Has Bernie Sanders finally figured out how to appeal to minorities?

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UCLA student, Maral Milani, center, cheers for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as he speaks at a rally last month in Santa Monica, CA. The primary in California is June 7. (Washington Post/Matt McClain)
Updated 04 June 2016
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Has Bernie Sanders finally figured out how to appeal to minorities?

CHICO, Calif: Bernie Sanders first touched down in California 10 months ago, and close to 28,000 people filled the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena to see him. Just two staffers made the trip. There was something dreamlike about the crowd, and something promising, too.
"By December, when we were looking down the road, California stuck out as a place to compete," said Sanders's campaign manager Jeff Weaver in an interview.
Today, Sanders travels around California in a caravan of SUVs and campaign buses. The Secret Service guards his hotel rooms and scans the lines where people wait up to six hours to hear the senator speak. And at long last, his crowds look just like the electorate of the state he is trying to win - young and racially diverse - and they howl with approval after every sentence of a speech that has hardly changed since Iowa.
Sanders is in striking range of a victory in the nation's largest state thanks to an early decision to play here and a long campaign to convert nonwhite voters that has taken root here in ways that it didn't in other states that front-runner Hillary Clinton won. The principal reason? Young Latinos and Asian Americans, who have registered in huge numbers here in part to oppose Donald Trump, and who seem to be coalescing around Sanders.
It may be too late for Sanders. He could win California Tuesday and still effectively lose the nomination the same day, when five other states will also hold primaries. And the campaign worries that Clinton's virtually insurmountable delegate lead could lead television networks to call the race early and depress late-in-the-day turnout on the west coast.
But in the Sanders stump speech, and in his interactions with voters, there are clues to how he broke through with non-white votes. Immigration is now an issue of morality and workers' dignity; gone are the days when, in sync with some labor leaders, he said that only people like David and Charles Koch wanted "open borders." At a Thursday rally in Modesto, Sanders promised to legalize workers by executive order if Congress did not pass "comprehensive" reform.
"Today, there are 11 undocumented people in this country, and when you are a worker, and when you are undocumented, you get cheated and you get exploited every single day," he said. "What your employer can do to you if you are an undocumented worker is a disgrace."
One day earlier, at a forum for Asian American and Pacific Islander voters in Palo Alto, Sanders traded the microphone with activists who raised specific concerns about racism and job security. As he has long done at forums like this, Sanders pivoted with every answer to talk about the larger systemic problems with the country.
But that changed when one voter brought up immigration. She asked Sanders about the "two million plus" people deported under the Obama Administration, and about deportations to come. He started his answer with a story about his parents, immigrants from Poland. Then he described his visit to Friendship Park, along the U.S.-Mexican border, one of the events meant to penetrate Spanish-speaking media.
"Anyone been there?" he asked. "It's a beautiful park, right on the ocean. At that park, there is a fence - a very heavily screened fence - and as I understand it, on weekends, for a few hours, people from both sides of the border can get through the border and talk to each other."
The room was cramped, and hot, with a few open doors doing little to air it out. Sanders did not usually get this personal.
"Literally, because of the nature of the screen - which is very, very tight - the only physical contact that husbands and wives and children can have, is literally putting their pinkies through their fence," he said. "No hugging. No kissing. That's the kind of contact they have. And what a tragedy that is."
Since the start of primary season, Sanders has struggled to earn the support of minorities. The main barrier has been black voters, who overwhelmingly rejected the self-described democratic socialist and handed Clinton her still-strong delegate lead in a string of southern states. Sanders had hoped to do better with Latinos, but his ability to do so seemed shaky after he lost the Texas primary to Clinton back in March.
