MARCH 6, 2020
LUCY WARNER
NEWS BLOG PROGRESSIVE OPINION DAILY
NEWS AND VIEWS
PAUL KRUGMAN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES POINTS OUT IN THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE THE RISK THAT SANDERS IS RUNNING IN HIS REFUSAL TO COMPROMISE, BUT ALSO SEES THE SEEMING WEAKNESS OF CORPORATE DEMOCRATS, SPECIFICALLY JOE BIDEN.
CLEARLY HE “GETS IT,” THAT WHAT SANDERS IS DOING IS MUCH BIGGER THAN JUST
BEATING DONALD TRUMP THIS YEAR OR ANY YEAR. HE IS GOING FOR THE HAMSTRING OF
THE 1% JUST LIKE HE SAID HE WOULD. HE WARNS OF THE DANGERS OF THAT, BUT DOES NOT CRITICIZE THE GOAL. THAT'S INTERESTING.
IF ELIZABETH
WARREN SHOULD PERHAPS, PERHAPS, ENDORSE BERNIE RATHER THAN BIDEN, I THINK THERE
WILL BE AT LEAST A SECOND WIND IN SANDERS’ FUTURE. I PERSONALLY DON’T KNOW IF
THE SUPER POLISHED CLASS WILL SUPPORT SANDERS, BECAUSE POLISHED HE ISN'T, UNLESS THEY ARE AS MOVED BY
POLICY MATTERS AND THE HUMAN CONDITION AS SANDERS HIMSELF IS. ONE PROBLEM WE
HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY IS THAT PEOPLE ARE OFTEN PRETTY WISHY WASHY, SLOW TO COME
TO A CONCLUSION, UNWILLING TO FIGHT FOR SOMEONE THEY DON’T KNOW, AND FEARFUL OF
A COURAGEOUS STANCE LIKE REALLY TAKING ON OUR OLIGARCHS. IT'S AN UNDERSTANDABLE FEAR, BUT IF WE DON'T DO IT THIS NATION WILL ALL TOO QUICKLY CEASE TO BE "THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE." WE WILL BE THE HUDDLING MASSES YEARNING TO BE FREE, AND WHERE CAN WE GO TO FIND A BETTER LIFE?
Bernie Sanders
Is Going for Broke
Is maximalism
the best political strategy?
Paul Krugman
By Paul Krugman,
Opinion Columnist
March 5, 2020
PHOTOGRAPH -- President
Obama and Bernie Sanders at the White House in June 2016.Credit...Zach Gibson
for The New York Times
Few political
movements have experienced as quick and dramatic a fall from grace as what
happened to the Sanders campaign between the Nevada caucuses and Super Tuesday.
Over the course of 10 days Bernie Sanders went from the presumptive Democratic
nominee to a very long shot.
In fact, things
have gotten so bad that Sanders is running an ad that attempts to portray him
as best buddies with former President Barack Obama.
Fact checkers
have pointed out that the ad is deeply misleading. It jumbles together things
Obama said over the course of a decade and leaves out important context.
But a
frame-by-frame analysis actually understates how disingenuous it is for Sanders
to try to tie himself to Obama. For Sandersism, as a philosophy, is all about
rejecting Obamaism. That is, it’s about refusing to accept incremental,
half-a-loaf-is-better-than-none politics and demanding go-for-broke maximalism
instead.
The thing is,
there is a case for the Sanders critique of Obama. But Sanders should own that
critique, not pretend that he never made it.
PAUL KRUGMAN’S
NEWSLETTER Get a better understanding of the economy — and an even deeper look
at what’s on Paul’s mind. Sign up here.
So what is this
debate about? It’s not about values, although Sanders and those around him have
a bad habit of suggesting that anyone who questions their political strategy
is a corrupt tool of the oligarchy. Obama was, and Joe Biden is, clearly in
favor of progressive goals such as universal health coverage and reduced
income inequality.
But Obama
pursued those goals via incremental changes. Obamacare was designed to
expand health coverage while doing as little as possible to disrupt the lives
of people who already had health insurance. Obama raised taxes on the
wealthy more than most people realize — by 2016 the average federal tax rate on
the 1 percent was almost as high as it was pre-Reagan — but he did so
quietly, without much populist rhetoric. [LW: FOR THE SOURCE OF AUTHOR’S STATED
TAX RATES, SEE -- https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-07/55413-CBO-distribution-of-household-income-2016.pdf.]
In the Sanders
view, this incremental, low-key approach reflected a failure of nerve (or perhaps
corruption by the “establishment”). Obama should have gone the whole
way and (somehow) enacted Medicare for All. He should have made a frontal
assault on inequality, with much bigger tax hikes for “millionaires and
billionaires.”
And to be
fair, I actually agree that Obama was much too cautious on some fronts.
Back in 2009 I was very publicly tearing my hair out over the obvious inadequacy
of Obama’s economic stimulus, which I predicted (correctly) would be a
political disaster, because the failure to achieve dramatic results
would play into Republican hands. And I believe that Obama could have gotten
much more if he had been willing to use reconciliation to bypass the filibuster,
the way Republicans did in ramming through the 2017 tax cut.
I was also very
unhappy, in real time, when Obama began echoing Republican arguments for
fiscal austerity despite continuing high unemployment.
And I still
believe that Obama could and should have taken a couple of big banks into
temporary receivership as the price of being bailed out. Obama definitely showed
too much respect for the bankers who got us into the financial crisis in
the first place.
