Sanders gains steam as Iowa caucus nears
CARROLL, Iowa — Fresh off a strong debate performance and buoyed by rising poll numbers, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders returned to Iowa with an air of vindication.
“We began this campaign some nine months ago. The media was saying, ‘Bernie Sanders, he’s an interesting guy, he has interesting ideas but he’s a fringe candidate. We already have the anointed candidate, the inevitable candidate,’” Sanders told hundreds of supporters gathered Tuesday afternoon at a winery here.
“Well, a lot has happened in the last nine months,” he said, “and the inevitable candidate is not quite so inevitable.”
The crowd roared in support.
Sanders, the professorial democratic socialist with an unruly cloud of white hair and wildly gesticulating arms, smiled and nodded in approval.
It’s a heady time for the independent Vermont senator. On Thursday, a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll found Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton leading him by 2 percentage points among likely Iowa caucus-goers, well within the poll’s margin of error in the state that holds the first nominating contest in the nation in less than two weeks.
The news out of New Hampshire, which holds its primary eight days later, was even better — he has led Clinton in six of the seven polls that had been taken this year. A CNN/WMUR poll released Tuesday had him ahead, 60 percent to 33 percent.
On the stump, Sanders connects with the frustrations of liberal voters who are tired of Washington politicians and establishment politics in the same way that GOP front-runner Donald Trump connects with those on the right.
Sanders rails against injustices that he says are harming working families: the economy is “rigged,” the disparities in income and wealth among Americans are “grotesque,” wages are “too damn low,” lax campaign finance rules are “undermining American democracy.”
