April 6, 2018


News and Views


PARDON ME FOR MAKING NO COMMENTS, BUT I DON’T FEEL VERY WELL. I’LL DO BETTER TOMORROW. YOU SHOULD LIKE AT LEAST SOME OF THESE ARTICLES. I ASSUME THAT THE ARTICLES ARE THE STAR OF THIS SHOW, ANYWAY.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ground-zero-in-russia-u-s-election-infrastructure-hack/
Ground zero in Russia's hack of U.S. election infrastructure
60 Minutes investigates Russia’s widespread cyberattack against state voting systems
Apr 06, 2018

The threat Russia posed to our democratic process was deemed so great, the Obama Administration took the unprecedented step of using the cyber hotline – the cybersecurity equivalent of the nuclear hotline – to warn the Kremlin to stop its assault on state election systems. Russian operatives had launched a widespread cyberattack against state voting systems around the country. Bill Whitaker goes to Illinois, where election officials were the first to report and defend against the cyber strike for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, April 8 at 7:00 p.m., ET/PT on CBS.

It began with a call from a staffer at the Illinois Board of Elections headquarters in Springfield to Steve Sandvoss, the executive director. "I picked up the phone. And it's like, 'Steve, we got a problem.' And I said, 'Okay, what happened?' He says, 'We've been hacked.' I said, 'Oh my God.'" The server for the voter registration database, with the personal information of 7.5 million Illinois voters, had slowed to a crawl. The IT team discovered a malicious attack. "I suppose you could analogize it to a fast-growing tumor-- in the system. It was unlike anything we had ever seen," Sandvoss recalls.

Today, seven months from the midterm elections, key members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence tell Bill Whitaker much more needs to be done to secure the election infrastructure at the heart of America's democracy. Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) and Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) say the U.S. needs a comprehensive strategy to fight cyber war but concede upgrading systems around the country by the 2020 presidential election will be a challenge. They are backing legislation to set minimum cyber security standards.

"This could be the Iranians next time, could be the North Koreans next time," says Lankford. "This is something that's been exposed as a weakness in our system that we need to be able to fix that, not knowing who could try to test it out next time," he tells Whitaker.

The sweep of the Russian operation in 2016 caught the Obama administration off guard. Michael Daniel, President Obama's cyber czar, envisioned a troubling scenario: hacked voter rolls causing chaos on Election Day. "Lines begin to form. Election officials can't figure out what's going on," says Daniel. "You would only have to do it in a few places. And it would almost feed on itself."

Asked by Whitaker if the government is doing enough to defend the country from the cyber equivalent of a foreign attack on American soil, Senator Harris says, "No. We're not doing enough."

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tired-of-being-told-no-sidelines-john-kelly/
AP April 6, 2018, 6:24 AM
Trump freezes out chief of staff John Kelly, says he's "tired of being told 'no'"

WASHINGTON - When President Donald Trump made a congratulatory phone call to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, White House chief of staff John Kelly wasn't on the line. When Mr. Trump tapped John Bolton to be his next national security adviser, Kelly wasn't in the room.

And when Mr. Trump spent a Mar-a-Lago weekend stewing over immigration and trade, Kelly wasn't in sight.

Kelly, once empowered to bring order to a turbulent West Wing, has receded from view, his clout diminished, his word less trusted by staff and his guidance less tolerated by an increasingly go-it-alone president.

John Kelly may also be on his way out, sources say

Emboldened in his job, Mr. Trump has rebelled against Kelly's restrictions and mused about doing away with the chief of staff post entirely. It's all leading White House staffers and Trump allies to believe that Kelly is working on borrowed time.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has governed at breakneck pace, ousting aides and issuing surprise policy announcements on Twitter, recreating the helter-skelter feel of his first months in office. Kelly's allies maintain that his retreat is strategic. They suggest that the belief that Kelly was Mr. Trump's savior was an overstated idea all along and that the chief of staff is now content to loosen the reins and allow an increasingly comfortable president to govern from his gut.

