Meredith Shiner

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., take a selfie with pages in the Capitol’s Senate Reception Room in January. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

If you were walking around Central Park in New York City earlier this week, you might have seen a tall man with earbuds in, holding up his iPhone, trying to capture video of a boy struggling to fly a kite.

What might have seemed like a mundane moment to most passersby was actually about to become a “snap,” a brief vignette on the social media platform Snapchat, which enables users to post pictures and videos for up to 10 seconds before they disappear into the Internet ether.

And the mystery poster, inspired by the moment, was, surprisingly, a United States senator: Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey.

An early adopter of all things social media, Booker joined Snapchat last month and has since been using it as a vehicle to show followers his life in Congress, his work on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton and moments like this one — the boy with the kite — captured as he was killing time before a promotional event for his new book.

He says that the platform allows him to be creative and to pull back the curtain on the life of a public official, which he says can seem distant to supporters and constituents, both in geography and substance.

But more than anything, Snapchat also allows Booker to reveal some of himself, a risky but interesting proposition for a public figure. The snap from Central Park was just a recent example of that.

“On special days, like Martin Luther King Day or Black History Month, which we’re in, I try to show people things that move or inspire me,” Booker told Yahoo News in an interview. “I just was walking through Central Park, listening to music, and I saw a kid trying to fly a kite and it was just scraping along the ground and I decided to — I found inspiration in a kid trying to get this kite up because he wouldn’t give up even though the kite wouldn’t fly. And it gave me a chance to take a snap of him and give that message.”

While Booker has posted snaps of himself and the Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, for example, he also takes the time to highlight lesser-known figures in the political process, from volunteers in Clinton field offices in Iowa and Nevada to the maintenance employees at the Capitol.

And it makes for an interesting window, albeit a calculated one, into the life of a 46-year-old politician who made his way from mayor of Newark to senator and top surrogate for the Democratic presidential frontrunner. Booker views his purpose on social media as a way to check four boxes for his followers: transparency, engagement, communication, inspiration. And the people featured in snaps with him, from campaign staffers driving him from event to event to other elected officials seem genuinely excited to make cameos in his social media show.

Photo: Snapchat 

Yahoo News interviewed Booker to ask him about how he views Snapchat, why it might be useful for other politicians and whether he’s different when he’s representing himself vs. Clinton on the campaign trail. Below is a transcript of that conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Yahoo News: Do you have a strategy for how you use Snapchat and what do you think is its actual utility for politicians or even unelected users?

Cory Booker: It’s a new platform and I want to try to be one of those folks that explores the possibility of a new platform to do some of the things that I think are important to do in an elected office, which is to give more transparency, to find ways to inform, to find ways to engage, to find ways to exchange ideas and connect with your constituency.

I’ve had a lot of very positive experience with past platforms — and I don’t mean “past” in that they’re not relevant anymore — but platforms like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. … It’s very successful in moving the needle on exactly those things that I mentioned, from doing constituent concern work on Twitter, whether it’s me communicating with frustrated commuters, it really helped us to gather momentum for getting the Hudson rail tunnels built. Whether it’s sharing inspirational ideas with people or seeing articles that people send to me over Facebook and Twitter. These platforms can actually be very, very powerful.

And so now, along comes Snapchat, which is definitely unique and different from the other platforms and is engaging a wide variety of people — a lot of young people are really engaged with it. And so just a matter of weeks ago, much to my staff holding their breath, I just jumped off one day and decided to get on Snapchat and see what I could do with the platform that could be creative and innovative in achieving those core values of engagement, transparency, inspiration, communication with my constituents. And it’s been a great success so far.

At this point, I now meet people as I’m traveling around New Jersey and in fact, now also as I’m traveling around South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire [for Clinton] who are seeing my snaps and appreciate the fact that they understand more about the day in the life [of a senator], understand what motivates me sometimes, inspires me, it makes the federal government a lot closer to them, where they can feel like they connect.

So I hope some of the result is that it engages, activates, inspires and informs people.

