Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont, fought frontrunner Hillary Clinton to a virtual tie in Monday’s (February 1) Iowa caucus, and telling supporters as the results came in that they have begun a “political revolution”.
Sanders congratulated Clinton for a hard fought contest, after Clinton said earlier that she was breathing a “big sigh of relief” after the results.
After winning just 0.6 percent of the vote, Maryland Mayor Martin O’Malley announced that he was suspending his campaign, whittling the democratic contest down to just two candidates.
Sanders’ upstart campaign has relied on a grassroots fundraising campaign and has his populist economic message has drawn strong support from young people.
Monday’s results were a message to the establishment, said Sanders.
“I think the people of Iowa have sent a very profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment, and by the way to the media establishment. And that is, given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics,” he said.
Sanders has called for a political revolution to force fundamental political and economic change, and today he told Iowans who voted for him their revolution had begun.
“The powers that be – wall street with their endless supply of money, corporate America, the large campaign donors, are so powerful that no president can do what has to be done alone. And that is why, and that is why, what Iowa has begun tonight is a political revolution,” he said.
On the Republican side, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz beat billionaire Donald Trump in Iowa’s presidential nominating contest, upsetting the national front-runner in the race to be their party’s White House nominee. (Reuters)