But those close to the president say that Mr. Trump has increasingly expressed fatigue at Kelly's attempts to shackle him and that while Mr. Trump is not ready to fire Kelly, he has begun gradually freezing out his top aide.

Mr. Trump recently told one confidant that he was "tired of being told no" by Kelly and has instead chosen to simply not tell Kelly things at all, according to a person who was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

CBS News' Major Garrett reported in mid-March that congressional and administration sources had suggested that Kelly could be on his way out. And in Mr. Trump's West Wing, once the rumors begin that an aide's exit is forthcoming, the "stink" on that staffer never leaves, according to one of the nearly dozen White House aides, former administration officials and outside advisers who spoke to The Associated Press under the same conditions.

As Kelly's public profile and behind-the-scenes influence has faded, speculation has risen that chaos could return.

"It's not tenable for Kelly to remain in this position so weakened," said Chris Whipple, author of "Gatekeepers," a history of modern White House chiefs of staff. "More than any of his predecessors, Donald Trump needs an empowered chief of staff to tell him what he does not want to hear. Trump wants to run the White House like the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and it's simply not going to work."

Kelly was once a fixture at the president's side, but Mr. Trump has now cut him out of a number of important decisions.

For months, Kelly made it a practice to listen in to many of the president's calls, particularly with world leaders. While he is still on the line for some of those conversations, Kelly was not part of the call Mr. Trump made to Putin last month from the White House residence during which Mr. Trump ignored advisers' advice against congratulating the Russian president on his re-election.

Although Kelly had agitated for the removal of outgoing national security adviser H.R. McMaster, he counseled Mr. Trump against hiring Bolton, a neo-conservative media commentator. Mr. Trump did it anyway, offering the job to Bolton in a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office and telling his chief of staff about it later.

As Mr. Trump spent the Easter weekend at his Florida resort and tweeted about his tariffs plan, Kelly was out of state, though the men did consult by phone. While Kelly has fumed about the ethics questions swirling around Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, Mr. Trump was at least initially more supportive of Pruitt, telling him, "We've got your back."

The president also has cast aside the constraints the retired four-star Marine general tried to place on Mr. Trump about whom he could see and speak to. Those restrictions led shunned advisers to try to undermine the chief of staff in the press and with Mr. Trump. For months, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was barred from the White House, only to return when Kelly was overruled by Mr. Trump, according to four White House aides and outside advisers.

Many in the West Wing believed that Kelly's attempts to curtail Mr. Trump's interactions with Lewandowski, as well as Trump allies such as David Bossie and Anthony Scaramucci, were always destined to fail and alienate the president, who has privately contemplated recreating the freewheeling nature of his campaign and Trump Tower office. Kelly also has clashed with Mr. Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who had his security clearance downgraded after a policy change written by the chief of staff.

Some White House aides contend that Kelly has been intentionally giving Mr. Trump more leeway to be himself and that Kelly recognizes that's what Mr. Trump wants. But allies acknowledged Kelly's receding power and said he's trying to keep his head down and focus on policy, such as the plan to mobilize the National Guard along the U.S. border with Mexico.

The White House declined to make Kelly available for an interview. In public, Mr. Trump praises his chief of staff, telling Marines in California last month that Kelly probably "likes what you do better than what he does, but he's doing a great job."

The speculation surrounding Kelly echoes the treatment of his predecessor, Reince Priebus, who was the subject of months of questions about how long he would last on the job. Priebus eventually resigned under pressure.

Kelly also no longer commands the same respect among some quarters of the staff. His role came under harsh scrutiny this year over his handling of the controversy surrounding ousted White House aide Rob Porter, who was accused of domestic abuse.

Kelly's shifting version of events elicited frustration from former communications director Hope Hicks, who had been dating Porter, and dismayed a number of West Wing staffers. That episode frustrated Trump, who still remains agitated about an interview that Kelly gave to Fox News months ago in which he suggested that Mr. Trump had "evolved" in his thinking about the need for a wall on the Mexican border.

Kelly, who took the job last July, had previously told confidants he hoped to be on the job for a year. One person familiar with his thinking said the chief of staff recently voiced doubt he would make it that far.

