Bernie Sanders's latest campaign ad shows just how differently he and Hillary Clinton see political change happening. 
 
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 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (center) is joined by his wife, Jane (right), and grandchildren, Dylan, 4, and Ella, 7, onstage after speaking at a town hall meeting at the Orpheum Theater in Sioux City, Iowa, Jan. 19, 2016. 
 
 Bernie Sanders has just released a sweeping, lump-in-your-throat campaign ad that he hopes will push him over the top to victory in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Whether that happens remains to be seen, of course. But one thing about the new spot seems certain: It shows how Senator Sanders and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have fundamentally different visions of the nature of the American political system. 
 
 More specifically, it shows where Sanders and Mrs. Clinton disagree about how political change happens, and the president’s role in that process. 
 
 OK, that’s a lot to hang on a one-minute video that features virtually no words, so let’s back up and start from the beginning. The Sanders spot is a closer. In other words, it’s the sort of political ad that campaigns issue when voting is only a short time away. It’s meant to solidify inchoate feelings into a positive candidate image, pushing supporters to the polls. 
 
 Music is maybe the spot's most distinctive feature. It is set to the unmistakable strains of the Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song “America,” from the opening lyric, “Let us be lovers/We’ll marry our fortunes together.” 
 
 Distinctly American scenes – small towns, tugboats, skylines, and farms – flash by, changing with each beat of the song. 
 
 Then scenes of Sanders rallies begin appearing. Suddenly, it cuts to a flashing montage of people who have sent their photo to the Sanders campaign as a sign of support. Hundreds of them. 
 
 “Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike/They’ve all come to look for America,” goes the song. 
 
 Then it’s all Bernie, with footage from his raucous rallies over the “All come to look for America” chorus. 
 
 Message: It’s all about the people, the people who will power the political revolution, the political revolution that will result in free college and Medicare for all in America. Among other things. 
 
 As other pundits have noted, Sanders is positioning himself as this election cycle’s Barack Obama, someone who’s promising inspiration and hope and change, without talking a lot about that change’s viability. 
 
 “Bernie Sanders is increasingly sounding an optimistic, inspirational message that promises a bright, progressive future that can, and will, be secured through mobilizing the masses, particularly younger voters, a vision that Clinton surely sees (just as she saw Barack Obama’s vision) as vague, airy, and naive,” writes left-leaning Greg Sargent Thursday in his "Plum Line" blog at The Washington Post. 
 
 Comparing Sanders’s “America” ad to Clinton’s latest spot is instructive in this context. “Airy” is not a word you’d use to describe the latter. It’s called “This House,” and it’s mostly about the burdens and responsibilities of the person who calls 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home. 
 
 “The person who lives here has to solve problems as big as the world,” it begins. Then it cuts to a shot of Navy fighter aircraft launching from a carrier. 
 
 The ad wants to make sure you know that Clinton believes she is up to this job. It’s more traditional, in the sense that it ticks through her biography, reminding viewers that she’s been first lady, a senator, and secretary of State. (Has anyone forgotten this?) 
 
 It mentions existing programs, such as Medicare, and says Clinton will prevent them from being “privatized.” It’s not about mobilizing the power of the people; it’s about day-by-day political trench warfare as it is actually lived in D.C. 
 
 “She’ll stop the Republicans from ripping all of our progress away,” it concludes. 
 
 That’s the choice. Sanders is pushing inspiration, and what he terms a political revolution that would eventually produce a swerve in the political direction of the country. Clinton is talking in more practical terms, about how she’s already prepared to do the job of president as she sees it. ||||| The new television ad that was released by Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersOvernight Health Care: States fight Trump on non-ObamaCare plans | Analysis looks into surprise medical bills | Left hits industry group working against single payer Overnight Energy: Trump Cabinet officials head west | Zinke says California fires are not 'a debate about climate change' | Perry tours North Dakota coal mine | EPA chief meets industry leaders in Iowa to discuss ethanol mandate Sen. Sanders blasts Zinke: Wildfires 'have everything to do with climate change' MORE's (I-Vt.) campaign, based on Simon and Garfunkel's song "America," is the most brilliant and appropriate campaign ad of the year so far, and may be the most important campaign ad since President Reagan's "Morning in America" ad. 
 