Are you different when you’re representing yourself versus when you’re out for Clinton? I know you took over her campaign’s Snapchat account in Iowa.

I just have a big belief in authenticity. I was talking to another colleague about this recently, that if you’re on social media, it’s just so important to be authentic.

On Snapchat, I’m trying to show people a real view of what this elected leader is doing on a regular basis, and it happens to be in the midst of an intense, tough primary battle. So yeah, there are days that I’m in Washington, like right now, chasing down my colleagues to talk about legislation, going to a morning prayer breakfast, about to go to the floor and vote. And then there are days like tomorrow, when I’ll be in South Carolina, running around trying to work hard for Hillary Clinton.

Photo: Snapchat 

I just try to keep it real and be authentic and take risks, you know, I think that’s important, as long as you keep what your values are, what you’re really going for and really bring government closer to people. Let folks understand that this isn’t some high-on-the-hill, faraway government body, that the people here are fellow Americans trying to get a job done. And in fact, there are a lot of great Americans — in fact, this is why I try often on my platforms to try to focus on the people whose names you might not read in the paper, but who are essential to this place, whether it’s the person that cleans the offices or the Senate pages that are running around working so hard on behalf of the Senate or the police officers who keep us secure.

But politicians are notoriously poll-tested and managed. I think there are a lot of your colleagues who would struggle to be “authentic” in the way you are describing and others would be less excited to be included in their efforts.

Authenticity means doing what is natural to you. Some of my colleagues do a lot of things that if I tried to do, it would be very inauthentic. I am a Generation X guy who was geeky and nerdy growing up. I had two parents who worked for IBM so I was on computers before my friends were playing computer games, even trying to build them on my old, clunky, IBM. It’s just who I am and I’m going to try to stay true to that.

Social media, in less than a decade, has transformed our society. This is the future. It’s coming. And these platforms are becoming more and more valuable. How do you know that? Corporations are rushing into these spaces. Entertainment, artists, Generation X and millennials, your and mine generation, this is becoming as commonplace as a typewriter. A smartphone is a typewriter. It’s becoming ubiquitous.

What would you say to skeptics of a platform like Snapchat?

I am so busy, running around the country, doing this job that takes me down to D.C. away from New Jersey and I find now that my friends, like one of my closest friends from fourth grade … he and his wife have been constants in my life, but I don’t see them as much. Suddenly I’m on Snapchat and now with him and his kids and his wife, because we’re all just loving, I actually thought to myself, we’re more connected now with these windows into their lives. I watched him as a family making dinner last night in a snap just for me, so we’re talking about the public version of it, but I encourage you because when it comes to enriching relationships and having fun, deepening connections … having tools like this, it’s really great.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., speaks to a D.C. corrections employee who recognized him from behind the glass of the jail’s entrance. (Photo: Meredith Shiner, Yahoo News)

Rep. John Lewis sits in a circle of chairs among 20 incarcerated teenagers in the makeshift chapel of a Washington, D.C., correctional facility less than 2 miles from the United States Capitol.

Unlike most of his colleagues in Congress, Lewis knows what it’s like to be in jail. In the 1960s, he was arrested 40 times as a result of his work as a nonviolent protester in the civil rights movement. A half century later, he sits in this jail on a hill, in a city where 535 members of Congress serve but few take the time to learn anything about the people who actually live here. These 16- and 17-year-olds live here. They’ve been charged as adults under the District of Columbia code, and as they sit attentively listening to Lewis, it’s hard not to think that under more normal circumstances they could just be school kids in a library instead of inmates. They are members of the Free Minds Book Club, a group that helps promote literacy and writing skills among incarcerated youth. Lewis is the co-author of a graphic novel, “March,” about his life and the history of the civil rights movement, and the group, having read it, has some questions for him.

“What made you go back to the bridge after you were beaten so badly?” a teen asks Lewis. (Because they are minors, they need parental consent to be identified in media accounts.)

With a preacher’s cadence, Lewis answers, “I go back to be renewed. I go back to be inspired.” His chair is positioned in front of where the pulpit stands at the focus of the room. Sayings, printed out on computer paper, hang on the wall behind him: “The church that God built.” “Lord speak to my heart.”

