The first contest of the 2016 presidential race for Democrats, the Iowa caucus, is this Monday, February 1. A Quinnipiac University poll released today shows Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton, the candidate once called “inevitable,” by four points in Iowa. As one final pitch for the best candidate, here are 16 reasons why all Iowans should vote for Sanders.

1. SANDERS IS SCANDAL-FREE

Polls from the end of 2015 show a colossal 60% of Americans do not think Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy; 36% think she is. With Bernie Sanders, it’s the opposite. 55% think Sanders is honest and trustworthy, 24% think he is not. This is due to, as Weekend Collective noted, the constant scandals and lies Clinton was and is involved in. Sanders’ long career in politics has been refreshingly devoid of scandal.

2. HE HAS MORE EXPERIENCE

Seriously. Clinton has only spent 8 years in an elected position, as senator for New York. She spent 4 years as Secretary of State and 8 years as first lady, both unelected positions. Contrast these 20 years of elected and unelected positions to Sanders’ 32 years of elected office. He spent 8 years as a mayor, 16 years in the House, and 8 years (and counting) in the Senate.

3. HE’S THE MOST POPULAR SENATOR IN THE NATION

Last year he had an 83% approval rating in Vermont, higher than any other U.S. senator in their respective states.

4. SANDERS REFUSES CORPORATE CASH

Clinton’s top donors are big banks and corporations like Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Time Warner. Sander’s top contributors are unions like the National Education Association, United Auto Workers, and the Laborers Union. Sanders declared he doesn’t want money from corporations or the wealthy, and refuses to use a Super-PAC.

5. HE SHATTERS RECORDS

Sanders reached 2.5 million campaign donations faster than any presidential candidate in U.S. history, including Barack Obama. He has also drawn far larger crowds than Clinton (her campaign claims Clinton prefers small crowds), such as 26,000 people in Boston, 28,000 in Portland, 27,500 in Las Vegas. Nearly 400,000 have flocked to see him since his campaign began.

6. UNLESS YOU MAKE $250,000 A YEAR, YOUR TAXES WON’T RISE MUCH

If you make between $28,800 and $250,000, your taxes will go up about 2%. Those making more will see their taxes raised 5-7%. This, as well as tweaks to capital gains and dividend taxes, will increase government revenues by nearly 50%, helping fund Sanders’ bold new social programs.

7. SANDERS CALLS FOR FREE HEALTHCARE AND COLLEGE FOR ALL, AND A JOBS PROGRAM FOR THE UNEMPLOYED

Through his tax plan described above and by ending corporate tax breaks and closing tax loopholes that allow the wealthy and corporations to hide much of their money in tax havens outside the U.S., Sanders proposes creating a jobs program in which the unemployed would work to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure and making public colleges and medical care free for all citizens.

His website lays out how each proposal will be paid for (and how some proposals will generate revenue greater than their cost). With healthcare, for example, what a typical family pays currently for private insurance is far greater than said family’s increase in taxes to cover universal healthcare. There will no longer be a need for the insurance giants Clinton supports.

8. HE SUPPORTED GAY RIGHTS LONG BEFORE CLINTON

While Clinton supported anti-gay legislation in the 1990s and didn’t voice support for gay marriage until 2013, Sanders called for the legalization of gay marriage in 2009, opposed the discriminatory legislation that Clinton supported, and has shown in his words and actions to stand for human rights since 1972, when he called for an end to laws banning homosexual behavior in Vermont.

9. HIS “SOCIALISM” IS NOTHING TO BE SCARED OF

Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, but his policies are that of a social democrat. Basically, his “socialism” is just an expansion of popular Democratic programs–expanding Medicare to cover all citizens, expanding Social Security, changing Pell grants and student loans into free college, more closely regulating Wall Street and giant corporations, etc. See Weekend Collective’s “Bernie Sanders Barely Scratches the Surface of What Socialism Is.”

Also, think about it: calling yourself a socialist is not likely to make a presidential bid easier. It speaks to Sanders’ willingness to stand for what he believes, to be honest and open.

10. MOST AMERICANS AGREE WITH HIM

Sure, don’t do something just because everyone else is doing it. But, as the Washington Post reported, a majority of Americans agree with his stances on key issues. This country may be more “socialist” than you thought.

