While U.S. political watchers have been pre-occupied in recent days with billionaire Republican Party candidate for president Donald Trump, on the other side of the country, Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders has drawn his largest crowd yet. His message, while not aimed at Trump personally, is decidedly anti-billionaire.
Sanders is the rumpled independent senator from Vermont who has so far emerged as the leading opponent of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the quest for the Democratic nomination. Without her financial resources, he has been on a tour of the northwestern U.S. to drum up support.
Saturday night in Seattle, he attracted some 12,000 supporters to a University of Washington sports arena, while 3,000 more gathered outside to hear Sanders’ populist platform: increased minimum wage, universal health care, mandated family leave.
“Seattle, 15,000 of you came out tonight and stood up to say loudly and clearly, ‘This country belongs to all of us, not just the billionaire class.’” Sander wrote Sunday on his Facebook page.
Later on Sunday, Sanders responded to Trump’s assertion at Thursday’s Republican debate that he (Trump) couldn’t be bought by campaign donors because he has enough money to finance his own campaign.
“I am trying another way,” Sanders said on CBS’ Face the Nation, “We have gotten well over 300,000 people who’ve made individual contributions. You know what the average contribution is? Thirty-one bucks. We’re running a people-oriented campaign.”
The Rally That Fizzled
Sanders’ rally followed a gathering earlier Saturday that was interrupted by three activists from Black Lives Matter, a grassroots movement that has sprung up in the wake of widely publicized killings of black people by American police officers.
The trio was determined to call attention to Sunday’s anniversary of the shooting of an unarmed black man – Michael Brown – by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
Commandeering the microphone, they called for some moments of silence and for the opportunity to address the crowd. Sanders never got the microphone back, and he left without speaking.
“White progressive Seattle and Bernie Sanders cannot call themselves liberals while they participate in the racist system that claims Black lives. Bernie Sanders will not continue to call himself a man of the people, while ignoring the plight of Black people,” Black Lives Matter Seattle posted on Facebook.
“On criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism, there is no candidate for president who will fight harder than me,” Sanders told his Saturday night rally.
Going for the Next Record
Sanders was headed to another rally Sunday evening, this one at the Moda Center sports arena in Portland, Oregon that seats more than 19,000 people. His campaign was hoping to fill the arena.
Sanders has always been considered a long shot against Clinton. A national poll by Monmouth University released August 5 put Clinton up by 36 percentage points.
But Sanders has filled houses recently in several major cities, including Minneapolis, New Orleans and Phoenix. After Portland, he will be heading to Los Angeles.
“Can we actually prevail over a billionaire or the billionaire class?” he asked on CBS Sunday. “Time will tell. I think we can.”