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 The ad perfectly captures the vision and spirit of the Sanders campaign and the mood of an America today that is the stuff of diverse people yearning to come together for common dreams and aspirations, at a time when many voters are hurting and hungering for a better life. The ad brings together music and video behind the Sanders message in a way that is fun to watch and memorable in substance and tone. 
 
 In his ad, Sanders, like Simon and Garfunkel in their song, paints a portrait of a people seeking a better and nobler and more hopeful nation. There is a poetry and romance to the ad, as there is a poetry and romance to politics at its best — something we see far too rarely in our politics of negativity, insults and attacks. There is no romance or passion to Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonHillicon Valley: FBI fires Strzok after anti-Trump tweets | Trump signs defense bill with cyber war policy | Google under scrutiny over location data | Sinclair's troubles may just be beginning | Tech to ease health data access | Netflix CFO to step down Signs grow that Mueller is zeroing in on Roger Stone Omarosa claims president called Trump Jr. a 'f--- up' for releasing Trump Tower emails MORE, Sanders's rival for the Democratic nomination, attacking Sanders for supporting single-payer healthcare, which most Democrats support, and becoming the candidate of ObamaCare. There is nothing uplifting when Republican front-runner Donald Trump Donald John TrumpAl Gore: Trump has had 'less of an impact on environment so far than I feared' Trump claims tapes of him saying the 'n-word' don't exist Trump wanted to require staffers to get permission before writing books: report MORE campaigns by insulting disabled people and calling women names such as "slobs" and "bimbos." There is a romance, passion, poetry and music to Sanders offering a long list of ways he wants to lift up America and change our politics, bringing it all together in a 60-second ad based on an iconic song with a video that shows Americans looking for America together. 
 
 The "America" ad is one that voters will want to see many times, unlike most political campaign ads, and it projects a message that is positive, uplifting and unifying, which embodies the spirit that we Americans want in our politics and our country. 
 
 When you watch the ad, think about it. I bet you will watch it more than once, as I did, and while they will not admit it, the campaigns of other candidates will wish they had thought of it themselves. 
 
 Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Chief Deputy Majority Whip Bill Alexander (D-Ark.). He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. Contact him at brentbbi@webtv.net. ||||| The campaign of Bernie Sanders debuted an inspirational ad on Thursday that features Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 song “America” as its soundtrack, but a spokesman for the candidate said it was not meant as an endorsement from the duo. 
 
 The spot has drawn strong reviews from ad makers, but also was the source of a fracas between the Sanders campaign and one of Hillary Clinton’s most prominent supporters. 
 
 Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Sanders, said that the music was properly licensed. A representative for Garfunkel said that singer gave his approval, while a rep for Simon, who also wrote the song, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 The one-minute ad features scenes from Sanders’ campaign rallies, along with images of everyday Americans at work in offices and on farms. The skyline of Des Moines is shown in one glimpse. 
 
 The campaign introduced the spot in a press release early on Thursday. “‘They’ve all come to look for America,’ sing Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in their classic folk rock anthem as faces flash on the screen of people backing Bernie’s insurgent campaign for president. 
 
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 “In Iowa alone, Sanders has spoken to more than 40,000 people at rallies and town halls since his campaign began last spring.” 
 
 The spot will run in Iowa and New Hampshire beginning on Friday. 
 
 The ad already has stirred up tensions between Sanders supporters and backers of Clinton’s. 
 
 David Brock, who founded the pro-Clinton PAC Correct the Record, told the Associated Press that the spot was a “slight” to the Democratic base, suggesting that it features too few people of color. 
 
 “From this ad it seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders,” Brock was quoted as saying. 
 
 That drew a rebuke from the Sanders campaign, which issued a statement calling Brock a “mudslinger.” 
 
