Bernie Sanders has undergone minor surgery for a hernia repair, according to his campaign staff, who were quick to stress he would be back at work within a day.
The elective procedure was carried out at George Washington University hospital in Washington on Monday, where the 74-year-old Vermont senator and 2016 Democratic candidate was treated as an outpatient.
In a brief statement, campaign spokesman Michael Briggs suggested Sanders would “resume his Senate duties on Tuesday”.
But there was no word from the campaign on whether recovery from the surgery would delay Sanders’ grueling campaign travel schedule, which has seen him crisscross early voting primary states in recent months as well as attend most Senate voting sessions.
x YouTube VideoAn Unyielding Crusader
How is a 74-year-old self-described Democratic socialist from one of the least populous states in the country turning the Democratic primary upside down and proving an adept challenger to one of the most established candidates in modern politics?
Easy, supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders say: He represents an unyielding crusader who will restore decency to American politics. Mr. Sanders is ideologically pure at a time when everything and everyone else in Democratic Washington seems to revolve around compromise. And as this primary is proving, many Democrats (and even some Republicans) are frustrated with compromise. In some way, Mr. Sanders’s appeal stems from his own un-electability.
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To understand how Mr. Sanders has outperformed expectations in the Democratic primary, you have to look at how he’s long been outperforming expectations in Washington, where he first arrived after winning a seat in Congress in 1990.
“Bernie Sanders surprises people,” said Harry Jaffe, an editor at large for Washingtonian magazine, who wrote an unauthorized biography of Mr. Sanders, to be published in mid-January. “If I would boil down his political career, it comes down to surprising people and exceeding expectations.”
Since winning his Senate seat, Mr. Sanders has held on to it by keeping his constituents, not his colleagues, in mind.
xSinger teams up with filmmaker for #FeelTheBern anthem: https://t.co/BHJt9xKz3epic.twitter.com/Yrmzzumbit
— The Hill (@thehill) December 1, 2015
x YouTube Video
Edward Sharpe & Friends ‘Feel the Bern’
It’s no secret that presidential wannabes play fast and loose with their theme songs, from a copyright standpoint. And some even make the effort to get the official OK, leading to almost-endorsements, such as the mutually irrelevant high-five between cock-rock relics Twisted Sister and fellow Aqua Net aficionado Donald Trump this past weekend.
Very rarely, however, a candidate actually captures the imagination of an artist, and they write a song especially targeted at rallying support. Martin O’Malley had such luck, with Irish band the Corrigan Brothers. And now Bernie Sanders can add his name to the list, with this tune from Golden Globe-winning rockers Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ frontman Alex Ebert.
Teaming up with Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Josh Fox (Gaslands), Ebert wrote a new piece of music, which is set to a documentary-style video full of factoids, sound bites, and cheering supporters.
“I felt like Bernie presented the first opportunity for me to feel honest in writing a sing-along in the simple tradition of social movements focused on a presidential candidate,” said Ebert in a statement. “The intention is for the verses to be improvised and changed as circumstances dictate, with only the choruses are the consistent refrain.”
xBernie Sanders supporters rally in Manchester!#Bernie2016#feelthebernpic.twitter.com/68LedlE9E0
— ToastyPoptart (@LollipopCrumbs) November 30, 2015A Student Explains Their Support Of Sanders
Like most of my peers that are involved in the political process I find myself dissatisfied and disillusioned with the process. Yet in the midst of apathy there is a beacon of hope: Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders happens to occupy space on a short list of people in national politics whom I feel actually have my (and by extension, a majority of my generation’s) best interest at heart.
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Of all the people running for president in 2016, Sanders is the only person whom I feel has the gall to stand up and fight for what’s right, because that’s what he’s always done. He’s the only Democratic candidate to receive the lion’s share of his campaign contributions from everyday Americans – not from big banks or from super PAC’s.
For a long time I thought the American Dream was dead. The game was rigged and the wealthy already owned it all. But with Bernie I have hope. I have hope that one day we will be more representative and equal. I have hope that the democracy of and by the people will beat down the super-rich that have tried to buy our democracy.
It’s time to stand up and take our democracy back. It’s time to fight for the preservation of the ideals that inspired the creation of our nation. It’s time to tell the über-wealthy establishment that enough is enough – this democracy is no longer for sale.
xThe @BernieSanders Iowa team celebrating after wrapping up a statewide training! #iacaucus#FeelTheBernpic.twitter.com/bKAs9amkvq
— Blair Lawton (@blairlawton) November 30, 2015x YouTube Video
Maintaining His Lead
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders continues to enjoy a healthy lead in TIME’s Person of the Year poll with just a few days of voting left.
As of Monday evening, the Vermont Senator had 10.4% of the vote in the reader poll, down slightly from last week but still well ahead of Malala Yousafzai, who is in second place at 5.3%. And he far outpaces other presidential candidates, including Republican Donald Trump (2.1%) and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton (1.4%).
Voting on the readers’ choice poll ends Dec. 4 at 11:59 p.m., and the winner of the poll will be announced Dec. 7. While American political figures from John F. Kennedy to Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan have been recognized as Man of Year after winning the White House (the issue changed to Person of the Year in 1999), no presidential candidate has been named Person of the Year prior to the end of the campaign.
x"Medicare for all" was the first thing Bernie Sanders said after emerging from a successful hernia procedure, an aide says.
— John Wagner (@WPJohnWagner) December 1, 2015x YouTube Video
Bernie Leads The Opposition To Another Pipeline
On Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders became the first 2016 hopeful to stand against a proposal that has stoked intense debate in New England.
Speaking at the Jefferson Jackson dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire, Sanders said he opposed the construction of the natural gas pipeline, proposed by Kinder Morgan, which would cross through New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
“I believe the Northeast Energy Direct pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas for 400 miles through 17 communities is a bad idea – and should be opposed,” the Vermont senator said.
Calling climate change the “greatest environmental challenge of our time,” Sanders said he opposed the pipeline for the same reasons he long-opposed the recently rejected Keystone XL pipeline.
The campaign’s New Hampshire communications director, Karthik Ganapathy, told Boston.com that concerns about the pipeline go beyond climate change.
“The truth is: there are lots of reasons to oppose this pipeline,” Ganapathy said. “There are justified concerns around abuse of eminent domain to seize private property, the route would go through historic towns and conservation sites and as with all pipelines, there could be leaks or spills.”
x@BernieSanders I'm 40. For the first time in my life a candidate for POTUS has truly captured my mind and made me say 'yeah, let's do that'.
— Freethinker (@BFreethinker) December 1, 2015x YouTube Video
A Look At Bernie's First Win
We've dipped back into our archives to take a look at the first election Bernie Sanders ever won in 1981. Once elected, Sanders faced obstruction from politicians in other parties who refused to support his agenda, the same kind of blowback he could face if elected president.
The first surprise of Sanders' political career is that it got started in the first place.
"It was a shock across Vermont and Chittenden County. No one believed Mr. Sanders could win an election," Bill Felling said.
In 1981, Felling, who is now a CBS News executive, was a WCAX reporter covering Sanders' run for mayor on the Liberty Union ticket. Sanders was an outsider trying to unseat incumbent Mayor Gordon Paquette, a Democrat.
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There were vast similarities between Sanders' platform then and now.
"Many, many people who have not been active in government before, begin the process of standing up and fighting for their lives and their dignity," Sanders said in 1982. "We begin a political revolution to transform our country economically, politically, socially and environmentally.
xWe love Senator Bernie Sanders, an honorable, honest, and truthful man. Lets support this man, who is fighting for us, "We the People!
— Pablo Sancho (@eaglefeather43) December 1, 2015National Nurses United Are Not Backing Down
A super PAC financed by the country’s largest nurses union has spent more than $610,000 on behalf of Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid, including $41,000 on new billboards touting him in the early caucus states of Iowa and Nevada, according to expenditure reports filed Monday.
Union officials said they plan to continue spending through the political action committee, National Nurses United for Patient Protection -- even though Sanders has repeatedly denounced the influence of super PACs and has insisted that he doesn’t have one flanking his upstart campaign.
“We never considered it a super PAC,” said Jean Ross, co-president of the nurses union. “This isn’t a corporation or an individual who can write out millions of dollars at a time. This is money that nurses put out for things that they believe in.”
Aides to the senator from Vermont also sought to draw a distinction Monday between the efforts of the nurses' super PAC and independent groups sanctioned by other presidential candidates, many of which are run by their former aides or close associates.
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Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the nurses’ union, said that its super PAC does not resemble the kind of personalized super PACs that have proliferated in the 2016 campaign.
“There’s no mystery here,” he said. “There’s nothing here of anyone trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. These are working people who feel passionately about having a government that works for everybody.”
xPrayers for Bernie Sanders on his out patient surgery today for a full recovery, we love you Bernie @BernieSanders
— Richard D.Hill (@rdhillphx) December 1, 2015x YouTube Video
Standing Up For Bernie
On a recent fall evening, a crowd of about two hundred filed into the Bell House, a nineteen-twenties former warehouse with a rough brick exterior, in Gowanus, Brooklyn, to raise money for Bernie Sanders’s Presidential campaign, and to laugh. The concert and special-events venue sits on a wide block of stumpy converted spaces, across from an Apple support store. Inside, the atmosphere was warm, vibrant.
Near the ticket window, just outside the main event hall, a flyer decorated the wall. “Stand Up for Bernie Sanders: Bern’in Down the House,” it read, in an autumnal, chestnut-and-pumpkin color palette. A ghoulish drawing of Sanders sat beneath a burning building (maybe the White House?). Two women representing the Bushwick Berners, a grassroots organization mobilizing for Sanders in North Brooklyn, stood adjacent to the ticket counter, hunched over a fold-out table crowded with signage, stickers, a donation jar, pens, voter-registration forms, and pamphlets. (“Bernie is Bae,” one sign read.) In the room next door, a d.j. launched into a cut of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Your Money.”
Lauren Irwin, a Bushwick Berner dressed in a long black coat with fur-like fuzz on the shoulders, solicited new volunteers and registered voters. “It’s all very D.I.Y.,” Irwin said, enthusiastic and proud, pointing to the chaotic arrangement of papers on the table. Irwin had designed and printed one of the pamphlets—a “zine,” she called it. The “BK Bern Book,” a few folded pieces of white paper stapled together, contained features like Sanders’s Senate voting record compared with Hillary Clinton’s, a Republican-candidate-quote matching game, an image of Donald Trump superimposed on a hair-transplant advertisement, celebrity tweets in support of Sanders—from Lil B the Basedgod, Anne Rice, Sarah Silverman, Cornel West, Killer Mike—and information about how to get involved with the campaign.
“This is something that I’m very passionate about—the physicality of a pamphlet or a zine, where you can pass them around,” Irwin said, beaming. “The zine is not just about [Sanders]. He represents this larger movement, this larger grouping of people who are not down with establishment politics.”
x@BernieSanders love it Bernie! Keep up the great work
— nikki braggs (@nikkibraggs) December 1, 2015x
@BernieSanders I'm undocumented and I'm so glad that you're finally giving me a voice, I love you! 💞
— Natascha (@lolitaa_10) November 30, 2015A Banker Who Backs BernieOne banker who has contributed to Bernie Sanders is Paul Ryan, a partner at Hayfield Financial, a firm that advises private equity and hedge funds. He's been on Wall Street for 30 years and says the financial system has become so complex, so manipulated, and corrupt that only Bernie Sanders can save it.
“The whole understanding of Wall Street that I have comes from Judge Brandeis [who said], ‘Sunlight is the greatest of disinfectants,’ something that we seem to have forgotten,” Ryan says. “Wall Street has gotten dark and complex in the last 50 years. There’s disintermediation of the banks, and everything that was clear and understood we’ve now murked up.”
The financial industry is consciously growing darker and darker, Ryan argues, adding that the banking sector is growing even more complicated.
“More than size, complexity is the problem,” he says. “Glass-Steagall separates things and makes things less complex. When you mix the investment bank and the shadow economy with the commercial bank, that’s a real complicated thing. I dare say—and I’m reasonably educated; went to law school, majored in economics, and worked in a bank—I’m hard pressed to know what Goldman Sachs or CitiBank actually does. And I didn’t fall off a turnip truck. I just can’t figure out what they’re doing right now.”
Unlike his peers in New York’s financial district, Ryan welcomes Sanders’ plan to get aggressive with with large banks.
“Bernie Sanders swinging the meat axe saying, ‘Hey, let’s just break it all up,’ that’s not the gradualism that Hillary’s saying right now,” he says.
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