But Sanders
isn’t making a selective case, arguing that Obama should have been more
aggressive on some fronts. He’s arguing for a maximalist agenda on all
fronts: complete elimination of private health insurance and a vast expansion
of government programs that would require major tax increases on the middle
class as well as the wealthy.
The political
theory behind this maximalism is an assertion that a bold populist program
would transform the electoral landscape, winning over white working-class
voters and bringing a surge of new voters, all of this on a scale sufficient
both to win a smashing victory in November and to intimidate centrist members
of Congress into accepting radical proposals.
There is,
unfortunately, no evidence to support this political theory; in particular,
the promised surge in young voters failed to materialize on Super Tuesday.
So Sandersism is looking more than a bit like Green Lanternism — a belief
that political miracles can be achieved by sheer force of will.
Of course, many
Sanders supporters will claim that I’m only saying this because I’m in the
pay of billionaires, or something.
In any case, we
need to be clear about the nature of the argument in what remains of the
Democratic primary contest. Again, it’s not about values: Democrats as a
group have become far more progressive than they were, and even a “centrist”
like Biden is advocating policies, like a major expansion of Obamacare,
that would have been considered pretty far left not long ago.
That said, I do
worry that if Biden becomes president he will compromise too easily;
progressives will have to hold his feet to the fire, and make sure that
incrementalism doesn’t turn into pre-emptive surrender.
Sanders,
however, despite his last-minute attempts to link himself to Obama, is
committed to a strategy of maximalism, without compromise. I understand that
strategy’s emotional appeal, especially to his young supporters. But
everything we know suggests that a progressive who insists on going for broke
will end up, well, broke.
The Times is
committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear
what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And
here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New
York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Paul Krugman has been an
Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished Professor at the City
University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize
in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic
geography. @PaulKrugman
A version of
this article appears in print on March 6, 2020, Section A, Page 23 of the New
York edition with the headline: Sanders Is Going For Broke. Order Reprints |
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READ 1929
COMMENTS
A TACITLY
THREATENING ACTION AGAINST BERNIE SANDERS OCCURRED AT YESTERDAY’S RALLY IN PHOENIX,
AZ. A LARGE SWASTIKA FLAG WAS UNFURLED FOR 30 SECONDS OR SO BEFORE MEMBERS OF
THE CROWD TORE IT FROM THE ANTI-SANDERS PROTESTOR’S HANDS AND SECURITY MARCHED HIM
OUT OF THE BUILDING. WAS HE ARRESTED? PROBABLY NOT. SANDERS SAID THAT HE DIDN’T
SEE IT, BUT THAT IT IS “BEYOND DISGUSTING.” HE SAID THAT HE DOES NOT
FEEL “UNSAFE,” AND THAT THE SECURITY AUTHORITIES HANDLED THINGS VERY WELL.
'Sickening':
Bernie Sanders campaign condemns protester who unfurled swastika flag at
Phoenix rally
Savannah
Behrmann
USA TODAY
PUBLISHED 11:26
AM ET, MARCH 6, 2020; UPDATED 4:00 PM MARCH 6, 2020
PHOTOGRAPH –
BERNIE SANDERS “... at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, AZ, March
5, 2020” Nick Oza / The Republic
WASHINGTON –
Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign responded to protesters who displayed a flag
bearing a swastika during his rally Thursday night in Phoenix.
Images of the
flag in the crowd circulated on social media posts, which showed the flag
unfurling as the crowd cheered for the Vermont senator after he declared how
loud they were. The cheers quickly turned to boos as they saw the flag.
Sanders'
supporters appeared to rip the flag from the protester's hands, and police
escorted him out.
Addressing
reporters Friday morning, Sanders said that he not only speaks as a Jewish
American, but he "speaks for the families" of the more than 400,000
American troops who died fighting in World War II "against fascism."
"It is
horrific, beyond disgusting to see that in the United States of America there
are people who would show the emblem of Hitler and Nazism," he continued.
If elected,
Sanders would be the first Jewish president. Many of his relatives were killed
in the Holocaust.
Related story
-- From Arizona: Bernie Sanders rally in Phoenix, Nazi flag video surfaces
At the time,
Sanders did not appear to notice the man, though he later said, “Whoever it
was, I think they’re a little outnumbered tonight. And more importantly they’re
going to be outnumbered in November.”
Democratic
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks to his supporters at Arizona
Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Phoenix, Az., March 5, 2020.
Later, Sanders'
communications director Mike Casa told Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed News that
Sanders “is aware of the flag with the swastika on it and is disturbed by it.”
Sara Pearl,
supervising producer for Sanders' campaign, tweeted Friday morning that
"Last night at Bernie’s rally in Arizona, someone horrifically unfurled a
Nazi flag with a swastika on it. Earlier we had just released this video of
what it means for Jews like me to elect our first Jewish President who will
stand up to white nationalism and hate."
Sara Pearl
✔
@skenigsberg
Last night at
Bernie’s rally in Arizona, someone horrifically unfurled a Nazi flag with a
swastika on it. Earlier we had just released this video of what it means for
Jews like me to elect our first Jewish President who will stand up to white
nationalism and hate. Watch pls (https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1235696591681404929
…
DO TAKE A FEW
MINUTES TO WATCH THIS VIDEO.