59 Photos -- Trump's team

© 2018 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-announces-issue-ads-to-be-treated-like-political-ads/
CBS NEWS April 6, 2018, 2:01 PM
Facebook announces advertisers running political, issue ads must be verified

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced two more steps the company is taking to head off interference in the 2018 midterm elections. From now on, Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook blog post published at 2 p.m. ET, advertisers who want to run political or issue ads will have to be verified.

"To get verified, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location," Zuckerberg wrote. "Any advertiser who doesn't pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads."

The company has also built a tool allowing anyone to see all of the ads a page is running, Zuckerberg says. It's a tool that's being tested now in Canada and will be launched globally this summer.

There will also be a searchable archive of past political ads, he writes.

Facebook will additionally require that those who manage "large pages" will have to be verified, too, making it more difficult for people using fake accounts to run pages and "to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content," according to Zuckerberg's post.

"These steps by themselves won't stop all people trying to game the system," Zuckerberg concedes. "But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads. Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform, and that's why we support the Honest Ads Act*. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online."

Facebook said Wednesday that the number of users whose data was swept up by Cambridge Analytica could be as high as 87 million, significantly more than the figure of 50 million that was widely reported at the outset of the data scandal more than two weeks ago.

Zuckerberg has agreed to testify in two congressional hearings next week, one before the Senate and one before the House. He'll appear at a rare joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees on April 10 -- a day before he testifies at the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Both hearings will focus on privacy issues -- on Facebook's use and protection of user data.

CBS News' Julianna Goldman contributed to this report.


Honest Ads Act* --
https://www.axios.com/facebook-ad-changes-5da9d7f7-d297-488b-9f46-9729101201f8.html
Facebook says it supports Honest Ads Act, cracks down on issue ads
Sara Fischer, David McCabe April 6, 2018 6 hours ago

Photograph -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies next week. Photo: Paul Marotta/Getty Images

Facebook said Friday it was supporting a bill that increases disclosure requirements for online political ads.

Why it matters: It’s the first time the company has endorsed a specific form of regulation of its platform, and it comes as founder Mark Zuckerberg prepares to face irate lawmakers on Capitol Hill next week. As recently as last week, company officials were dodging whether they supported the bill.

The details:

The bill, called The Honest Ads Act, was introduced in October by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Ad exec Rob Leathern wouldn’t say whether he would endorse the act just a week ago on a call with reporters.

But on Friday, Zuckerberg said in a post that election "interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform, and that's why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online."

The impact: Facebook's support of the bill is politically advantageous — its competitors haven't backed the bill — but the legislation doesn't yet have the momentum to pass.

Other updates:

Facebook says it plans to release its highly-anticipated public, searchable political ads archive in the U.S. in June. (The company is currently testing a feature in Canada that lets users see ads being run by a specific page.)

The company also says that moving forward, only authorized advertisers, who can confirm their identity and location, will be able to run "issue ads," or ads that advocate for a certain political cause. It also says people who manage Pages with large numbers of followers will need to be verified.

In a twist, the company said it would be applying some of these efforts to Instagram as well.

This story has been corrected to reflect that previous comments about the Honest Ads Act were made by Rob Leathern, not Rob Goldman, and the precise nature of the feature being tested in Canada.



https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-6-questions-mark-zuckerberg-still-needs-to-answer/
By RICHARD NIEVA CNET April 6, 2018, 4:00 PM
6 questions Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg still needs to answer

Video – Privacy Watch

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did something this week he hardly ever does: He took questions from reporters on a call and invited others to listen in. The call on Wednesday came more than two weeks after news broke about Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that harvested data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission.

Zuckerberg's company has been in the hot seat ever since, facing questions about how it handles information on the 2 billion people who use its network. After fessing up to the scandal last week in blog posts and a few interviews, Zuckerberg decided to be more open and host an hour-long media call to answers questions about how he's trying to fix the situation.

