Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been making a direct appeal Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s supporters, hiring staffers associated with the various “Draft Warren” movements and vowing to bring on even more.
Sanders recently hired Blair Lawton of the “Run Warren Run” group, which tried to draft Warren into the race, to help him organize in Iowa. And he has been emphasizing on the stump how close he and Warren are on a variety of policy issues, especially their opposition to Obamatrade.
“Senator Warren is a good friend of mine and her views and mine are pretty close on most of the major issues, so we’ll be bringing in some of those people into our organization,” Sanders reportedly said during the weekend.
Before Clinton started to move closer to Sanders in opposing Obamatrade, Sanders called her out for her silence on the issue, saying he could not believe “how any candidate cannot have a position on what is a major, a major issue facing the American people.” Sanders has also said that it is “hard for me to understand how you can run for president of the United States and not take questions” in a reference to Clinton’s avoidance of the press since she announced her candidacy two months ago.
Like Warren, Sanders has also railed against the so-called “billionaire class” and the political establishment with which the Clintons have been associated–even more so after the numerous revelations regarding crony capitalism in Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash.
Though Sanders still trails Clinton by significant margins in Iowa and New Hampshire, he has closed the gap to within 12 points in New Hampshire, which holds the first-in-the-nation primary. Sanders finished just eight points behind Clinton in a recent straw poll at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention.