Candidates focus on SC and crucial minority vote

Democratic presidential candidate and New Hampshire primary victor Bernie Sanders joined the Reverend Al Sharpton for breakfast on Wednesday at Sylvia’s, the iconic soul food restaurant in Harlem.

The history lesson was an appropriate #ThrowbackThursday reference for a debate featuring the 74-year-old Sanders and 69-year-old Clinton. While a student at the University of Chicago, Sanders was involved in the Congress on Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Sanders is within 7 points of Clinton, according to a new Morning Consult survey released Friday. With the campaign shifting to more racially diverse states, the legacy of the first African-American president matters. This on-the-ground work may account for the significantly higher number of Google searches for “Sanders” in SC than for “Clinton”, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Furthermore, wasn’t Mr. Sanders in the Senate during the passage of the Affordable Care Act?

He planned to campaign for Sanders next week in SC.

At the outset of the race, there was speculation about how Clinton would try to distance herself from the Obama Administration. Sanders claims it would cost the average American an extra $500 on their tax bill, but would return $5,000 worth of benefit; Clinton insists his numbers “don’t add up”, and suggests re-opening the Obamacare debate could roll back its gains. She peppered her comments on the Islamic State and Russian Federation with reminders of her four years serving as Obama’s secretary of state. In the same breath, he said he agreed with Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Senior citizens are also part of Sanders’ strategy: “Bernie Bingo”, a game promoted by the senator’s campaign, teaches those who play all about his major policies – and, according to MSNBC, offers those who win a ride to the polls. “What President [Barack] Obama succeeded in doing was to build on the healthcare system we have, to get us to 90 percent coverage”. It did not endorse either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Sanders. In the past he has called him weak.

Sanders called that a “low blow”. “So let’s not in any way imply here that either President Obama or myself would in any way not take on any vested interest, whether it’s Wall Street or drug companies or insurance companies or frankly the gun lobby, to stand up and do what’s best for the American people”. As you know, he came to Vermont to campaign for me when he was a senator.

Sanders pointed the blame for the political unrest in Southeast Asian countries at Kissinger, and said he paved the way for the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of 3 million people in Cambodia.