Bernie Sanders
✔
@BernieSanders
I would be very
proud to be the first Jewish president. Together, we will counter the hatred
and bigotry of the Trump administration. Thank you @jewsforbernie for standing
with us.
Embedded video “The
Value Of Having Bernie Sanders As The First Jewish President,” 4:22 Duration
2,925
7:57 AM - Mar
6, 2020
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Steven Slugocki, chairman of
the Maricopa County Democratic Party, of which the county seat is
Phoenix, tweeted that, "We can argue about which candidate should get
the Dem nomination, but antisemitic acts have no place in this world. This is
absolutely abhorrent."
Rep. Ilhan
Omar, D-Min., condemned the protester via Twitter. Omar endorsed Sanders and
has been campaigning for him. She wrote, "This is an appalling display of
anti-Semitism against a man whose family perished in the Holocaust."
The incidonce [sic]
again raised the issue of security for presidential candidates.
RELATED ARTICLE
-- More: Secret Service protection of presidential candidates factors in aggressive
crowds, mass shootings
Acting Homeland
Security Secretary Chad Wolf was urged Wednesday to consider Secret Service
protection for Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, the two top
contenders for the Democratic nomination. Both campaigns have been operating
without government protection, but the Secret Service's involvement appears
more likely as the presidential campaign heats up.
Get informed
before you vote
Find FAQs on
the key issues and where the candidates stand.
VOTER GUIDE
Plus, make sure
you're registered to vote.
The request
from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., came
a day after protesters rushed a stage in Los Angeles where Biden was
celebrating a string of Super Tuesday primary wins. Biden was not harmed by the
sign-waving protesters, who were repelled by his wife, Jill Biden, and a
campaign aide.
RELATED STORY
-- OnPolitics weekly recap: This week was just really quite a lot
In a statement
yesterday addressing the calls for support, the Secret Service said, "At
this time, no candidates have requested protection."
Sanders'
Thursday night protest was also interrupted by multiple supporters of President
Donald Trump.
Ilhan Omar
✔
@IlhanMN
This is an
appalling display of anti-Semitism against a man whose family perished in the
Holocaust.
And this SAME
white nationalist has been harassing the Muslim community for years.
Our struggles
are tied.https://twitter.com/jewishaction/status/1235925877709516800?s=21 …
Bend the Arc:
Jewish Action*
@jewishaction
Horrifying.
Last night, a man brandished a Nazi flag at a Bernie Sanders rally in Arizona.
It’s a clear
attack on the only Jewish presidential candidate — in a time of rising white
nationalism & antisemitism spurred on by Trump & the GOP.
It must be
condemned all over the news.
View image on
Twitter
11K
12:11 PM - Mar
6, 2020
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are talking about this
Former vice
president Joe Biden, who is Sanders' main competitor for the nomination,
tweeted out his condemnation of the protester, saying, "I don't care who
you're supporting, attacks like this against a man who could be the first
Jewish President are disgusting and beyond the pale. Hatred and bigotry have
no place in America — and it's up to all of us to root out these evils wherever
they're found."
Amy Spitalnick, executive
director of Integrity First For America, called the display
"sickening."
The group,
which is funding a lawsuit against the organizers of the Charlottesville march
in federal court, put out a statement, saying they are
"horrified."
"These are
not isolated incidents – they are part of a wave of anti-Semitism,
neo-Nazism, and white supremacy and we cannot let this become normalized."
Contributing:
Kevin Johnson
BEND THE ARC:
JEWISH ACTION*
Bend the Arc
From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
Bend the Arc: A
Jewish Partnership for Justice is a progressive Jewish political organization
that blends advocacy, community organizing, and leadership training.[1][2] The
organization advocates for a more equal and just society, focusing strictly on
domestic issues. Bend the Arc does not deal with issues related to
Israel.[3][4]
The
organization was formed in 2012 from the merger of Jewish Funds for Justice and
the Progressive Jewish Alliance.[5]
Bend the Arc
has been noted for its work protesting the policies of the administration of
U.S. President Donald Trump.[3][6] Members of the organizations have argued
that Trump has emboldened white nationalism, and disrupted an October 2019
speech by Trump in Pittsburgh by chanting "Trump Endangered
Jews."[7][8][9]
Stosh Cotler
became Bend the Arc's Executive Vice President in 2011 and CEO in 2014.[2] When
Cotler became CEO, The Forward noted that she was "one of the few
women leading a national Jewish group of its size."[10]
Progressive
Jewish Alliance
From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
The Progressive
Jewish Alliance (PJA) was founded in 1999 by Jewish Angelenos who broke away
from the Los Angeles chapter of the American Jewish Congress.[1] They
sought to assert a Jewish interest in the campaigns for social justice in
Southern California, which has the United States' second largest Jewish
population. Progressive Jewish Alliance expanded in February 2005 by
opening a San Francisco Bay Area chapter. The PJA stated goals are social
justice, judicial reform, and improved working conditions. They also try to
facilitate dialogue between non-violent young offenders and their victims
and between Jews and Muslims.
PJA ran the Jeremiah
Fellowship, which trains young Jews to be future social justice leaders. In
addition, the PJA conducted education programs and quarterly holiday events on
the intersection of art, culture and politics.