But California offered a unique opportunity. According to a January 2016 study by the Pew Research Center based on tabulations of 2014 Census data,, eligible voters who are Hispanic skew younger in California than elsewhere in the country, and make up a larger slice of the state's Democratic electorate. As another Pew study from 2011 noted, the average age of Latinos born in California was just 18; the average age of white Californians was 44.
There was also hope for Sanders in polling. A Field Poll of the Democratic race last May put his overall support among likely Democratic voters at 5 percent. By the end of the year, he had climbed to 35 percent overall, and to 32 percent among nonwhites.
"That was even though he'd barely campaigned in California," said Weaver. "We hadn't even advertised here. There was just a tremendous movement with Latino voters."
The Clinton campaign watched this happen all year, and at key moments, like Nevada's caucuses and Illinois's close primary, it appeared to hold off the tide. In 2008, Clinton won California's Latino voters by a 35-point margin over Barack Obama. Among Latinos younger than 30, she won by 30 points.
Yet in this week's final pre-primary Field Poll, Clinton led with Latinos by just four points. The Sanders campaign believes he has progressively sliced into her numbers by winning landslide support from younger voters, including Latinos.
Sanders sees these gains as evidence that early losses with nonwhite voters were tricks of the front-loaded Southern campaign schedule. In California, he proved that nonwhite voters could be won over if they simply learned who he was. In a telephone interview Thursday, he said his message is now resonating more with minority voters not because he's doing much differently but because of a greater familiarity with him.
"Let me give you my prediction," he said of his performance in California. "If there is a record-breaking turnout, I think we will win by big numbers."
"We focused on three things in California: Bernie barnstorming the state, outreach to new voters, and campaigning heavily among the Latino community," said Robert Becker, who served as the campaign's state director in Iowa and Michigan before decamping here. "The last poll has shown we're currently winning there, and that's not an accident. We've put a heavy emphasis in holding conversations with those communities."
In the first six months of 2016, 1.8 million new California voters were registered. Latino registration was up 123 percent compared to the same period in 2012. The rise of Donald Trump propelled that increase, but Sanders seemed to reap the benefits.
"We're doing very well with Latinos, in general, and very, very well with younger Latinos," Sanders told Rolling Stone last week. "What's been very interesting is that the demographic splits have been less white, black and Latino than they have been on age."
The support has gotten impossible to miss. Last week, at Sanders's rally in Ventura, some voters wore T-shirts portraying a young Sanders wincing as police wrest him away from a civil rights protest. The sound system, cycling through the usual mix of revolution-centric songs by Pearl Jam and Tracy Chapman, added Latin hits including "Lo Gozadera" and "Madre Tierra (Oye)."
One voter, 35-year old Guadalupe Potocacetpl, showed up in the "brown beret" gear of a Chicano nationalist group. He'd protested Trump at a Phoenix rally and started having conversations with fellow alienated activists who'd jumped aboard with Bernie.
"I met a lot of Bernie supporters, and I liked every single reason they were supporting him," he said. "At one point, I wasn't even going to vote because of the outcome of what Obama did - the deportations, the promises that didn't come through. But then I saw Bernie and he gave me a little bit of hope again."
Not far away, brothers John and Brian Meza, 22 and 19, were talking about the reasons they'd come to Bernie and the reasons their elders had not.
"I started finding news about Bernie on social media, and finding out about Hillary the same way - what she'd said, whether she had changed her mind," said Brian Meza. "The older people are getting their news from TV so they don't see that."
Sanders has not ignored TV. He was on the California airwaves, to the tune of $1.5 million, before Clinton was. More importantly, three months before the primary, his campaign shelled out to broadcast a short film called "Tenemos Familias" on Univision. It told the story of Florida tomato pickers, which Sanders had discovered while in his first Senate term, and which he had promoted from his Washington perch.
The ad did not make much of a dent in Florida, but the Sanders campaign could not focus on Florida as it could California. At the end of April, Sanders earned is-it-over headlines when early-state staffs were fired. But the plan was always to consolidate in California.
"I think you see on an overall basis that he does much better when he has been able to focus on a single state," said Weaver. "You can build on the rallies in single states, versus in multiple states, where the impact is diluted."