 Briggs said that Sanders “doesn’t need lectures on civil rights and racial issues from David Brock, the head of a Hillary Clinton super PAC. Twenty-five years ago it was Brock – a mud-slinging, right-wing extremist – who tried to destroy Anita Hill, a distinguished African-American law professor. He later was forced to apologize for his lies about her. Today, he is lying about Sen. Sanders. It’s bad enough that Hillary Clinton is raising millions in special-interest money in her super PACS. It is worse that she would hire a mudslinger like David Brock. She should be ashamed of her association with Brock.” 
 
 Campaigns have been anxious to adopt classic American rock and folk songs at rallies and in ad spots. Republicans in particular have run into trouble from artists who claim that they did not give campaigns their approval to use their works, often with the worry that it would make it seem that they were giving their endorsement. Donald Trump, for instance, ran Neil Young’s “Rockin in the Free World” at his announcement speech in June. Young, however, said he never gave the campaign his approval and instead supports Sanders. 
 
 Supporters of Clinton and Sanders are planning a series of events in the next week before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. 
 
 On Monday, Chelsea Clinton is scheduled to visit Los Angeles for a series of fundraisers, including an event at the offices of Frank Gehry, with tickets starting at $250 per person. 
 
 On Tuesday, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Nealon, George Lopez and Paul Rodriguez are headlining a fundraiser at Jamie Masada’s Laugh Factory in Hollywood. Sanders will not be there, but each of the comics is expected to perform. ||||| The media is raving (“Perfect“; “Magnificent“)about the new ad by Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that features a song from a half-century ago by Sixties folk-rock icons Simon and Garfunkel called, “America.” The ad is reportedly targeted at voters in the first-in the-nation states of Iowa and New Hampshire. 
 
 The studiously crafted one minute ad has no voice over–just edits from ‘America’ over staged scenes and shots from Sanders campaign events. 
 
 
 
 The Simon and Garfunkel song is an ancient classic. Its use by Sanders is a revealing choice by the aging (74 years old) Sixties radical who is trying to appeal to voters who are focused on their future in the 21st Century. 
 
 More revealing is the choice of people featured and not featured in the one-minute ad. 
 
 There are no Americans in uniform featured in the Sanders ad; no military, no police and no firefighters. The war on terror and those serving on the frontlines including servicemen and women and first responders don’t matter in Bernie Sanders’ America. (Note: two police officers can be briefly glimpsed behind Sanders in one scene.) 
 
 The people in the Sanders ad, whether in tight staged shots or crowd shots, are overwhelmingly white with just a handful of token minorities featured in mostly tight shots. 
 
 The first twenty seconds of the ad features only white people. There are nine staged ‘day in the life’ scenes that open the ad–all featuring white men, women and children–including five scenes of white families. Then four campaign crowd scenes are shown with white people. 
 
 It is not until the eighteenth scene in the Sanders ad that the first minority is seen with a quick shot of a minority female campaign volunteer working a crowd. 
 
 It takes another twenty seconds for other minorities to be prominently seen in the Sanders ad. Then in a span of seven seconds five scenes with minorities are shown interspersed with a shot of Sanders walking in a parade with his white family: A lone Black person at a Sanders rope line surrounded by white people; Sanders hugging a Black woman; Sanders standing with a minority woman; a tight Sanders rally crowd scene featuring four minority men and women and finally a tight shot of a minority man holding his child. 
 
 The rest of the ad is crowd shots of Sanders rallies that are filled with white people, including the closing scene of a smiling Sanders on stage with a crowd of white people (with one minority) behind him. 
 
 The ad would fit right in the Sixties of Sanders’ radical youth when minorities were used as tokens by grandstanding white liberals. 
 
 Sanders has had a race problem from the beginning of his campaign that he has being trying to fix, as CNN reported in a July 3, 2015 report entitled, Bernie Sanders adds race, civil rights to his stump speech. 
 
