Bernie Sanders swooped onto a crowed-filled East Los Angeles baseball field in Lincoln Park Monday, where he made his usual pitch for free college tuition, hit hard at his critics and assailed joblessness and corporate greed.
“A great nation is not judged by the number of billionaires it has or the number of nuclear weapons it has,” Sanders said. “It is judged by how it treats the weakest and most vulnerable among us.”
The Vermont senator has been hopscotching across Southern California over the past few days, adding rallies the way a musician might keep adding concert dates - National City, Vista, Irvine - Monday morning in East Los Angeles, then hours later in Santa Monica Sanders has been canvassing California ahead of the June 7 primary.
He’ll get to San Bernardino, Riverside and Anaheim on Tuesday.
The nearly hour-long speech before a crowd of about 2,000 started with a bold prediction and a plan.
“We are going to win the state of California,” he said. “And we are going to win the state of California because by the end of this campaign, we are going to have rallies all over this state and speak personally in a grassroots way to over 200,000 people in California.”
He said he estimated that 5 million people would be voting in the Democratic primary and that he’ll need at least 2.5 million voters to cast ballots for him. The 200,000 direct contacts through rallies, he said, is an “unprecedented” effort in California primary politics.