(Editor’s note: “Bernie Briefing” is a weekly campaign-season look at how Vermont U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is playing in the national media.)
[B]ernie Sanders surprised political pundits in Michigan. Might he soon do the same in Ohio and Missouri?
That’s the premise of the New York magazine story “There Are at Least Two March 15 Primaries Where a Big Sanders Upset Can’t Be Ruled Out,” which comes in response to the Vermont senator besting Hillary Clinton last week in the Wolverine State.
“As smart people stare at the numbers,” New York reporter Ed Kilgore writes, “we’re getting a picture of the Michigan upset that suggests some reason to wonder about Clinton’s polling margin in some states, but not necessarily in others.”
Voters will cast ballots Tuesday in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio.
“Recognizing that the polling numbers can change in the days left before these states vote, it’s still logical to stipulate that Clinton’s leads in Florida and Illinois are probably large enough that even a once-in-a-lifetime polling error like that which occurred in Michigan isn’t going to obliterate it,” Kilgore writes. “The other states are within the political earthquake zone, in theory at least.”
On Sunday, Sanders appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’ “Face the Nation” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” where he faced questions not only about the coming contests but also about a Donald Trump campaign rally that was canceled Friday after protesters clashed with participants.
The Republican, blaming the Vermonter’s campaign, took to Twitter to announce: “Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disrupters aren’t told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!”
In response, Sanders told CNN: “This man cannot stop lying about anything. To talk about our organization, our campaign disrupting his meeting is a lie. His language, his intonations … he talks about carrying people out on stretchers. … You see at his rallies people sucker-punch folks, kick people when they’re down. This is a man who keeps implying violence, and then you end up getting what you see.”
In other news:
— In its story “It’s not over til it’s over: Inside the Sanders campaign’s do-or-die moment,” London’s Guardian reports how the Sanders campaign is tapping volunteers and technology.
“The weekend before the 2012 election, the Obama campaign juggernaut announced its paid staff of 4,000 had delivered over 125 million phone calls and door-knocks during the campaign,” writer Paul Hilder notes. “Bernie’s volunteer-powered movement has thus far made 30 million phone calls in a fraction of the time.”
— In an interview for Politico’s “Off Message” podcast, Sanders strategist Tad Devine doesn’t dismiss speculation about Clinton, if victorious, choosing Sanders as her vice presidential running mate.
They haven’t talked about the possibility, says Devine, telling Politico’s Glenn Thrush that Sanders wouldn’t consider it “unless you know, it was done in the right and proper way.”
— In “How to Take on Bernie Sanders in a Debate: Advice From an Old (Defeated) Rival,” 2006 Vermont Republican Senate candidate Richard Tarrant tells Politico that his onetime opponent is “a brilliant politician.” (That said, the software entrepreneur now living in Florida is voting for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.)
— In “Donors to Bernie: Never surrender,” the candidate’s wealthiest contributors (those who’ve hit the $2,700 primary limit) tell Politico they’re concerned less with delegates and more with their candidate’s ability to reshape the Democratic Party agenda.
“Clearly the mood of the country for Republicans, Democrats and Independents is anti-the-Washington establishment,” Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, tells Politico reporter Daniel Strauss.
Adds colleague Jerry Greenfield: “I would like to see Bernie find a better way to have his commitment to African-Americans and people of color — his long-standing commitment — to have a better way to communicate that and have it be better understood.”
— In “‘Excuse me!’ Bernie Sanders doesn’t know how to talk about black people,” Washington Post editorial board member Jonathan Capehart opines on the candidate’s “glaring inability to talk about African-Americans beyond criminal justice reform and income inequality” — and whether his home state might be part of the problem.
“He is a Socialist (or Democratic Socialist, as he prefers) from a state where blacks make up 1.2 percent of the population in Vermont,” Capehart writes. “This might explain his shallow knowledge of African Americans compared to Clinton and his over-reliance on the hope that his messages on income inequality and criminal justice reform will trickle down from their heads to their hearts.”
— And finally, in “Sanders had big ideas but little impact on Capitol Hill,” Politico reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere interviews Democrats who’ve worked with the Vermont senator to come up with a summary of his congressional career: “The essence of his Capitol Hill style: more influential than his detractors often give him credit for, more of an inside player than his supporters tend to admit or than he likes to project, though often less consequential in others’ telling of events than in his own.”