 “Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator currently rising in polls against Hillary Clinton as they vie for the Democratic presidential nomination, responded to critics who say he hasn’t done enough to appeal to non-white voters during his raucous rally in Madison, Wisconsin, on Wednesday…” 
 
 One month later on August 8 in Seattle, Sanders infamously let Black Lives Matter activists charge the stage and take over his rally while he meekly stood by. 
 
 Oh and by the way: There are no Muslims in Bernie Sanders’ ‘America.’ ||||| Folk rock is at the front and center of Bernie Sanders’ latest television advertisement. 
 
 As warm scenes of spinning windmills, tugboats, parents and children, farmers and cows and tossed hay bales play across the screen, Simon & Garfunkel sing “America,” a popular song from their 1968 album Bookends. The mood of the ad, set to air in Iowa and New Hampshire, is hopeful: a Des Moines skyline, dancing at a campaign rally and plenty of shots of a grinning Mr. Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate. 
 
 “They’ve all come to look for America,” the folk rock duo sings as the sign-waving masses cheer for Mr. Sanders, a Vermont senator electrifying liberals across the country. 
 
 The irony, though, is that “America” is probably not the song Mr. Sanders’ operatives think it is. Like Ronald Reagan, the Republican president who mistook Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A” for a cheerful patriotic anthem when it was really an indictment of the Vietnam War, the ambience of this spot doesn’t match the meaning of the lyrics in full. 
 
 Mr. Sanders, who has an interest in folk music, may know this himself. The crescendo of “America” is not about crowds of ecstatic people coming together in the name of American glory and community. Written by Paul Simon, who like Mr. Sanders is a 74-year-old native New Yorker, the protest song is at best bittersweet, describing the journey of a man leaving Saginaw, Mich. to find his fortunes elsewhere. 
 
 The Sanders camp was probably smart to omit the second to last verse of “America” from the ad. In the verse, the true meaning of the song emerges, that of an illusory nation failing to deliver on its lofty promise. 
 
 “So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine; and the moon rose over an open field,” the duo sings. ” ‘Kathy, I’m lost,’ I said, though I know she was sleeping. ‘I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.’ ” 
 
 The song climaxes with the verse most prominently featured in the ad: “Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they’ve all come to look for America.” But the listener is not left with the sense of hope fulfilled in the new America. Rather, the image lingers of the young couple riding a bus toward an uncertain destination, anxious and disillusioned. The traffic streams by on a loveless turnpike. They are still looking for America. 
 
 Of course, “America” may be a fitting song for Mr. Sanders. On the stump, the self-professed democratic socialist has perfected a fire-and-brimstone delivery that uplifts as much as it depresses, describing a country succumbing to environmental degradation and the greed of oligarchs. The Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, is not so dire, and she has been attacked by Mr. Sanders for being in bed with the wealthy interests causing so much destruction. 
 
 Maybe the choice of song isn’t so ironic after all. ||||| Often, the worst part of political ads is having to listen to them. Between the ominous muckraking about an opponent's past and the stilted rhetoric of sound bites from the stump, it quickly becomes an auditory annoyance throughout election season. 
 
 So regardless of your politics, you have to admire Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders' choice to forego any audio in his new campaign ad except for the rising swell of Simon & Garfunkel's 1968 single "America." 
 
 Of course, it's a decision that carries its own risks. Sanders' populist politics are already a bit of a throwback to the 1960s and '70s, and some might see the song as indicative of his campaign lacking a certain modernism. And obviously he could be using this ad time to share policy stances that separate him from his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton. 
 
 But on the other hand, it shows yet again that he's not fettered by politics as usual—and that his campaign's Spotify playlist is probably sweet as hell. ||||| Published on Jan 21, 2016 
 
 "They’ve all come to look for America..." 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ★ About Bernie: 
 
 Bernie Sanders is a Democratic candidate for President of the United States. He is serving his second term in the U.S. Senate after winning re-election in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote. Sanders previously served as mayor of Vermont’s largest city for eight years before defeating an incumbent Republican to be the sole congressperson for the state in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lives in Burlington, Vermont with his wife Jane and has four children and seven grandchildren. 
 