On June 1,
2011, Progressive Jewish Alliance merged with Jewish Funds for
Justice (JFSJ), adopting the name Bend the Arc in 2012.[2]
WHAT I FIND MOST
INTERESTING IN THIS WAPO ARTICLE IS THE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT SANDERS FAMILY
IN POLAND, AND THE FACT THAT ONE OF THEM LOST HIS LIFE BECAUSE HE PROTECTED A
GROUP OF POLITICAL INSURGENTS WHO HAD ENTERED THE COMMUNITY. WHEN THE NAZIS
CAME TO ARREST THE ACTIVISTS, SANDERS’ UNCLE REFUSED TO EXPOSE THEM, AND WAS SHOT.
Retropolis
Bernie Sanders
lost family in the Holocaust. The Nazi flag at his rally was personal.
He didn’t know
much about the history until he appeared on the PBS show ‘Finding Your Roots,'
hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
By Michael S.
Rosenwald
March 6, 2020
at 3:30 PM EST
PHOTOGRAPH -- Bernie
Sanders, second from left, with brother Larry, mother Dorothy and father Elias.
(Bernie Sanders campaign)
Sen. Bernie
Sanders on Friday addressed perhaps the ugliest moment so far in his campaign
for the presidency: a Nazi flag displayed Thursday at his rally in Phoenix.
Speaking to
reporters ahead of another rally, Sanders said it was “beyond disgusting” that someone
would display “the most detestable symbol in modern history."
Given what Sanders
(I-Vt.) has learned in recent years about his family’s Holocaust history, the
event was probably deeply painful.
Sanders grew up
in Brooklyn, a son of Jewish immigrants. His father, Elias, emigrated from
Poland in 1921 at 17 to “escape the poverty and widespread antisemitism of his
home country,” as Sanders recounted last year in an essay for the magazine Jewish
Currents.
Like other
immigrants who left Europe before the rise of Adolf Hitler, Sanders’s father
wasn’t especially loquacious when it came to details about his struggles
back home.
Sanders knew
that his father, a paint salesman, had grown up hungry and a target of
anti-Semitism during World War I. He knew that his father’s family — those who
stayed behind — didn’t fare well years later during Hitler’s march across
Europe.
That was about
it.
But a few years
ago, the remarkable details emerged when Sanders appeared on the PBS show “Finding
Your Roots*,” in which scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a team of researchers
retrace the ancestral lives of actors, politicians and other stars. (The
Sanders episode also featured Larry David, his comedic doppelganger. It turns
out they are distant cousins, which understandably blew both of their minds.)
RELATED STORY [SEE
BELOW.] -- The Polish hero who volunteered to go to Auschwitz — and warned the
world about the Nazi death machine
Gates and his
team discovered that Elias Sanders had traveled to the United States by
himself, with just $25. What he escaped was horrific. The town of Dobra was
assailed not just by anti-Jewish forces but by townspeople who also wanted Jews
out and took part in their plundering.
“Oh, God,”
Sanders says as he reviews archival accounts during the show. “This is the
first I hear about the specifics. But you think about how vulnerable … who’s
there to protect you? There’s no law and order. There’s no police that you can
go to because the police may be turning on you.”
“What I’m
seeing,” Sanders says, “is totally horrific.”
Horrifying. Last night, a man brandished a Nazi flag at a
Bernie Sanders rally in Arizona.
It’s a clear
attack on the only Jewish presidential candidate — in a time of rising white
nationalism & antisemitism spurred on by Trump & the GOP.
It must be condemned
all over the news. pic.twitter.com/Y0XEbpvCtk
— Bend the
Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) March 6, 2020
Gates revealed
more details. Synagogues were burned. Residents endured attacks from armed
forces and armed peasants.
“My father grew
up in a community where you did not know who you can trust,” Sanders says,
putting his father’s childhood together for the first time. “Maybe the person
you bought something from in two days would be ransacking your house. I mean,
how do you live in that kind of environment? I mean, I knew it was tough.
But now add all that together. That is a hell of a place to grow up in.”
Then Gates
revealed what Elias had left behind. He showed Sanders a picture of his
extended family that the senator had never seen. In it was a man about whom he
knew almost nothing: Elias’s half brother Abraham, though he often was known as
Romek.
Abraham was
born with a withered right arm. By 1939, he and the other family members were
confined in a ghetto. Abraham was a high-ranking member of the ghetto council
that kept order and served as an intermediary with Nazi forces.
Gates found a
letter Abraham had written to an aid organization describing life in the
ghetto, and he asked Sanders to read it.
“The Jewish
community,” Sanders read, “will not receive any external support. They will be
condemned to inevitable death from starvation. Therefore, we beg your help.”
Gates says:
“What do you think it must have been like for your father’s siblings to endure
that? Can you imagine that?”
Sanders
replies: “There comes a point where you really can’t imagine, you really can’t.
How do we know what kind of horrors and pain people were feeling? I
mean, it’s impossible, I think, for any person to know how people in that
moment were feeling. But it was horrible. Unutterably horrible.”
Sanders did not
know that his uncle was on the ghetto council. He also didn’t know the extreme
choice he faced one May day in 1942, when Nazi officers demanded he turn over a
group of resisters so they could be executed.
Abraham
refused.
He was shot in
the back of the head.
Gates showed
Sanders a picture of the officer who ordered his uncle’s death.
“You look at
people who look normal, and you just wonder how people could descend to that
type of barbarity,” Sanders says. “These are normal people. They
have wives, they have children. How can you go around starving people or
shooting people? Because you think that they are inferior? Or different than
you are?”