If you don't feel like reading the call's transcript, here's what went down. Zuckerberg apologized for the scandal and took sole blame for it, noting that he hasn't fired anyone over the mishandled data. He addressed data protection rules in Europe. He said he'd been "too flippant" when he dismissed reports that Russian groups, among others, were planting fake news on Facebook to sway US voters in the 2016 presidential election. (In fact, two days after that election, he called the influence of fake news on the outcome a "pretty crazy idea").

What you need to know about Facebook & Cambridge Analytica
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admits "mistakes" in Cambridge Analytica scandal
Zuckerberg also said he's still the right person to lead Facebook, despite calls this week from a prominent investor that he step down as board chairman.

"Life is about learning from the mistakes and figuring out what you need to do to move forward," the 33-year-old said. "The reality of a lot of this is that when you are building something like Facebook that is unprecedented in the world, there are going to be things that you mess up."

Zuckerberg will need to stay in an answering mood. He's set to testify before Congress in hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday. Lawmakers are expected to grill Zuckerberg on everything from Facebook's data practices to possible regulation of the company's ad business -- the primary source of its revenue and profit.

While he covered a lot of ground this week, there are questions Zuckerberg didn't answer. Here are six for him specifically. We contacted Facebook about these issues, but the company didn't respond. So we are offering our own commentary below each one.

1. Why should Facebook users keep trusting and believing you when it comes to privacy?
Facebook waited years to disclose what happened with Cambridge Analytica, and it only came clean after it learned that The New York Times and the UK's Guardian and Observer newspapers were about to publish stories. Why should users trust the company to be forthright at this point? In an interview with TechRepublic, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the social network is already losing that trust.

Trust factor is key because Facebook's business depends on people feeling comfortable enough to share information within the social network. If that trust disappears, so does the influx of data and, with it, Facebook's ad business.

2. Is Facebook just too big and complicated for you and your team to manage?
Facebook draws more than 2 billion people a month. That's almost twice as big as the biggest nations. Zuckerberg said the company will hire 20,000 people to work on security and content moderation. Is that enough? He also said Facebook will look to use artificial intelligence in the future to help police Facebook, but acknowledged it would be years before the technology is good enough to be dependable at a large scale. This brings us to the next question.

3. You said it will take "years" to fix Facebook. Can we wait that long?
Elections continue to happen and bad actors continue to try to manipulate voters using Facebook and other social media platforms. Zuckerberg said his company will "never fully solve security -- it's an arms race." But it feels like we're all just waiting for the next disaster.

4. You tossed around the idea of an independent "Supreme Court" for Facebook to settle disputes about acceptable speech and content. What would that look like?
Who would make up the panel? How would people be able to argue their cases? How would the "justices" be appointed?

5. How's the fact-checking effort going?
Facebook recently said it will fact-check photos and videos, not just links to written articles. That's great. But what about the efforts it's already been making? A report published Wednesday by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School said Facebook's fact-checking partners want more transparency. So, how effective have their efforts been?

6. The big tech companies -- Facebook, Google and Twitter -- have said they work together when it comes to security and data protection. Specifically, how has Facebook worked with other companies?
Zuckerberg said he hopes other tech platforms can learn from the figurative "playbook" Facebook has put out for dealing with abuse. What did they learn from it? What has Facebook learned from the other companies?

This article was originally published on CNET.

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-seize-classified-ad-site-backpage-com-over-sex-trafficking-ads/
CBS NEWS April 6, 2018, 4:39 PM
Feds seize classified ad site Backpage.com over sex trafficking ads

The Justice Department has seized the popular classified ads website backpage.com over the sex trafficking ads on its website. On Friday, some visitors to the site were greeted with a message that said, "backpage.com and affiliated websites have been seized as part of an enforcement action" by the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division.

U.S. officials allege Backpage has earned more than $500 million in revenue from prostitution since it was founded in 2004.

The Justice Department says almost every sex trafficking case involves online ads, mostly from the backpage.com website. Further, the department contends that the biggest issue concerning these websites is that they facilitate sex trafficking for people who would have been too sheepish to pursue sex on the streets, especially those looking for children. DOJ views this action as a major development in its overall effort to combat sex trafficking, although there have been previous cases against Backpage that were thrown out.

