Former Obama senior advisor and Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer said Senator Bernie Sanders is a serious contender to receive the Democratic nomination, after a recent jump in national and early-state polls.

Pfeiffer told Politico that "people should take [Sanders] very seriously." He said that Sanders has very good chances in the states with early primaries and caucuses.

"He has a very good shot of winning Iowa, a very good shot of winning New Hampshire, and other than Joe Biden, the best shot of winning Nevada," said Pfeiffer, noting that these early odds improved Sanders' chances going forward. "He could build a real head of steam heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday," a Tuesday early in the primaries where the most states hold primaries and caucuses. That falls on March 3, 2020, with Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia holding primaries.

Pfeiffer served as a strategy and communications senior advisor to President Barack Obama during the president's second term; he had worked for the Obama-Biden transition team after Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election. Prior to being appointed senior advisor, Pfeiffer served as White House communications director. In June 2018, he published his first book Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump. His next book, Un-Trumping America, will be released in February 2020.

Whether we like it or not, horse race season is upon us, and that means pundits and voters and candidates will increasingly be asking a simple question: Which Democrat has the best chance against Trump? The numbers have fluctuated throughout the primary, but in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, it’s Bernie Sanders who has the best hypothetical numbers against the president:



Sanders and Biden are both +4 in the hypothetical match-up, but it's Sanders who attracts the most voters. It's all within the margin of error still, but these results are good enough to put the lie to the idea that Sanders' ideas somehow make him unelectable. Sanders and Biden both lead Warren, who holds a +2 margin over Trump, While Bloomberg is +1 and Buttigieg (-1) is the only likely nominee who trails Trump.

Speaking at a conference Monday hosted by the liberal-leaning Jewish organization J Street, Sen. Bernie Sanders expressed support for leveraging billions of dollars in annual U.S. military aid to stop Israel's horrific treatment and occupation of the Palestinian people.

"My solution is to say to Israel: You get $3.8 billion every single year. If you want military aid you're going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza," said Sanders, who is vying to become the first Jewish president in U.S. history.

The Vermont senator also took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he said is pursuing a racist and authoritarian agenda.

"It is not anti-Semitism to say that the Netanyahu government has been racist," Sanders said to applause. "That's a fact."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads the field of contenders in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) close behind.

The latest CNN-University of New Hampshire survey finds Sanders at 21 percent, followed by Warren at 18 percent.

Former Vice President Joe Biden comes in third place at 15 percent, followed by South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 10 percent and three candidates — tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) — tied at 5 percent support.

Sanders has the highest favorability rating in the field at 66 percent positive and 23 percent negative. Warren posts a 63-25 split and Biden rings in at 55-30.

New Hampshire voters also view Sanders as most likable, with 27 percent liking him the most, 20 percent saying Biden, 14 percent for Buttigieg and 10 percent for Warren.

• Early 2012: Dr. Katherine Mitchell, a Veterans Affairs emergency-room physician, warns Sharon Helman, incoming director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System, that the Phoenix ER is overwhelmed and dangerous. Mitchell now alleges she was told within days by senior administrators that she had deficient communication skills and was transferred out of the ER.

• Later in 2012: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs orders implementation of electronic wait-time tracking and makes improved patient access a top priority. In December, the Government Accountability Office tells the Veterans Health Administration that its reporting of outpatient medical-appointment wait times is "unreliable."

• March 2013: The GAO's Debra Draper tells a House subcommittee: "Although access to timely medical appointments is critical to ensuring that veterans obtain needed medical care, long wait times and inadequate scheduling processes at VAMCs (medical centers) have been persistent problems."

July 2013: In an e-mail exchange among employees at the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix, an employee questions whether administrators are improperly touting their Wildly Important Goals program. "I think it's unfair to call any of this a success when veterans are waiting six weeks on an electronic waiting list before they're called to schedule their first PCP (primary-care provider) appointment," program analyst Damian Reese complains.

In spite of—or perhaps because of—his aversion to war, Sanders has a long history of committed service to veterans. He became chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee in 2013, and that is how he wound up at the negotiating table with Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida.

They were driven there by scandal. Veterans across the country were waiting months on end for appointments and the wait times were being hidden. Up to 40 veterans in Phoenix died while waiting for appointments. Hundreds never even got onto a list. And retaliation was the order of the day for those who tried to blow the whistle.

From the moment the long-gathering scandal broke into public view in April 2014, it took Congress less than four months to produce a new law—a split second by Capitol Hill standards. That it happened at all, and so fast, was a testament to the determination of Sanders and his partners to surmount the red-blue divide in American politics. It speaks volumes in particular about Sanders, who pushes for a single-payer government health system in every speech, that the law introduced a private-care option for veterans.

Of the 20 Democrats still running for president in 2020, only two -- Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders -- were in a position to vote on authorizing President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq back in 2002.

Sanders, then in the House, voted no. Biden, then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted in favor -- and like other Democrats who voted yes, has spent the years since apologizing for it as the conflict became increasingly unpopular with the American public and Democratic voters.

Biden, the Democratic front-runner, now faces opponents who do not have a voting record on Iraq and a Republican incumbent, Donald Trump, who too initially supported the Iraq war before turning against it, and then increasingly criticized Republican Party orthodoxy about American intervention abroad during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The Iraq issue dogged John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2008, when it contributed to Barack Obama's meteoric rise, and again in 2016, when Sanders and Trump used it as a cudgel against her. Biden, who also ran in 2008, made the same claims that he's making today: He changed his mind about the invasion as soon as it happened.