Gates asks
Sanders how he felt learning that a family member had stood up to the Nazis.
“I’m proud of
his courage and willingly going to his own death in order to protect innocent
people,” Sanders says. “I’m very, very proud that I have a family member who
showed that type of courage and decency.”
WHILE THE
APPEARANCE AT A BERNIE RALLY OF SOME GOOFBALL CARRYING A NAZI FLAG INFURIATES
ME, IT DOESN’T SCARE ME AS MUCH AS THE IDEA OF A MORE VIOLENT INTRUDER CARRYING
A CONCEALED HANDGUN. I REALLY DOUBT THAT BERNIE WORKERS PAT DOWN EVERYBODY WHO
ENTERS THE RALLY SITES, OR RUN THEM THROUGH A METAL DETECTOR. I HOPE THEY DO
HAVE METAL DETECTORS OF THE HAND-HELD KIND AT LEAST, AND SOME WAY TO CONTROL
THE INGRESS POINTS.
EVEN IF THEY
DO, THOUGH, I WANT THE FEDS TO HURRY UP ON THEIR PLANS FOR BOTH SANDERS AND
BIDEN TO HAVE SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION. THIS ARTICLE SAYS THAT BIDEN PAYS HIS
OWN PERSONAL GUARDS, SO PRESUMABLY, BERNIE DOES AS WELL. IF SO, THAT’S A
CONSIDERABLE EXPENSE TO HAVE TO FORK OVER AT EVERY ONE OF THEIR STOPS ALONG THE
ROAD, AND I DON’T KNOW THAT THEY WOULD HAVE THE POWER TO ARREST OR IF NECESSARY,
USE LETHAL FORCE. IT WOULD BE TRAGIC IF HE WERE INJURED OR WORSE.
A Man Unfurled
A Nazi Flag And Shouted Anti-Jewish Slurs At A Bernie Sanders Rally
The incident
comes at a time of increasing concern about the rise of white nationalism in
the country and as Sanders runs to become the first Jewish president.
Last updated on
March 6, 2020, at 3:34 p.m. ET
Posted on March
6, 2020, at 12:04 p.m. ET
Ruby Cramer, BuzzFeed
News Reporter
Miriam Elder, BuzzFeed
News Reporter
Reporting From Phoenix,
Arizona
PHOTOGRAPH -- Democratic
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally at Arizona
Veterans Memorial Coliseum on March 5 in Phoenix. Caitlin O'Hara / Getty Images
PHOENIX — A man
waving a Nazi flag and shouting “Heil Hitler” was kicked out of a rally for
Bernie Sanders on Thursday, a shocking incident targeting the man running to be
the first Jewish president.
The flag,
styled professionally in the actual designs of Nazi Germany, hung prominently
over a banister at the 7,000-person Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the
start of Sanders’ speech. The person stationed himself in the upper deck of the
arena, behind where Sanders was speaking.
The man was
shouting anti-Jewish slurs at Sanders and performing the Nazi salute, said Ron
Mack, 40, an attendee at the rally who was sitting nearby. “He never put his
arm down,” Mack said. “Everybody was in disbelief.”
Security
removed the man from the event several seconds after he unfurled the flag. Mack,
who spoke to BuzzFeed News the day after the rally, followed him outside to
make sure he was removed, and the man shouted racial slurs at him, an incident
that was captured on video.
On Friday
morning, taking questions at the Phoenix airport, Sanders told reporters that
he was “shocked” to learn about the flag from his staff.
“I speak not
only as a Jewish American — I think I can speak for the families of some
400,000 American troops who died fighting Nazism, fighting fascism — that it is
horrific," he said. “It is beyond disgusting to see that, in the United
States of America, there are people who would show the emblem of Hitler and Nazism.”
Sanders said
that he has seen plenty of protesters at his events over the years — many of
them Trump supporters — “but this was something different,” he said,
describing the swastika as “unspeakable” and the “most detestable symbol in
modern history.”
On Friday
afternoon, in a tweet, Biden wrote of the display at the Friday rally, "I
don't care who you're supporting, attacks like this against a man who could be
the first Jewish president are disgusting and beyond the pale."
The
Anti-Defamation League identified the man as Robert Sterkeson, a white
supremacist who has "harassed a range of Jewish and Muslim organizations
and events," often posting the stunts on YouTube.
Sanders
appeared to hear the commotion, turning to his right to look to the stands, but
the flag had already been taken down. Aides told him about the incident after
the rally.
Multiple
protesters caused disruptions at the rally, including one who unfurled a
“TRUMP” banner.
Video and
pictures of the incident spread on Instagram and Twitter.
Siddak Ahuja
@SiddakAhuja
A man brought a
literal Nazi flag to the rally of a Jewish Socialist candidate for President
He was escorted
out by security forces
12.5K
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5, 2020
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lexi
@lexi4bernie
Replying to
@sluggahjells
They did. I was
there. Here’s a picture I found.
View image on
Twitter
47
10:39 PM - Mar
5, 2020
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The incident
comes at a time of increasing concern about the rise of white nationalism in
the country and a rise in anti-Semitic incidents, including deadly synagogue
shootings. For Sanders and his team, it also comes weeks after prominent media
figures described his rise in terms the candidate and his supporters have found
to be anti-Semitic.