Another agency participating in the action is the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

Last year, a Senate report alleged Backpage "knowingly concealed evidence" of child sex trafficking through its editing "by deleting words, phrases, and images indicative of criminality". Senate investigators said words like "young," "little girl" and "innocent" were removed while "the remainder of the ad would be published."

Backpage executives called to testify before Congress after the report was published took the fifth. The company accused senators of conducting a "witch hunt" against the site and said it cooperates with police departments to locate victims.

Some victims believe the federal action will help their civil lawsuits against Backpage. But others are concerned about the website shutting down because it could drive more child sex trafficking to the dark web and make it harder to find victims.

Reporting by CBS News' Paula Reid

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/us/politics/bernie-sanders-obama-mississippi.html
Bernie Sanders Courts Black Voters Anew. But an Obama Reference Stings.
By JONATHAN MARTIN APRIL 5, 2018

Photograph -- Senator Bernie Sanders, who struggled for support from black voters in his 2016 presidential bid, at a forum in Jackson, Miss., on the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. Credit Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

JACKSON, Miss. — Senator Bernie Sanders insists he hasn’t decided whether to run again for president, but a 14-hour sprint across the Deep South on Wednesday made clear that he is not only thinking about it but is already trying to remedy his most significant vulnerability in 2016: his lack of support from black voters.

Mr. Sanders began the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination with a morning speech and a march in Memphis, helpfully captured in a picture on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s Twitter feed. He appeared at an economic justice forum here in Mississippi’s capital, speaking before a crowd that included far more African-Americans than his campaign events typically drew. And he wound down over a plate of wings at a late-night dinner with Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Jackson’s new mayor, a 35-year-old African-American and progressive.

Even more than recapturing the magic of 2016 in the early nominating states, Mr. Sanders’s prospects in 2020 would hinge in large part on whether he could garner far stronger support from African-Americans than the less than 20 percent of the vote that he won from them in Southern states.

Still, the same unvarnished bluntness, lack of polish and unwavering devotion to his tried-and-true message — which made him a global hero of the left — continue to create challenges for him. On Wednesday night, after the Jackson forum, Mr. Sanders faced sharp criticism from some African-Americans who thought he had reduced the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, to merely being what Mr. Sanders called a “charismatic individual.”

If any 2020 coalition of Sanders voters was as monochromatic as his supporters in the last campaign, he would find it nearly impossible to win the Democratic nomination, especially given the abundance of party leaders expected to run who could raid his political base of white progressives.

So the senator from Vermont — a state where the largest city has but one black barbershop — has begun trying to make inroads across the South and beyond and the country with black voters, who are perhaps the most crucial pillar in a multicandidate Democratic primary.

View image on Twitter

Reverend Al Sharpton
✔
@TheRevAl
Sen Bernie Sanders joined us in Memphis. #MLK50

5:03 PM - Apr 4, 2018
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1,097 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

Earlier this year, Mr. Sanders invited Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Washington, telling Mr. Richmond, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, that he wanted to work more closely with the group. He recently convened a meeting in his office with two black economists who have researched issues of racial and class inequality. And later this month he is expected to join the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a North Carolina-based black pastor who has risen to prominence as a social justice activist, for a joint event at Duke University.

Yet even as he moves to forge new relationships among African-American leaders and Democrats, Mr. Sanders is demonstrating why it may prove difficult for him to command broad support with a bloc of voters who usually do not rally to the more liberal candidates in Democratic primaries.

Photo

The crowd that turned out to see Mr. Sanders on Wednesday night in Mississippi was more racially diverse than that at many of his 2016 campaign rallies. Credit Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

Appearing with Mr. Lumumba, the Jackson mayor, at the forum on economic justice, Mr. Sanders was asked how he would engage millennial voters and remake the Democratic Party.

He immediately won applause by declaring that the party’s business model had “failed” and then recalled, as he and many Democrats often do, that the party had lost about 1,000 state legislative seats in the last decade.