Hungary to withdraw from ICC as Netanyahu arrives despite warrant

Updated 10 sec ago
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Hungary to withdraw from ICC as Netanyahu arrives despite warrant

BUDAPEST: Hungary said Thursday it will begin the procedure of withdrawing from the world’s only permanent global tribunal for war crimes and genocide.
“Hungary will withdraw from the International Criminal Court,” Gergely Gulyás, who is Prime Minister Viktor Orbán chief of staff wrote in a brief statement. “The government will initiate the withdrawal procedure on Thursday, in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework.”
The announcement came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, despite an international arrest warrant against him over his conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Hungary’s government, led by right-wing populist Orbán, extended the invitation to Netanyahu in November after the ICC, based in the Hague, Netherlands, issued the warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity.
Orbán, a close Netanyahu ally, has called the arrest warrant “outrageously impudent” and “cynical.” Member countries of the ICC, such as Hungary, are required to detain suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil, but the court has no way to enforce that and relies on states to comply with its rulings.

Tornadoes, heavy rains rip across central, southern US

Updated 03 April 2025
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Tornadoes, heavy rains rip across central, southern US

  • Violent storms are forecast to ravage the country for several days

Tornadoes ripped across a wide swath of central and southern United States on Wednesday, destroying homes and businesses and bringing down power lines and trees.
The National Weather Service said there had been at least 15 reports of tornadoes in at least four states by late Wednesday.
Eight people have been injured across Kentucky and Arkansas, including one critically injured in Kentucky’s Ballard County, local officials said.
Late Wednesday, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency across the state due to the storms, which also brought hail and torrential rain.
The NWS said millions of people were under alerts for tornadoes and flash floods and that dangers would continue into early Thursday.
Violent storms are forecast to ravage the country for several days, the NWS said, with Wednesday just “the beginning of a multi-day catastrophic and potentially historic heavy rainfall event.”
“The word for tonight is ‘chaotic,’” said Scott Kleebauer, a NWS meteorologist. “This is a large expanse of storms migrating slowly to the east, stretching from southeast Michigan down into southeastern Arkansas.”
The town of Nevada, Missouri, was hit by a tornado. Writing on social media, the state’s Emergency Management Agency said it caused “major damage to several businesses, power poles were snapped and several (empty) train cars were flipped onto their sides by the powerful storm!“
The NWS issued tornado and flash flood warnings for parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma.
It called the rain threats for Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi in the coming days a “generational flood event” with some locations forecast to see as much as 15 inches (38.1 cm) of rain by the weekend, which could cause rivers to burst their banks and cause “catastrophic river flooding.”
More than 400,000 customers had their power knocked out across the storm-hit area, according to PowerOutage.us.


Boat carrying migrants capsizes near Greek island

Updated 03 April 2025
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Boat carrying migrants capsizes near Greek island

  • Greece is one of the main entry points into the European Union for people fleeing conflict and poverty
  • The Greek government has cracked down with increased patrols at sea

ATHENS: A broad search and rescue operation was underway early Thursday near the eastern Greek island of Lesbos after a boat carrying migrants capsized while heading to the island from the nearby Turkish coast, Greece’s coast guard said.
Weather in the area was reported to be good, and it was unclear what caused the boat to overturn early Thursday morning. The coast guard said 23 people have been rescued. There was no immediate information on the survivors’ nationalities or the type of vessel they had been using.
There were no specific reports of missing people, but a sea and land search and rescue operation was continuing, with three coast guard vessels, an air force helicopter and a nearby boat searching for potential further victims.
Greece is one of the main entry points into the European Union for people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, with many making the short but often treacherous journey from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands in inflatable dinghies.
The Greek government has cracked down with increased patrols at sea, and many smuggling rings have shifted their operations south, using larger boats to transport people from the northern coast of Africa to southern Greece.