11. SANDERS MARCHED WITH DR. KING

It’s true. Not only did Bernie Sanders join in the famous 1963 March on Washington, he was involved with the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at the University of Chicago, protesting police brutality and organizing sit-ins for racial equality. He was arrested in 1962 for protesting segregation.

12. HE WANTS A $15 HOURLY MINIMUM WAGE; CLINTON THINKS THAT’S TOO GENEROUS

Sanders has been calling for higher wages for working people for a long time, and believes the minimum wage must be raised to $15 an hour. Clinton, caught between a liberal base that demands an end to the widespread poverty in the U.S. and her corporate backers, settled on a $12 hourly minimum wage. This despite the ample evidence that higher minimum wages actually leads to job growth and raises prices only an insignificant degree.

13. SANDERS WAS, UNTIL RECENTLY, IGNORED BY THE MAJOR MEDIA, BUT OVERTOOK CLINTON ANYWAY

For example, after the first Democratic debate in October, media outlets like CNN declared Clinton the winner (CNN is owned by Time Warner, which donates to Clinton’s campaigns), but many polls and focus groups showed viewers thought Sanders the victor, from Fox News to Slate, to Fusion, Time, The Drudge Report, Daily Kos, and CNN itself! Despite being dismissed, Sanders is now leading by a hair in Iowa, crushing Clinton in New Hampshire, and gaining ground in other states and nationally.

14. SANDERS JOINS ORDINARY PEOPLE IN PROTESTS

Sanders, an activist since his days in college, still finds time to join causes he believes in. He joined the NAACP Journey for Justice march in D.C. in September, Verizon workers on a picket line in New York in October, fast food workers striking for a higher wage in D.C. in November.

15. HE FLIES COACH

Sanders is not a poor man. It is estimated Sanders is worth $330,000, Clinton $15 million (not counting Bill Clinton’s even greater wealth). Still, Sanders is a humble, down-to-earth man. People often take pics of him as he flies coach around the country.

16. HIS UNOFFICIAL CAMPAIGN SLOGAN IS LIKELY THE GREATEST IN AMERICAN HISTORY

“Feel the Bern,” created by Sanders fanatics, represents the mass excitement over his political revolution. Sanders supporters are so passionate, and as Sanders is a person of deep integrity and vision, who wouldn’t want to join?

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As Democratic primaries and caucuses in more diverse states approach, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are locked in a complex battle for the black vote.

Both candidates find themselves with powerful allies. The former head of the NAACP, Ben Jealous, threw his support behind Sanders, saying in a recent interview black voters need to compare the candidate records:

In the 80s, [Clinton] chaired the Children’s Defense Fund, but then in the 90s the CDF came out with the “super predator” theory, which said there were some kids who were so sociopathic by age six months that they were beyond redemption… And [the theory] was not used against young white men in Columbine, it was almost always used to explain the actions of young urban black men…

It comes down to the trio that MLK referred to as the triplets of evil: racism, militarism, and greed. Bernie Sanders has been very consistent in fighting racism, in fighting stupid wars–Vietnam or Iraq, [and] he has been very consistent in fighting greed. When you take those with Hillary, it just gets confusing, confusing.

Jealous also pointed to out at the same time Sanders was involved in the civil rights movement in Chicago, Clinton supported Barry Goldwater, a Republican.

Others condemned Clinton’s support for actions Bill Clinton took during his time in office. On Wednesday, Michelle Alexander, author of the famous The New Jim Crow, wrote a scathing article in The Nation entitled “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”

While stressing “this is not an endorsement for Bernie Sanders,” Alexander says legislation like Bill Clinton’s crime bill and welfare reform, which Hillary Clinton supported, “decimated black America.”

She marvels at how fellow blacks are “eager to get played,” at their support for Clinton and her husband:

What have the Clintons done to earn such devotion? Did they take extreme political risks to defend the rights of African Americans? Did they courageously stand up to right-wing demagoguery about black communities? Did they help usher in a new era of hope and prosperity for neighborhoods devastated by deindustrialization, globalization, and the disappearance of work? No. Quite the opposite.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me and a famous article in The Atlantic called “The Case for Reparations,” said on Wednesday he would be voting for Sanders (but rejects the term “supporter”).