But Mr. Sanders also said that these setbacks happened on the watch of “a charismatic individual named Barack Obama,” whom Mr. Sanders also called “an extraordinary candidate, brilliant guy.”

Few in the audience responded adversely, many of them having witnessed firsthand the decline of the state and local party. But the fact that his only mention of Mr. Obama was in reference to Democratic defeats, particularly during an event honoring Dr. King in a heavily black Deep South capital with a painful racial history, struck some critics as tone-deaf and even insensitive.


Jeffrey Wright
✔
@jfreewright
Bernie Sanders down in Mississippi today - IN MISSISSIPPI - giving a master class on expressing TOTAL ignorance of how black folks work.

12:07 AM - Apr 5, 2018
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967 people are talking about this
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Imani Gandy
✔
@AngryBlackLady
did you mention that he was president much less that it was historic?

Because I saw you call him a ‘charismatic individual’—not even leader!

An ‘extraordinary candidate’—not even president!

And ‘brilliant guy’.

Perhaps your office will release a transcript of your remarks. https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/981957626241089536 …

2:23 PM - Apr 5, 2018
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234 people are talking about this
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On Thursday, Mr. Sanders and his top aides responded angrily to the suggestion he had diminished Mr. Obama. The senator tweeted that “some have so degraded our discourse that my recognition of the historical significance of the Obama presidency is attacked.”


Bernie Sanders
✔
@BernieSanders
It's unfortunate that some have so degraded our discourse that my recognition of the historical significance of the Obama presidency is attacked. https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/981878100500926467 …
2:11 PM - Apr 5, 2018
7,257
3,181 people are talking about this
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The episode was also a reminder of another hurdle in his way: the feud between many Sanders supporters and Democratic leaders and Hillary Clinton loyalists, which has been raging ever since he challenged Mrs. Clinton for the nomination. Mr. Sanders remains very much an insurgent in a party he still has not formally claimed as his own, a fact he made clear in a less remarked-upon part of the same answer: “The establishment,” he said, “doesn’t go quietly into the twilight.”

Mr. Richmond, the Congressional Black Caucus leader, said he did not think Mr. Sanders had slighted Mr. Obama. The mistake Mr. Sanders made, according to Mr. Richmond, was that he did not go the next step and explain why Democrats incurred so many down-ticket defeats during the Obama years.

“The real question is why it happened and it’s no secret: Everybody underestimated the backlash that would come to the first African-American president,” he said.

As Mr. Sanders seeks to gain support from black voters, the Jackson forum was also notable for what the senator did not say to the audience, which skewed young and was almost evenly divided between blacks and whites.

While briefly noting that Dr. King had been a “major political inspiration” for him, Mr. Sanders said nothing about his history as a civil rights activist and his arrest demonstrating against segregation as a college student.

“That’s the No. 1 selling point,” said Teneia Sanders Eichelberger, who plays in a husband-wife band here and supported Mr. Sanders in 2016. “For me and for my grandmother, who’s 82, she loved that about him.”

But unless they already knew about Mr. Sanders’s connection to the movement, hundreds of would-be Democratic primary voters left the gathering none the wiser. (Mrs. Clinton won the 2016 Mississippi Democratic primary with nearly 83 percent of the vote; Mr. Sanders took 16.5 percent.)

Part of Mr. Sanders’s appeal is that he is not a typical, lip-biting politician, ever on the lookout to find a personal connection with any audience. But his relentless focus on the policy dimensions of social justice, which has been the animating cause of his life, can also deprive him of creating bonds that can be essential, especially in building a multiracial coalition.

“Yes, I’m a fairly private person and I don’t like to talk about every aspect of my life,” Mr. Sanders acknowledged in a dressing-room interview after the forum. “I think a lot of politicians do that in a way that is not appropriate.”

Upon hearing the suggestion that recounting his own youthful activism would be compelling to an audience full of younger voters becoming activists in their own right, he all but rolled his eyes.