 
 
 Bernard “Bernie” Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant parents and grew up in a small, rent-controlled apartment. His father came to the United States from Poland at the age of 17 without much money or a formal education. While attending the University of Chicago, a 20-year-old Sanders led students in a multi-week sit-in to oppose segregation in off-campus housing owned by the university as a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) officer. In August of 1963, Sanders took an overnight bus as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech firsthand at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. 
 
 
 
 After graduation, Bernie moved to Vermont where he worked as a carpenter and documentary filmmaker. In 1981, he was elected as mayor of Burlington as an Independent by a mere 10 votes, shocking the city’s political establishment by defeating a six-term, local machine mayor. In 1983, Bernie was re-elected by a 21 point margin with a record amount of voter turnout. Under his administration, the city made major strides in affordable housing, progressive taxation, environmental protection, child care, women’s rights, youth programs and the arts. In 1990, Sanders was elected to the House of Representatives as the first Independent in 40 years and joined the Democratic caucus. He was re-elected for eight terms, during which he voted against the deregulation of Wall Street, the Patriot Act, and the invasion of Iraq. 
 
 
 
 In 2006, Sanders defeated the richest man in Vermont to win a seat in the U.S. Senate as an Independent. Known as a “practical and successful legislator,” Sanders served as chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs where he authored and passed the most significant veteran health care reform bill in recent history. While in the Senate, Sanders has fought tirelessly for working class Americans against the influence of big money in politics. In 2010, he gave an eight-and-a-half hour filibuster-like speech on the Senate floor in opposition to extending Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy. In 2015, the Democratic leadership tapped Bernie to serve as the caucus’ ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. 
 
 
 
 Known for his consistency on the issues, Senator Sanders has supported the working class, women, communities of color, and the LGBT community throughout his career. He is an advocate for the environment, unions, and immigrants. He voted against Keystone XL, opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, wants to expand the Voting Rights Act, and pass the Equal Rights Amendment. 
 
 To learn more about Bernie on the issues, click here: https://berniesanders.com/issues/ ||||| Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images 
 
 Above is Bernie Sanders’ new 60-second TV commercial, a version of which will begin running Friday in Iowa and New Hampshire. The Sanders camp has suggested they may have one more ad to unveil before voters in the two states kick off the presidential nominating contests, but with 11 days to go until the Iowa Caucus and 19 days to go until the New Hampshire primary, the commercial serves as something of a nontraditional closing statement in the two states for Bernie. Its simplicity stands in stark contrast to the more detailed and traditional spot Hillary Clinton is currently running in the two early voting states. 
 
 It’s pretty great! As an Iowa resident, I’ve been forced to watch an untold number of political ads over the past several months, and this one represents a welcome break from the usual campaign promises and stale warnings that usually interrupt my evenings on the couch. 
 
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– The Bernie Sanders campaign has launched the most talked-about ad of the 2016 election season to date—"America," set to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's song of the same name. A roundup of coverage: Is it really "the most important campaign ad since President Reagan's 'Morning in America' ad?" This blogger makes the case for the spot at the Hill because of its mixture of "romance" and substance. The Observer suggests that the real meaning of this "bittersweet" protest tune might not be what the Sanders campaign thinks it is. The spot illustrates a contrast in campaigns: Sanders is "pushing inspiration," while Hillary Clinton is "talking in more practical terms." The Christian Science Monitor digs in. This blogger at Gateway Pundit hates it: The first glimpse of a minority comes in the 18th scene. Clinton ally David Brock picks up on that theme, as reported in this AP story. "It seems black lives don't matter much to Bernie Sanders." AdWeek is a fan, especially because of the ad's lack of words, but wonders whether the 1968 song might date the 74-year-old Sanders. As an Iowa resident deluged with ads, Josh Voorhees at Slate is pretty happy with this one, "a welcome break from the usual campaign promises and stale warnings." What do Simon and Garfunkel think? The latter gave his approval, while Simon hasn't commented, reports Variety. The Sanders campaign says the song's use—all properly legal—isn't meant to signal an endorsement from the pair.