Coates (a critic of Sanders’ opposition to reparations), while noting Sanders also voted for Bill Clinton’s crime law, said Clinton’s support for the law and her Wall Street ties were concerning, and that he supports Sanders’ push to guarantee free college tuition for all and fight inequality and poverty.

Civil rights activist and actor Harry Belafonte, actor Danny Glover, rapper Killer Mike, and democratic socialist Cornel West, author of Race Matters, have endorsed Sanders. While Black Lives Matter has yet to endorse either, the lawyer for Walter Scott’s family recently switched his support from Clinton to Sanders, and Eric Garner’s daughter endorsed Sanders, starring in a powerful new video explaining her decision. Walter Scott and Eric Garner were killed in altercations with police.

Sanders met with Al Sharpton this week, but has yet to get his endorsement.

But Clinton has powerful support as well. On Thursday, the political action committee of the Congressional Black Caucus, comprised of 20 politicians and lobbyists, endorsed Hillary Clinton. Civil rights legend John Lewis questioned Sanders’ civil rights activism, declaring:

I never saw [Sanders]. I never met him. I was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for three years, from 1963 to 1966. I was involved with the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the march from Selma to Montgomery and directed [the] voter education project for six years. But I met Hillary Clinton. I met President [Bill] Clinton.

Supporters of Sanders, such a writer for Mother Jones, were quick to point out Sanders’ civil rights work was indeed “brief and localized” when compared to Lewis’, but considering Sanders was involved with the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Chicago–whereas Lewis worked in Southern states–they were unlikely to meet. Further, the March on Washington, which Sanders attended and Lewis spoke at, comprised hundreds of thousands of people. Sanders protested and organized sit-ins against police brutality and segregation during his time at the University of Chicago.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus that may lean toward Sanders noted the political action committee of the Caucus is a separate group. Congressman Keith Ellison tweeted emphatically that the Caucus itself “has NOT endorsed” a candidate and that the PAC decision was made “withOUT input from CBC membership, including me.”

The CBC as an organization represents the black members of Congress. U.S. Uncut, a popular liberal website, implied opening the decision to members might have helped Sanders, quoting The Intercept as saying,

Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide.

Some members of organizations that backed Clinton, like those of the Human Rights Campaign, rose up in rebellion over leader decisions.

But Clinton also has black actress Angela Bassett, famous for performances in What’s Love Got to Do With It? and most recently American Horror Story and Chi-Raq, speaking at campaign rallies for her. At a recent event at South Carolina State University,

Bassett said Clinton does care about black families, pointing to her work with the Children’s Defense Fund and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The actress also said Clinton is ready to have conversations about incarceration and the role of the government pertaining to black families.

As the candidates vie for support, this week Charles M. Blow of The New York Times condemned Sanders supporters for what he perceives as condescending attitudes toward black voters. His articled was called “Stop Bernie-Splaining to Black Voters.”

Frustrated by the “black people are voting against their interests [if they choose Clinton]” argument, Blow writes:

If only black people knew more, understood better, where the candidates stood — now and over their lifetimes — they would make a better choice, the right choice. The level of condescension in these comments is staggering.

Sanders is a solid candidate and his integrity and earnestness are admirable, but that can get lost in the noise of advocacy.

Tucked among all this Bernie-splaining by some supporters, it appears to me, is a not-so-subtle, not-so-innocuous savior syndrome and paternalistic patronage that I find so grossly offensive that it boggles the mind that such language should emanate from the mouths—or keyboards—of supposed progressives.

Blow believes this reflects old, racist ideas “that black folks are infantile and must be told what to do and what to think.”

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If there was one event in recent American memory during which people best showcased their willingness to believe things for which they had no evidence, surely it was the 2008 presidential election, when the far right accused Barack Obama of being a socialist, a Muslim, and a Kenyan.

These beliefs persist into the waning years of the Obama presidency. In 2010, 55% of likely voters believed Obama to be a socialist. In late 2015, 29% of Americans still think Obama is a Muslim, 20% think he is foreign-born.

The near future will make a mockery of the fear mongering and hysteria that birthed and perpetuated this mythology.

The United States is changing, for the better in the opinion of some, for worse in the opinion of narrow minded thinkers. Is it not obvious that the baseless attacks on Obama’s political beliefs, religion, and nationality necessitated the use of “socialist,” “Muslim,” and “foreigner” as vile slurs? Would not the far right oppose a similar vilification of “conservative” or “Christian” or the “native born” as ludicrous reasons why a presidential candidate should be disqualified for office?

By imagining that “those people” are less qualified for the presidency than others, we waste an enormous pool of human talent, discouraging people that could do a tremendous good in office, plus spitting on the notion of American freedom and equality.

Call it irony, karma, or justice, but it is not difficult to imagine the untruths about Obama will soon be the truths of other presidents. This is an important hope, as it could dispel fear and bigotry.

Indeed, the U.S. is already drawing close.

THE SOCIALIST

Bernie Sanders may or may not be the first socialist elected president.

Since entering the presidential race, Sanders has made enormous gains against the presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, even leading her in New Hampshire for a time.

Currently, in the key early battleground states, Clinton leads Sanders by the slim margin of 48%-41% in Iowa, 48%-45% in New Hampshire. This is far better than Barack Obama was doing against Clinton at the same time in 2008, before she lost her lead and came in third in Iowa.

From July through September 2015, Clinton raised $28.8 million and spent nearly all of it; Sanders raised $26.2 million and spent less than half. He’s spending far less and still in statistical ties. During this time, Sanders reached 1 million campaign donations faster than any presidential candidate in U.S. history; the average donation was $25. He takes union donations, refusing to accept corporate money, a stark contrast to Clinton, who is heavily funded by big banks and corporations.

Sanders draws the most massive crowds of any Democratic candidate and, before Donald Trump came along, of any candidate period. 11,000 people in Phoenix; 15,000 in Seattle; 28,000 in Portland; 27,500 in Los Angeles; 20,000 in Boston–twice the number that came to see Obama in 2007.

In a theoretical national contest with Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders does slightly better than Clinton. After the first Democratic debate in October, though media outlets like CNN declared Clinton the winner (CNN is owned by Time Warner, which donates to Clinton’s campaigns), many polls and focus groups showed viewers thought Sanders the victor, from Fox News to Slate, to Fusion, Time, The Drudge Report, Daily Kos, and CNN itself.

Perhaps Sanders’ rise can be attributed to the fact that many younger people don’t view “socialism” as a dirty word. In recent polls, 69% of those under 29 (and 50% of those 30-49) would be willing to vote for a socialist for president. Overall, 47% of Americans said they would.

The election and reelection of local socialist politicians, like Sanders in Vermont or Kshama Sawant in Seattle, points to the willingness of American voters to support candidates of radical political persuasion.

Though I imagine most Americans, both supporters and opponents of socialism, have a very limited understanding of what socialism is (to cure this, see my article “Bernie Sanders Barely Scratches the Surface of What Socialism Is”), it is not outside the realm of possibility that a socialist could one day take the White House…be it in one year or one hundred.

After all, most Americans agree with his ideas.

THE MUSLIM

Anti-Muslim bigotry reeks from high-profile Americans like Ben Carson, who suggested recently that a Muslim should not be president, to nameless Americans, like the man who told Trump, “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims.” He went on to claim Obama was a Muslim, that Muslims were in training camps plotting American deaths, and asked, “When do we get rid of them?”

Whether that was referencing terrorist networks or all American Muslims is open to speculation.

Trump, not one to defend Muslims, replied, “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things.”

The two Muslim Americans in Congress, who for all we know may one day run for the highest office, had strong words for intolerance of this sort. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim in Congress, said:

For Ben Carson, Donald Trump, or any other Republican politician to suggest that someone of any faith is unfit for office is out of touch with who we are as a people… It’s unimaginable that the leading GOP presidential candidates are resorting to fear mongering to benefit their campaigns, and every American should be disturbed that these national figures are engaging in and tolerating blatant acts of religious bigotry.

Congressman Andre Carson of Indiana said, “Saying that the U.S. shouldn’t elect a Muslim U.S. president is absurd as saying we shouldn’t elect a neurosurgeon as president.”

Obviously, anti-Muslim sentiment stems from hateful conservative myths that most Muslims are terrorists, looking to kill Americans and replace religious liberty and American democracy with an Islamic caliphate.