Though he does not say so explicitly, a major theme running through Lewis’ answers is that over the course of his 76 years, he has turned the most painful junctures of his life into symbols of optimism and hope. He tells the group that he has returned nearly every year to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. — including last year with President Obama and the first family to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when he was beaten.

Another teen speaks up to ask Lewis whether there was ever a time when he thought he wouldn’t survive. He talks briefly about that day, but then cites a recent trip to Birmingham and the evolution of America he’s seen firsthand.

“I was arrested. I was jailed in Birmingham. When I go back there [today], they have a white police officer guarding me, and he tells me, ‘I’m a white Republican, but I would take a bullet for you. I would follow you. You changed America,’” Lewis says.

“You should always have hope,” he continues, before stopping to ask if the kids have heard the Pharrell Williams song “Happy” or seen the video of Lewis dancing to it on the Internet. “You should always be happy.” 

Another teen asks if Lewis would be willing to dance for the group. He declines by noting he’d need music and doesn’t have any with him. But he adds: “If it hadn’t been for music, the civil rights movement would have been like a bird without wings.”

Lewis speaks to 20 incarcerated teens at a D.C. jail less than 2 miles from the U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Meredith Shiner, Yahoo News)

Deangelo Johnson, a 17-year-old member of the book club who has been in jail for 10 months, says he felt very inspired by the congressman’s visit.

When asked what he learned from the talk, Johnson says: “That any black man can be who we want to be and that we shouldn’t give up. … Maybe I can stand up and come back and talk to young juveniles.

“He was with Martin Luther King. He was Martin Luther King’s messenger,” Johnson continues. “I want to come back just like he did and say it’s not wrong to change.”

Lewis speaks to a new generation of youth now about civil rights, in person and through his graphic novels. He has written two of them with his staffer Andrew Aydin. Aydin, an Atlanta native who as a kid used comic books as a form of escapism, had the idea for the graphic-novel series when Lewis told him that King himself had edited a 10-cent comic about the civil rights movement.

No one thought more about this visit to the correctional facility than Aydin, a 32-year-old aide and lifelong constituent of Lewis, who worked with the D.C. Department of Corrections for months to arrange it. He tells the young adults there that he had been thinking about them and urges them to continue reading and writing. He also tells them to find mentors to help them along the way. Aydin’s father left him and his mother when he was 3 years old, he tells the kids, and he turns to the congressman as a father figure for guidance.

Before the talk, Aydin told Yahoo News: “If I had one more bad day, it would be entirely possible that I could have ended up in the same situation that a lot of these kids are in. And that means that I owe it to them to go back and hopefully tell them a little bit about myself and tell them about the people in my life who made a difference and made sure I didn’t end up there. These are just kids, and none of them have done anything bad enough to mean that their life should be over. There are few people who know more about going to jail than John Lewis and even fewer people about being on the right side of history. I hope that he can inspire them but also inspire all of us to do what is necessary to ensure that all of these kids get the opportunities they deserve to live a good and decent and fulfilling life.”

According to Free Minds Book Club staffers after the talk, that’s exactly what Lewis did. The kids are rarely as engaged or quiet or interested in other authors who come to visit. This particular talk, the first for the group from a member of Congress, was different.

Keela Hailes, the reentry facilitator for Free Minds and a self-described “Free Minds mom” (her son was a member of the club when he was 16 — he is 25 now and still incarcerated), was overwhelmed by Lewis’ appearance.

“It was beyond special. It gave me so much hope, I had to compose myself. For him to come here, knowing the situation of these young men, there are no words for the encouragement he provided,” Hailes says. “I cannot express how happy I am for these guys. … Their spirits can be so downtrodden, and looking how they are in his presence, it’s overwhelming and it’s awe-inspiring.”

At their last book club meeting before Lewis’ visit, about 10 Free Minds members collectively wrote a poem for the congressman. On Tuesday night, they read it for Lewis and present him with the first-ever framed version of a poem penned by Free Minds teenagers inspired by a work they read. The poem is titled “Free Minds March.”

