[M]ANCHESTER, N.H. — Reporters covering Monday’s New Hampshire AFL-CIO Labor Day breakfast stood hungry with questions for the morning’s keynote speaker, who arrived in the first-in-the-nation-primary Granite State with plenty of 2020 presidential buzz.
“He would start with a leg up,” The Atlantic had just posted on its website, “a nationally tested organization with the hardened experience of one presidential run already under its belt, an email list of 7 million proven donors, and the ability to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.”
That said, Vermont U.S. senator Bernie Sanders, walking past steaming plates of pancakes, eggs and bacon, didn’t serve up any answers.
“We are living in a pivotal moment in American history,” he told a crowd of 400 union workers. “We have a president, and I say this with no joy in my heart, who is a pathological liar. We have a president who works night and day on behalf of his fellow billionaires. And most reprehensible, we have a president who is not doing what almost every president in American history has done — when you make it into the Oval Office, you understand you have a sacred responsibility to bring the American people together.”
So does that mean Sanders is set to challenge President Donald Trump in the next election?
The Vermonter didn’t pause even a moment for the press inquiry.
The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate has made news this summer for neither confirming nor denying speculation he’s considering a second bid for the party’s nomination.
“Sanders advisers and allies believe he’s earned the right of first refusal: He was the runner-up to (Hillary) Clinton, galvanized a fresh flock of young voters, and fundamentally reframed the issue matrix for a hyper-progressive party going forward,” The Atlantic is reporting on its website. “A common refrain bandied about in Bernieland is that Sanders won at least 40 percent of the primary vote in 37 states.”
But at three public events Monday in New Hampshire and Vermont, Sanders echoed what he recently told “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert: “My focus right now is on 2018.”
The U.S. senator started at Manchester, N.H.’s Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral social hall, where he was joined by Granite State colleagues Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, and his son Levi Sanders, one of nearly a dozen Democrats running for New Hampshire’s other congressional seat in a Sept. 11 primary.
“There is no more passionate advocate in Washington for working families than Bernie Sanders,” Shaheen told the crowd.
Sanders, seemingly proving that by shouting to the point he was losing his voice, called for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and repeated his recent attacks on Amazon.com founder Jeffrey Bezos, who the senator said was the richest man in the world in part because he paid salaries so low employees must apply for federal assistance such as food stamps and Medicaid.
“Today we say to Bezos, today we say to the owners of Walmart, the Walton family, today we say to the billionaires who own large multinational corporations, we are not going to subsidize you anymore.”
Sanders also sparked a Politico.com report at the breakfast by criticizing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on the eve of Senate confirmation hearings, set to begin Tuesday.
“I have no doubt that if he is selected, put into the Supreme Court, the nominee will be an anti-worker justice,” Sanders said. “He will also be an anti-woman justice. We should call him out.”
Although many reporters speculated on Sanders’ 2020 plans in light of his New Hampshire appearance, aide Arianna Jones said there wasn’t necessarily a connection, as he has attended the Labor Day breakfast for five straight years.
“He’s been coming to this stop forever,” said Jones, who served as the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate’s deputy communications director, “and will do so to the end of time.”
Sanders moved on to the Vermont towns of Middlebury and White River Junction for afternoon rallies in support of his Senate re-election bid. Asked about a fall debate schedule, aides didn’t report anything about that race, either.