Last month on
MSNBC, Chris Matthews compared Sanders to the German occupation of France in
World War II, and left the channel this week after a string of missteps. Last week, in
graphics on a segment put together by CNN’s Michael Smerconish, the host asked:
“Can Either Coronavirus or Bernie Sanders Be Stopped?”
At the urging
of his advisers, Sanders has spoken more openly this year about his background
as the son of a struggling working-class Jewish family in Brooklyn much more
explicitly than when he ran for the Democratic nomination four years ago.
Earlier Thursday, his campaign released its latest video highlighting that. “I
would be very proud to be the first Jewish president,” Sanders tweeted. He has
spoken about how his Jewish heritage affects him “profoundly” and of visiting
Poland, where much of his father’s family was murdered in the Holocaust.
Sanders’ father
came to the US from Poland at the age of 17 to “to escape widespread
anti-Semitism,” as Sanders put it during his campaign launch speech in March.
The Vermont senator, born in 1941, has described growing up with an acute
awareness that his father’s immediate family “was wiped out by Hitler and Nazi
barbarism” during the Holocaust.
Over the last
month, as he’s traveled across the county, Sanders has been preoccupied with
and deeply angered by the media comparisons to the Nazi army and coronavirus,
raising the issue publicly with reporters and privately with his advisers.
Before taking
off for Arizona for his first rally since a disappointing finish on Super
Tuesday, Sanders spoke to reporters at the airport in his hometown of
Burlington, Vermont, describing the comparisons by the “corporate media” as
“unprincipled” and “terrible.”
“You’re talking
about a candidate who had to listen to somebody say that our supporters are
brown shirts — that’s Nazi supporters. What a disgrace,” he told reporters. “A
candidate who described a victory that we had as Nazis invading France.”
“You had on one
of the TV stations the question, which is what the media is preoccupied with, ’How
do we stop Bernie Sanders! We gotta stop the coronavirus and we gotta stop
Bernie Sanders,” he said, feigning panic and alarm. “What a terrible
thing.”
Sanders, who
now faces a two-person race against Joe Biden after a stunningly fast turn of
events in the Democratic primary over the last two weeks, has spent the days
since his losses in 10 states in Super Tuesday airing grievances about the
corporate media, appealing to reporters to cover the race as a debate of
ideas.
“That’s the
frame,” he said of the “Stop Sanders” coverage Thursday morning. “Not, my
god, ‘You have a candidate who’s trying to bring working people [into] the
political process.’”
Neither Sanders
nor Biden is traveling with the protection of the US Secret Service — a
somewhat atypical setup at this point in the primary for two major political
figures. (During his first presidential run four year ago, Sanders received
Secret Service protection at the start of voting in the Democratic primary,
around the time of the Iowa caucus in February.)
Sanders said on
Friday that he isn’t sure when or if his campaign will receive USSS protection, but that he
did not feel “unsafe” at the Phoenix rally.
In response to
a question about their plans for the Sanders and Biden campaigns, a Secret
Service spokesperson pointed to a Thursday statement that from communications
director Cathy Milhoan who called the idea that the agency is
"unprepared for candidate protection" is "categorically
false."
The statement
outlines the process by which candidates receive protection, beginning with
their formal request. "To date, the Department has not received a request
for protection," the statement concludes.
Speaking to
reporters on Friday, Sanders said he believed his staff had been in contact
with the Department of Homeland Security about receiving protection.
On Wednesday,
the day after protesters rushed the stage at Biden’s Super Tuesday event in Los
Angeles, House Homeland Security Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson asked
the Department of Homeland Security to add both candidates to the USSS roster.
“I think it’s an unfortunate sign of the times in 2020 — a white supremacist
showing up at a public event with a swastika,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, head
of the Anti-Defamation League. “They need to make sure they have adequate
security at their campaign events.”
“I don't agree
with all Bernie's ideas, for sure, but he's the highest-profile Jewish
candidate running for the presidency and it's, albeit unsurprising, it's
alarming to see the anti-Semitism being directed at him," he said.
Picture of Ruby
Cramer
Ruby Cramer is
a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Ruby
Cramer at ruby.cramer@buzzfeed.com.
Got a
confidential tip? Submit it here.
I AM SORRY TO
HEAR THAT ELIZABETH WARREN DROPPED OUT, BECAUSE SHE IS THE OTHER MOST ADVANCED PROGRESSIVE
THINKER IN THE RACE. SHE HAS NOT YET ENDORSED ANYONE ELSE. A STORY YESTERDAY
SAID THAT THE WARREN AND SANDERS CAMPS ARE HOLDING TALKS NOW. I CAN’T WAIT TO
FIND OUT THE RESULT OF THAT. SINCE I DON’T HAVE A TIME MACHINE, THOUGH, I GUESS
I’LL HAVE TO WAIT. MOVING ALONG, NOW.
Elizabeth
Warren, Once a Front-Runner, Drops Out of Presidential Race
Ms. Warren, a
senator and former law professor, staked her campaign on fighting corruption
and changing the rules of the economy.
By Shane
Goldmacher and Astead W. Herndon
March 6, 2020,
10:52 a.m. ET
Video 1:10,Warren
Calls Campaign ‘The Honor of a Lifetime’
PHOTOGRAPH -- Senator
Elizabeth Warren discussed why she decided to exit the race for the Democratic
nomination, and said she was not ready to endorse one of her rivals. CreditCredit...Ruth
Fremson/The New York Times
CAMBRIDGE,
Mass. — Senator Elizabeth Warren entered the 2020 race with expansive plans
to use the federal government to remake American society, pressing to strip
power and wealth from a moneyed class that she saw as fundamentally corrupting
the country’s economic and political order.
