and you can RSVP here.

In January, Sanders gave a 20-minute speech to a packed banquet hall at Royal Missionary Baptist Church (4750 Abraham St.) in North Charleston, four weeks before he officially announced his run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination during an interview with Vermont Public Radio on Feb. 19.

South Carolina has been swarmed with Democratic hopefuls looking to wrest the White House back from President Donald Trump, whose latest job approval numbers sit at 43 percent, according to Gallup.

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“No single candidate can take on Donald Trump and the billionaire class of this country alone,” Sanders’ campaign said in a press release. “Our campaign is about bringing people together to transform our country and create a government that works for all of us, not just the one percent.”

I'm excited to announce we will be heading back to South Carolina this week as we continue to grow our grassroots campaign. I hope you'll be able to join us Thursday at 7 p.m. in North Charleston. RSVP here if you plan to attend!https://t.co/CVNPLgounk

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 12, 2019

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Bernie Sanders makes his 2020 Iowa debut

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday night returned to Iowa — and the fiery form that characterized his last presidential bid — at his first campaign event since a pair of homecoming rallies last weekend in Brooklyn and Chicago.

“Iowa, you helped begin the ‘political revolution’ in 2016,” Sanders said in Council Bluffs, “and with your help in this campaign, we are going to complete what we started here.”

His three-stop tour of the state, where he came within a whisker of upsetting Hillary Clinton in 2016, will continue Friday in Iowa City before turning back and wrapping up in Des Moines, at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, on Saturday morning.

Sanders has kept in close touch with the first-in-the-nation caucus state since 2016, making appearances in 2017 and most recently, stumping for Democratic candidates a few weeks before the 2018 midterm elections.

Though his 2020 campaign is still in its early stages, Sanders made his Iowa debut this time amid heightened expectations and, perhaps, a more daunting challenge: to distinguish himself in an expansive field of candidates whose messages can bear a striking resemblance to those he preached the last time out — a task that will require both solidifying his devoted base and making inroads where he couldn’t in 2016.

As he did last weekend, Sanders pushed his ambitious agenda, including the expansion of health care to every American, the creation of a universal pre-K system and a hike in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. But the Sanders of 2019 also made a point of touting the gains of the past four years.

“When I first came here to campaign in 2015, the truth is that not a whole lot of people knew who the junior senator from Vermont was,” he said. “At that time nobody took our campaign seriously, and we began that campaign at 3% in the polls — and I thank those 3%. Further, the ideas, the agenda, that we were talking about at that time four years ago was considered by establishment politicians and mainstream media to be ‘radical’ and ‘extreme’ — remember that?”

You can read the transcript of the full speech here.

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