Sanders takes on Clinton while she meets with Democrats

As he reminded the crowd, he was the first presidential candidate to release any comment on the Puerto Rican debt crisis, and remains the only one to speak repeatedly about the humanitarian crisis in the Dominican Republic.

“To the best of my knowledge, those are ideas that Secretary Clinton does not agree with”, Sanders said. Her experience running for president has also given her a strong base in the Hispanic community, which she has targeted with her campaigning so far.

And for Sanders, the insurgent candidate who represents a notably white constituency in Vermont and who only added the conference to his schedule last week, it is, quite simply, how to broaden his appeal.

“Lastly, but not leastly”, Sanders said, concluding his speech, “think of a nation where every person in this country – no matter their race, no matter their country of origin, no matter their religion, no matter their disability, no matter their sexual orientation – that all of us come together to create the greatest country that anyone has ever seen, a country which works for all of our people“.

“I don’t believe we should be excavating or transporting some of the dirtiest fuel on this planet”, he said, referring to his opposition to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. On the other side, Bernie Sanders is facing a crisis of image among Latino voters. Four in ten self-identified Democratic voters were non-white in 2012, a slight increase from four years earlier, according to a 2013 Gallup analysis. The socialist senator’s response on Monday was to graft a section about immigration reform onto his standard campaign speech, riling up a morning crowd by decrying slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and what he called the “plague” of racism before pledging to extend protections to DREAMers’ parents – and then returning to his usual lines about inequality and the “one percent”. On Tuesday, she plans to meet with influential groups of black, Asian-Pacific and Latino lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Clinton also has said an immigration overhaul must include a path to “full and equal citizenship” for people living in the US illegally. She described volunteering to babysit the families of Mexican migrant farmworkers when she was about 10 or 11 years old in Illinois. Clinton voted for that war in 2002, an issue that hurt her in the 2008 presidential election against President Obama. Bernie Sanders, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley at the Kansas City Convention Center, where an estimated 7,000 people attended the four-day event.

As for O’Malley, he tried out a theme he has been building ahead of Tuesday’s immigration policy rollout: Latino issues are moral issues. His father moved to the United States as a teenager who had no money and knew no English. “We should be proud that in recent decades we have made real progress”, he said. Overall, Sanders’ message on Monday was clear, I am going to do more for Latinos than anyone else. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.

Stay on topic – This helps keep the thread focused on the discussion at hand.

Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk.