FOURTH QUARTER WAS STRONG FOR SOCIALISM
The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign says it raised more than $34.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, likely more than any other Democrat candidate has raised in any quarter of last year.
Although the Federal Election Commission quarterly report is not due until Jan. 15, Sanders’ campaign released the strong numbers to show its candidate, who suffered a heart attack in October, is the leading contender for the Democrats.
Sanders received 900,000 individual donations in December alone, the campaign said, and has had over five million donors so far in 2019, with a total raised of more than $87 million.
Sanders is popular with Alaska Democrats, who strongly preferred him during the Democratic caucuses in 2016. In fact, Sanders’ second strongest state in 2016, after his home state of Vermont, was Alaska, where he won 80 percent of the caucus vote and 83 percent of state convention delegates.
He carried every borough and census area in the state by a wide margin over Hillary Clinton, the establishment candidate who went on to win the Democratic nomination, but his voters were disenfranchised by the Alaska Democratic Party during the scandal that was uncovered by Wikileaks.
During the fourth quarter of 2019, the most frequent donors to Sanders, an avowed Socialist, listed their job title as “teacher,” a trend that may worry conservatives already concerned about what increasingly radicalized teachers are instructing children in the classrooms of America.
According to the Sanders campaign, the top five most commonly listed employers of his donors are Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, the U.S. Postal Service, and Target.
Sanders has been a harsh critic of Amazon and Walmart, as well as other corporations that do not pay the $15 an hour minimum wage that he wants as the federal minimum. Amazon does pay $15 an hour, as of last year.
Other campaigns that announced their fundraising amounts for the fourth quarter were Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang.
Buttigieg raised $24.7 million, while Yang says he raised $16.5 million.
Buttigieg’s campaign says he received over 700,000 individual donations.
Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to supporters late last week saying that she had raised just over $17 million so far in the fourth quarter. That’s a significant drop from the $24.6 million she raised in the third quarter. Her final number has not been announced for the fourth quarter, but will probably come in close to $19.5 million.
Joe Biden set a note to his supporters earlier this week, pushing for donations in the final two days of the year. In the third quarter he raised $15.7 million, far less than the $21.5 million he raised in the second quarter.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar raised $4.8 million in the third quarter and has not yet announced her fundraising totals for the fourth quarter.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg entered the race on Nov. 24, 2019, and has already spent at least $155.3 million on political ads as he tries to muscle his way onto the field. He has not announced his fourth quarter fundraising, but it’s likely to be insignificant, since he is self-funding his campaign.
The Democrats’ next debate is Jan. 14 at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Hosted by CNN and the DeMoines Register, this seventh debate will be limited to those who secured 225,000 unique donors and earned 5 percent or more in four DNC-sanctioned national polls, or 7 percent in two DNC-sanctioned “early state” polls.
Those qualifying for the debate so far are Biden, Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg.
On Thursday, Julian Castro dropped out of the race. The former Housing and Urban Development Secretary made his announcement in a video published by the New York Times, saying, “With only a month until the Iowa caucuses and given the circumstances of this campaign season, I’ve determined that it simply isn’t our time.”
As for the president, the Donald Trump campaign raised $46 million in the fourth quarter. Although that is more than any individual Democrat candidate, the large Democrat field as a whole will have raised more than $80 million in the fourth quarter.
Bernie Sanders has many good talking points but where “the rubber meets the road” there is little traction.
I lived in Vermont for several years while attending college, but after finishing my degree and venturing out into the “forced to work” camp, I quickly saw there was little opportunity in the green mountains to build the life I was looking to achieve.
The social welfare blanket that is placed upon the residents there drives wages down low (just try and make $15 an hour in VT).
Like it or not, Capitalism is the system we have and reform will not come with talking points such as “I will turn the post offices into socialized banks”.
What we need is a leader who can bring corporations and manufacturing back to America…end offshore tax havens and secure a safe and clean environment for future generations.
Yes, Bernie’s heart is in the right place, but if you look at Vermont you will see their economy and GDP is much similar to AK (at the bottom of the list for our country).
Banks are not to be trusted, but there are worse things than our current banking system and at the top of the list is the USPS as a bank.
“What we need is a leader who can bring corporations and manufacturing back to America…end offshore tax havens and secure a safe and clean environment for future generations.”
The guy in office is doing just that, I didn’t know you were a Trump supporter Steve.
Maybe if Trump would have torn up NAFTA like he promised, but re-writing it to allow companies like FORD to siphon manufacturing out of the U.S. will not help.
Neither will allowing big agriculture to grow for cheap in Mexico while we subsidize our farmers $19 billion to “not farm” their soil.
Sometimes we just can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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For what you have listed above, none of the Democratic candidates for president will do any better than Trump, and they have all said that their plans will do much worse.
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Politics, ain’t it just a bitch.
Of course they did. There is an example of a union running an entire county. It was called the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union would have worked if we hadn’t bankrupt them in an arms race. I’m not advocating for the Soviet Union because obviously they suck the big one. Had we going in after world war II like Patton wanted to do, and take care of the USSR China and everybody else then they have a big ol Union called the United States of America running the show on this planet exclusively, think of all the money we would have saved and lives. But people were tired of fighting, wanted to take a breath, and here we are today fighting the same old wars that could have been ended. The same political fight is happening now. We never learn it’s all the same stupid cycle.
Are teachers really that selfish and stupid that they would want Bernie Sanders in charge? I mean really…..I did have a few goofy teachers while in school…..but I didn’t know there were so many idiots in charge of the blackboards. God save our country and the kids!
Judy, the country won’t be saved by the likes of Bernie Sanders. Would you really want him to protect you from global terrorism, ISIS, nuclear Iran, North Korea?
Bernie Sanders is an ostrich. An old, goofy, Alz-like, patient….with a bad ticker, who thinks his 60’s rhetoric is relevant 50 years later. Any one who supports him is plain ol’ DUMB…..
All taxpayer funneled money into the coffers of Bernie Sanders by teachers and their union. It’s a giant racket perpetrated on American taxpayers.
Anyone over 30 years old who supports Bernie Sanders, is an abject loser. Those under 30 who support him are too stupid to know any better.
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