She exited on
Thursday after her avalanche of progressive policy proposals, which briefly
elevated her to front-runner status last fall, failed to attract a broader political
coalition in a Democratic Party increasingly, if not singularly, focused on
defeating President Trump.
Her departure
means that a Democratic field that began as the most diverse in American
history — and included six women — is now essentially down to two white men:
former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Ms. Warren said
that from the start, she had been told there were only two true lanes in the
2020 contest: a liberal one dominated by Mr. Sanders, 78, and a moderate one
led by Mr. Biden, 77.
“I thought that
wasn’t right,” Ms. Warren said in front of her house in Cambridge as she
suspended her campaign, “But evidently I was wrong.”
Though her
vision energized many liberals — the unlikely chant of “big, structural
change” rang out at her rallies — it did not find a wide enough audience among
the party’s working-class and diverse base. Now her potential endorsement
is highly sought, and both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden have spoken with her
in the days since Super Tuesday losses sealed her political fate, though she
revealed precious little of her intentions on Thursday.
“I need some
space around this,” she said.
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2020
Ms. Warren’s
impact on the race was far greater than just the outcome for her own candidacy.
Her policy plans drove the agenda. She effectively pushed former Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, a centrist billionaire, out of the race with
a dominant debate performance last month.
And her ability
to raise well over $100 million and fully fund a presidential campaign without
holding high-dollar fund-raisers demonstrated that other candidates, beyond
Mr. Sanders and his intensely loyal small-dollar donors, could do so in the
future.
Image -- Ms.
Warren with her husband, Bruce, and their dog, Bailey, at their home in
Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday. She announced her exit from the race in a news
conference outside. Credit...David Degner for The New York Times
Ms. Warren’s
political demise was a death by a thousand cuts, not a dramatic implosion
but a steady decline. In the fall, most national polls showed that Ms.
Warren was the national pacesetter in the Democratic field. By December, she
had fallen to the edge of the top tier, wounded by an October debate during
which her opponents relentlessly attacked her, particularly on her embrace of
“Medicare for all.”
She invested
heavily in the early states, with a ground game that was the envy of her
rivals. But it did not pay off: In Iowa, where she had bet much of her
candidacy — she had to take out a $3 million line of credit before the
caucuses to ensure she could pay her bills in late January — she wound up
in a disappointing third place.
Ms. Warren slid
to fourth in New Hampshire and Nevada, and to fifth in South Carolina. By Super
Tuesday, her campaign was effectively over — with the final blow losing her home
state, Massachusetts.
The California
results strikingly laid bare the demographic cul-de-sac her candidacy had
become as Ms. Warren struggled to win over voters beyond college-educated
white people, in particular white women. She was poised to win delegates in
only a handful of highly educated enclaves: places like San Francisco, Santa
Monica and West Hollywood.
Though the
campaign failed to generate the widespread backing necessary to win the
nomination, Ms. Warren retained a core of fierce loyalists dedicated to her
promise of wholesale change.
Her selfie
lines were filled with well-wishers — young girls seeking her trademark pinkie
promise (“I’m running for president because that’s what girls do”), cutouts of
Ms. Warren’s likeness, and tattoos of her adopted slogan: “Nevertheless, she
persisted.” When her staff gathered Thursday, many were clad in liberty green,
the color her campaign adopted to symbolize its togetherness.
“One of the
hardest parts of this is all those pinkie promises,” a visibly emotional Ms.
Warren said, describing the “trap” of gender for female candidates.
“If you say,
‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’” Ms. Warren
said. “If you say, ‘No, there was no sexism,’ about a bazillion women think,
‘What planet do you live on?’”
Image -- Ms.
Warren often made a pinkie promise with young girls at her events, saying, “I’m
running for president because that’s what girls do.” Credit...Ruth Fremson/The
New York Times
Before her
exit, Ms. Warren accumulated the second-largest number of Democratic
delegates of any woman to run for president in history, behind only Hillary
Clinton, the 2016 nominee.
The party’s
left lane is now clearer for Mr. Sanders. His supporters and other
progressives have spent the last two days gingerly reaching out to Ms. Warren’s
orbit and plotting in private conversations about how to keep the two
liberal standard-bearers aligned.
In January, Mr.
Sanders and Ms. Warren clashed in a deeply personal way after she confirmed a
report that in a private meeting before the campaign began, he told her he
believed that a woman could not win the White House in 2020. During a
debate, Mr. Sanders strongly denied having made the remark, and Ms. Warren
confronted him onstage afterward, accusing him of calling her a “liar.”
Relations have been chilly since.
In her call
with Mr. Biden, Ms. Warren revealed so little of her endorsement plans that a
person familiar with the call remarked on her “great poker face.”
Ms. Warren
arrived on the political scene in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse
and shot to stardom with her indictments of Wall Street and unfettered
capitalism.
In 2016, some
progressive organizations mounted “Run Warren Run” campaigns and Mr. Sanders
floated her as a possible challenger to Mrs. Clinton, but Ms. Warren
declined to run.
Joining the
2020 race, she found a changed political terrain. Mr. Sanders’s political stock
had soared after his 2016 run, giving him an immediate advantage in fund-raising
and name recognition that complicated Ms. Warren’s electoral path.
