Following the money
by Tom Sullivan
Sen. Bernie Sanders just solved our get-out-the-vote problem here for 2016. At least for next year's primary. In this very blue town, Dennis Kucinich handily won the county's presidential primary over North Carolina's John Edwards in 2004. Democratic insiders were mortified. Sanders entering the 2016 presidential race this week will goose our turnout for sure.
Clinton's Twitter feed welcomed Sanders to the race on Thursday:
I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America's middle class. GOP would hold them back. I welcome him to the race. –H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 30, 2015I'd have thought he would have to change his registration, but Steve Benen thinks not:
There is one nagging issue, though, that’s likely to come up in the coming months: Sanders is running in a Democratic primary despite not being an actual Democrat. In the Senate, the Vermonter caucuses with Dems, but is officially an independent. That remains true today – Sanders’ office has made it quite clear that, despite his bid for national office, the senator has not changed his party affiliation, is still not a Democrat, and remains a proud independent.
Indeed, Sanders has never been a Democrat – as the multi-term mayor of Burlington, he was a member of a small, state-based party, and as a multi-term U.S. House member, Sanders was a member of Vermont’s Progressive Party. (In recent years, the state Democratic Party has had no interest in running candidates against Sanders, so Dems formally nominate Sanders as their Senate candidate, and he then declines that nomination.)
As a procedural matter, there’s no rule that says only Democrats can seek the Democratic nomination, but as a practical matter, it may add an additional challenge for Sanders while appealing to Democratic diehards.
Sanders might still have trouble getting on the ballot in some states.
Comparisons between Sanders and Hillary Clinton are already surfacing that will put some heat on Clinton's candidacy. Not to put a fine point on it, somebody online combined these screen grabs from OpenSecrets.org:
As CNN reported on Thursday:
The Vermont senator who entered the 2016 race for the White House on Thursday told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in his first interview as a candidate that he'll instead look to small-dollar individual donors.
And he lambasted the growing influence that major donors like Charles and David Koch on the right and Tom Steyer on the left now have on the political process.
"Frankly, it is vulgar to me that we're having a war of billionaires," Sanders said.
Asked whether he would bless a wealthy donor's support for a pro-Sanders Super PAC, he said: "No."
Sanders' donations history, if not his policies, will set him clearly apart from Clinton, but as the graphic illustrates, in terms of raw numbers he might not want to get into a "his pacs - her pacs" debate.