Fortunately, a recent poll shows 60% of Americans would actually be willing to vote for a Muslim for president. For 18-29 year olds, it’s 76%; for 30-49 year olds, it’s 67%, an encouraging sign that not only are many Americans far less prejudiced than Ben Carson, but that a younger, more tolerant generation is upon us.

THE FOREIGNER

The U.S. Constitution currently states that anyone who is not a natural-born citizen cannot be president. With this in mind, ultra-conservatives obsessed over Obama’s birthplace during the 2008 election (and of course much later), demanding to see his birth certificate, only to declare it fraudulent once it was made public. Trump was one of the leaders of this national embarrassment.

The notion that a man or woman who immigrated to the U.S., or a child adopted from abroad, should not be president amounts to nothing more than a nationalistic, “patriotic” belief that American-born people are somehow superior to foreigners, or have more of a “right” to be democratically elected and lead than foreign-born citizens.

Should one’s qualifications be based on the spot on the globe on which you chanced to be born, over which you had no control? Or whether you care enough about your new home, the United States, to seek public office, and whether voters agree with your ideas and vision?

Consider 10-year-old Alena Mulhern: born in China, adopted, a U.S. citizen since she was 10 months old, resides in Massachusetts.

She is one of many in the last decade to push for an Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment, like the one from 2003 that went nowhere in Congress (it was nicknamed the “Arnold bill,” as it would have made California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger eligible to run). The amendment would have declared foreign-born persons eligible for the highest office once they had been a U.S. citizen for 20 years.

“We should all have the opportunity to run for president… Just think of all the great candidates that would not be able to serve our country because of a law that came into existence over 200 years ago,” Mulhern recently told the Massachusetts State House.

She is part of that new generation that will broaden freedom for people of formerly slandered political ideologies, religions, and national origins. She will help bury the bigoted and outdated ideas that assaulted Barack Obama. She said of her own presidential ambitions:

I would be a great leader and bring people together. I would guide our country so it would be an even greater place to live, work, and raise a family. And most of all, I love my country. I want to serve my country, and this is my country.

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On July 26, 2016, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly received some criticism after claiming black slaves who constructed the White House were “well-fed” and offered “decent” housing. O’Reilly was offering some background information after Michelle Obama, in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, brought up the topic of slavery and the construction of her current residence. O’Reilly said:

In 1800, President John Adams took up residence in what was then called the Executive Mansion — it was only later on they named it the White House. But Adams was in there with Abigail, and they were still hammering nails, the construction was still going on. Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802. However, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor.

O’Reilly’s main point was that “there were others working as well,” not just slaves, to construct the White House, but his side note raised some eyebrows, including those of Abigail Adams, who promptly rose from her grave at United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, and began floating in the direction of New York City.

“Oh, hell no,” the ghost of Adams snapped as she reentered the physical world, before leaving the church grounds, says lawn care specialist Hank Emerson.

Highway motorists reported various mutterings of profanities from the apparition during its journey, including “That Bill fuckface O’Reilly” and “Silly rabbit. Trix are…for kids.”

Before her arrival at the Fox News headquarters at Rockefeller Center, word had already spread that Adams was coming for Bill, according to a gaffer who asked to remain anonymous. “I heard one of his assistants say he was off to a last-minute 3 p.m. luncheon. I’ve never seen Bill move that fast.”

The source says that when the assistant insisted they wouldn’t be able to wrap up production in time if he left, he allegedly went ballistic, saying, “We’ll do it live. Fuck it! We’ll do it live!” before dashing across the parking lot.

Adams was miffed to have to leave a message for Bill, but the one she left was, objectively, pretty powerful — a verbatim quote from a letter she wrote to her friend Cotton Tufts on the conditions of the black slaves building the White House:

The effects of Slavery are visible every where; and I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labour of 12 negroes from my window, who are employd with four small Horse Carts to remove some dirt in front of the house. the four carts are all loaded at the same time, and whilst four carry this rubish about half a mile, the remaining eight rest upon their Shovels, Two of our hardy N England men would do as much work in a day as the whole 12, but it is true Republicanism that drive the Slaves half fed, and destitute of cloathing…to labour, whilst the owner waches about Idle, tho his one Slave is all the property he can boast, Such is the case of many of the inhabitants of this place.

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