Search for long-missing flight MH370 suspended: Malaysia minister

Updated 03 April 2025
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Search for long-missing flight MH370 suspended: Malaysia minister

  • The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Kuala Lumpur: The latest search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been suspended, Kuala Lumpur’s transport minister said, more than a decade after the plane went missing.
“They have stopped the operation for the time being, they will resume the search at the end of this year,” Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a voice recording sent to AFP on Thursday by his aide.
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has not been found.
Loke’s comments come just one month after authorities said the search had resumed, following earlier failed attempts that covered vast swathes of the Indian Ocean.
An initial Australia-led search covered 120,000 square kilometers (46,300 square miles) in the Indian Ocean over three years, but found hardly any trace of the plane other than a few pieces of debris.
Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the United States, led an unsuccessful hunt in 2018, before agreeing to launch a new search this year.
“Right now, it’s not the season,” Loke said in the recording, which was made during an event at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday.
“Whether or not it will be found will be subject to the search, nobody can anticipate,” Loke said, referring to the wreckage of the plane.


Myanmar earthquake toll crosses 3,000; forecast rains pose new threat for rescuers

Updated 03 April 2025
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Myanmar earthquake toll crosses 3,000; forecast rains pose new threat for rescuers

  • Last Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake jolted a region home to 28 million, toppling buildings and flattening communities
  • Conditions could get even tougher for the huge relief effort after weather officials warned of unseasonal rain

BANGKOK: The death toll from Myanmar’s devastating earthquake has surpassed 3,000, with hundreds more missing, as forecasts of unseasonal rain presented a new challenge for rescue and aid workers trying to reach people in a country riven by civil war.
Last Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake, one of the Southeast Asian nation’s strongest in a century, jolted a region home to 28 million, toppling buildings, flattening communities and leaving many without food, water and shelter.
Deaths rose to 3,003 on Wednesday, with 4,515 injured and 351 missing, Myanmar’s embassy in Japan said on Facebook, while rescuers scramble to find more.
But conditions could get even tougher for the huge relief effort after weather officials warned unseasonal rain from Sunday to April 11 could threaten the areas hardest-hit by the quake, such as Mandalay, Sagaing and the capital Naypyidaw.
“Rain is incoming and there are still so many buried,” an aid worker in Myanmar told Reuters. “And in Mandalay, especially, if it starts to rain, people who are buried will drown even if they’ve survived until this point.”
There have been 53 airlifts of aid to Myanmar, the embassy in Japan added in its post, while more than 1,900 rescue workers arrived from 15 countries, including Southeast Asian neighbors and China, India and Russia.
Despite the devastation, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing will leave his disaster-stricken country on Thursday for a rare trip to a regional summit in Bangkok, state television said.
It is an uncommon foreign visit for a general regarded as a pariah by many countries and the subject of Western sanctions and an International Criminal Court investigation.
Unseasonal rain
The rains will add to the challenges faced by aid and rescue groups, which have called for access to all affected areas despite the strife of civil war.
The military has struggled to run Myanmar since its return to power in a 2021 coup that unseated the elected civilian government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
The generals have been internationally isolated since the takeover and Myanmar’s economy and basic services, including health care, have been reduced to tatters amid the strife.
On Wednesday state-run MRTV said a unilateral government ceasefire would take immediate effect for 20 days, to support relief efforts after the quake, but warned authorities would “respond accordingly” if rebels launched attacks.
The move came after a major rebel alliance declared a ceasefire on Tuesday to assist the humanitarian effort.
Nearly a week after the quake, searchers in neighboring Thailand hunting for survivors combed a mountain of debris left after a skyscraper in the capital, Bangkok, collapsed while under construction.
Rescuers are using mechanical diggers and bulldozers to break up 100 tons of concrete to locate any still alive after the disaster that killed 15 people, with 72 still missing.
Thailand’s nationwide toll stands at 22.