Bernie Sanders' Eye-Popping West Coast Swing: 3 Days, 70,000 Cheering Supporters

[n2doc]

by James Nash


Some 27,000 people descended Monday night on the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, which has hosted acts such as Madonna and Pink Floyd, to hear from a raspy-voiced 73-year-old who has become the 2016 political season's breakout star.

For Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Democrat and self-proclaimed socialist, it was the third staggeringly large crowd in three nights that capped a west coast swing that put his political rivals on notice. From fellow white-haired activists to youth wielding signs depicting him as "Bernie Man," his head grafted onto a stick figure representing the counterculture Burning Man festival in Nevada, his fans turned out in numbers that other candidates might only dream of at this early stage in the race.

The crowd packed the Los Angeles arena and spilled into an overflow area outside, where people cheered under the palm trees as Sanders spoke for an hour, denouncing income inequality and money in politics and supporting gay marriage and abortion rights and free tuition at public universities.

"This is a bigger buildup, a bigger grassroots thing than Howard Dean," said Allen Peters, a 73-year-old doctor wearing a T-shirt from the failed 2004 Democratic presidential candidate from Vermont, also a darling among liberals. "Bernie Sanders is in a better place than Howard Dean was at this time. We always have to worry that Hillary and her bank buddies will knock him down."

Sanders himself did not mention former Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton or any Republican candidates during his speech, which drew sustained and rapturous applause and cheers when he voiced support for universal health care, legal rights for undocumented immigrants and higher minimum wages. He repeated his call for a "grassroots political revolution" that would upend the economic system, which he said is rigged to benefit the elite.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-11/bernie-sanders-eye-popping-west-coast-swing-3-days-70-000-cheering-supporters

[LiberalElite]

1. I posted this bloomberg link in LBN and it could use some Sandersista attention nt

It's gonna sink even in DU...

[n2doc]

2. It's on the greatest page

Seems like that is good, right?

[ladjf]

3. Could it be true that after forty years of deteriorating political ideology, the American people

,en mass, are waking up to what has been happening to them and are worried enough about it to actually support a candidate who has the intellect, talent and courage to lead us in the long climb out of the oligarchical morass that has been stealing from us?

Let's go America. Let's band together and fight like hell for our rights.

[Pastiche423]

4. I believe many Americans are waking up

On the way back south from the Portland rally, my friends and I stopped frequently. At every stop people that saw our t-shirts and buttons asked us question after question about Bernie.

The number one question was.... "Why don't we see him on tv?"

[ladjf]

5. That's good. It's all about the percentages now.

Step one is for Bernie to win the primary.

Although I prefer Bernie, Mrs. Clinton is a far better choice than any of the Republican clowns, including Trump.