“Somebody might be interested in what I did 50 years ago, that’s fine,” Mr. Sanders said with an evident lack of enthusiasm. “Or what I did yesterday. But what people have got to start focusing on is not me. It’s how we transform America.”

Bernie Sanders memorabilia was on sale outside the forum in Jackson, Miss., where the senator spoke on Wednesday night. Credit Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

Mr. Sanders’s reticence can frustrate even his closest supporters.

“If you’re talking to a black audience, you’ve got to say, ‘I was fighting for fair housing in the ’60s,’” said Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a top Sanders surrogate in 2016, noting that he has “an interesting story to tell.”

Several of those at the forum Wednesday night said they liked what they heard. And as is typical for Mr. Sanders, who in 2016 did best among millennials, the younger black attendees were the most enthusiastic.

“To hear his voice and see what he stands for, it’s powerful,” said Cassandra Hogue, 26, who backed Mrs. Clinton two years ago as part of what she called “a legacy thing” for the Clintons but said she would be open to supporting Mr. Sanders in 2020.

Deterrian Jones, 19, made the two-hour-plus drive from the University of Mississippi to Jackson and clutched a handful of buttons he bought from vendors outside, one of which featured Mr. Sanders’s unmistakable visage and logo but with a new slogan: “Hindsight 2020.”

“He talks to millennials, unlike other politicians,” Mr. Jones said.

Yet Mr. Sanders could encounter trouble among black voters if he faces a black Democrat in the primary. “Black voters take special pride in being able to vote for viable African-American candidates,” said former congressman Mike Espy, who plans to run for the Senate.

And while few in attendance at the forum said it so directly, many alluded to Mr. Sanders’s age — he is 76 — and voiced a desire for new blood.

“It’s really time for change,” said Rachael Ighoavodha, 24, a recent Jackson State University graduate sporting a “Black Girl Magic” pin. “It’s time for something new.”

In the interview, Mr. Sanders repeatedly assailed what he called the media’s excessive focus on personality over substance. But when confronted with questions about his age, he replied with good-natured humor on a process question.

”What did you say?” he said, feigning hearing loss and gripping a reporter by the shoulder. “Get me my cane.” Yes, age is a fair question, he said. “But health is a factor,” Mr. Sanders quickly added, before turning to an aide and asking how many times the senator had missed work because he was ill.

The staffer could not recall a single instance.


RELATED COVERAGE
Bernie Sanders a Virtual Unknown Among Black Voters JUNE 24, 2015

NOW THIS IS RACIST!!:
lookup --https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2018/04/05/georgia-city-meeting-n-word-orig-vstop-bdk.cnn



MADDOW

THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/5/18
Icahn role shows common thread in Pruitt ethics, policy scandals
Rachel Maddow looks at the relationship between Donald Trump adviser Carl Icahn and EPA chief Scott Pruitt and how Icahn's business interests intertwine with Pruitt's ethics scandals and peculiar EPA policies. Duration: 22:20


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/5/18
Sasse on Trump trade war: 'the dumbest possible way to do this'
Rachel Maddow reports on Donald Trump raising the stakes in the trade war he is starting with China, and the reaction of Republican Senator Ben Sasse who says Trump is "threatening to light American agriculture on fire." Duration: 1:14


HELP THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/5/18
Wallace: Pruitt scandal is a White House dysfunction story
Nicolle Wallace talks with Rachel Maddow about why the scandals surrounding EPA chief Scott Pruitt have outgrown the bounds of his agency and are now part of the story of the dysfunctional Donald Trump White House. Duration: 6:37


HELP THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/5/18
Mueller not done with Manafort, also scrutinizing Michael Cohen
Rachel Maddow reports on new court filings that show that Robert Mueller's prosecutors have executed another search warrant on Paul Manafort as recently as a month ago, and a new report that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has come into the investigative spotlight. Duration: 2:40


HELP THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 4/5/18
With two indictments already, Mueller still digging into Manafort
Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about understanding special counsel Robert Mueller's strategy as he continues to execute search warrants on Paul Manafort and interviews Donald Trump's lawyer and business associates. Duration: 6:27