Mr. Trump’s
election seemed to shock the Democratic base into an acute focus on
electability. Voters frequently second-guessed their electoral choices as
they tried to game out which candidate would be best equipped to beat him.
Mr. Biden, in
particular, has capitalized on this anxiety.
Ms. Warren’s
allies and supporters said the electability question — who would be the
surest bet to defeat the president — disproportionately hurt female candidates
after Mrs. Clinton’s unexpected loss in 2016.
“All they heard
all along was what a risk the women were,” said Christina Reynolds, a vice
president of Emily’s List, a leading Democratic women’s group that endorsed Ms.
Warren this week, only after Senator Amy Klobuchar withdrew.
Ms. Reynolds
said that evaluation was as wrong as it was widespread. “The idea that that
doesn’t hang around the women’s necks is crazy,” she said.
Ms. Warren’s
campaign was slow to directly address questions of electability, seeming to
believe her rise in the polls last year spoke for itself. But as the calendar
turned to 2020, it was apparent that the issue was hobbling her candidacy as
precinct captains and volunteers warned Ms. Warren that it was what they were
hearing about from voters.
Ms. Warren’s
decline had begun in earnest at the October debate, when she was pressed on how
she would pay for Medicare for all and had no answer. It took weeks to
detail her plan, but by then her perceived trustworthiness seemed to have taken
a hit: The candidate with a plan for everything did not have one to finance the
biggest issue of the campaign. (Mr. Sanders, despite releasing fewer details on
paying for Medicare for all, has faced fewer questions.)
When she did
roll out details, she was criticized by those on the left for compromising
too much and by centrists for the sheer size of the plan. The episode
captured a fundamental pain point for her candidacy: She was too much of an
insider for those demanding revolution, and too much of an outsider
for those who wanted to tinker with the system and focus on beating Mr. Trump.
As the race
intensified in the fall, Ms. Warren was reluctant to strike back at her
opponents, even as they undermined her image. Pete Buttigieg made deep
incursions into her support among educated white voters but she did not call
him out in earnest until December, even as he flooded the Iowa airwaves with a
moderate message undercutting her progressive platform.
Image -- Before
her exit, Ms. Warren accumulated the second-largest number of Democratic
delegates of any woman to run for president in history, behind only Hillary
Clinton, the 2016 nominee. Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
While most
campaigns used the megaphone of mass television ads to cut through the media
filter, Ms. Warren’s braintrust was cool to the power of commercials from the start,
preferring on-the-ground and digital organizing.
At times, Ms.
Warren’s campaign did not reflect the urgency of a candidacy trying to make
history and promote a program of systemic upheaval that included
government-run health care, free public college, student debt cancellation,
breaking up Big Tech, universal child care, and tax increases on the wealthy.
But after weak
finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, Ms. Warren charged into the February
debate planning to confront Mr. Bloomberg in his first appearance onstage. In
Mr. Bloomberg, she found a rare rival she seemed truly comfortable attacking,
an embodiment of the influence of money.
She slashed. He
stumbled. Mr. Bloomberg would never recover. Ms. Warren’s donations surged,
but her vote count did not.
She would bend
a principled stand that week as well, declining to disavow a new super PAC
that would air nearly $15 million in pro-Warren advertising, saying she did not
want to unilaterally disarm. The irony was not lost on her opponents: The
anti-big money candidate wound up with the biggest super PAC in the race to
date.
In recent days,
Ms. Warren had taken to speaking to voters directly about their electability
fears, imploring them to tune out pundits.
“Cast a vote
from your heart,” she said Tuesday.
In speeches
over the course of her campaign, Ms. Warren sought to elevate the stories of
women, often women of color. Her final major address, in East Los Angeles on
Monday, was devoted to Latina janitors who organized for better working
conditions.
Aimee Allison,
the founder and president of She The People, a political advocacy organization
for women of color, praised Ms. Warren for her campaign’s intentional
inclusivity. “She really comes up as the first white candidate for
president who had an intersectional politics,” she said.
But Ms. Allison
acknowledged that pitch did not find favor in the broader minority
electorate, even as it won plaudits from academics and activists.
“Black voters
really were looking for a return to normalcy,” she said. “It was a rejection
from what was perceived as riskier politics and a broader and more courageous
political vision.”
Ms. Warren’s
supporters were devoted to making the party more progressive to the end. In Illinois,
where Ms. Warren’s campaign was scheduled to hold a post-Super Tuesday phone
banking session, staff and supporters refused to cancel. They used their
time to support Marie Newman, the local challenger running against an incumbent
Democrat opposed to abortion rights.
“Our work
continues,” Ms. Warren told her staff in the call informing them she was
quitting the race. “The fight goes on, and big dreams never die.”
Astead W.
Herndon reported from Cambridge, and Shane Goldmacher from New York. Jonathan
Martin contributed reporting from New York.
Shane
Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief
political correspondent for the Metro Desk. Before joining The Times, he worked
at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016
presidential campaign. @ShaneGoldmacher
Astead W.
Herndon is a national political reporter based in New York. He was previously a
Washington-based political reporter and a City Hall reporter for The Boston
Globe. @AsteadWesley
A version of
this article appears in print on March 6, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New
York edition with the headline: Warren Exits, And Rivals Vie For Her Favor.
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