Sacrificing myself and my family for rights and education

Fighting through these ropes of segregation

Killing them with kindness and no irritation

To make an impact on this great nation

We would take the word “nigger”

Instead of pulling a trigger

We were beaten and broken down to little pieces

To pave the way for our little nephews and nieces

We wanted nonviolence, but they gave us hatred

We gave it to the world, sat back and were patient

Rosa Parks wouldn’t give up her seat

Because she wasn’t going to let racism repeat

So we sat at lunch counters asking to be served

We got spit on and yelled at, but didn’t get disturbed

Congressman Lewis …

If you and Dr. Martin Luther King didn’t have a dream

We wouldn’t have equal rights in 2016!

Lewis hugs every young man who stood up to read the poem. He and Aydin sign their books, and then the congressman has to leave to return to the Capitol for late-evening votes.

On the short drive back to the Capitol, Lewis reflects on the experience.

“It was just very moving,” he says quietly from the passenger seat of the car, noting how impressed he was by the young men he met. “There was such a warm spirit there.

“I tell you, sometimes you have to think what happened,” he says, pausing for a long moment as he contemplates the past two hours and the lives of the 20 young men he just met. Rain pouring down, the car drives past the congressional cemetery and eventually turns onto East Capitol Street, with the under-construction dome of the Capitol in full view. “It’s a reflection on society.”

Lewis shook the hand of every teen who came to hear him speak Tuesday evening, as he and his staffer Aydin gave a book talk. (Photo: Meredith Shiner, Yahoo News)

Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., sat down with Yahoo News’ Katie Couric in one of his many national interviews since becoming speaker. (Photo: Yahoo News)

Paul D. Ryan is revolutionizing the job of speaker of the House, adding to his constitutional responsibilities as the nation’s top legislator the role of ubiquitous spokesperson and advocate for his party’s agenda.

At a time when Republicans seem to be divided against themselves — with House conservatives still savoring their victory in forcing out Ryan’s predecessor, John Boehner, and Donald J. Trump as the GOP frontrunner for president — Ryan’s emergence as a fixture on national TV and radio is both pervasive and highly significant.

Through the first four months of his tenure as Washington’s highest-ranking Republican, Ryan has emerged as the speaker of the airwaves, racking up 37 national radio and television appearances, according to a count provided by his office, including a Fox News hit Monday with Megyn Kelly and a scheduled appearance Tuesday morning on CNBC.

For context, Boehner never did more than 38 interviews in a year as speaker, and Ryan has participated in nearly as many interviews as the House has had days in session, 38, since he was elected to lead Republicans.

“He takes seriously his duty to communicate conservative policies and use the bully pulpit he has,” spokeswoman Ashlee Strong said.

Ryan was uniquely qualified to undertake a hyperactive media schedule. His time as a vice presidential candidate in 2012, his message discipline and general comfort with reporters all make him a natural fit for a modern media speaker. And his credibility with the political base makes him a better fit for the role than Boehner, whose members encouraged him to do more television appearances to provide them political cover in their districts, while shoring up their own right-wing credentials by railing against “the establishment” in various media forums, especially conservative talk radio.

Boehner’s presence on national television and radio steadily declined as his speakership progressed. In 2011, he made 38 national TV and radio appearances and by 2014, he was down to eight, in part because of how controversial immigration reform had become — and the growing belief that almost anything he said would agitate a faction within his own party. Between January and October of 2015, he did 20 national TV and media appearances, but that figure includes the exit interviews he did after his resignation.

Still, Boehner laid the foundation for Ryan’s PR approach, becoming the first-ever House leader to do on-camera weekly briefings with reporters in 2006. As the No. 2 Republican under Speaker Dennis Hastert, Boehner also took on a large media schedule to communicate the House Republican message because the speaker rarely made TV or radio appearances.

Ryan, however, has certainly upped his game, having already hit all the Sunday morning public affairs programs — many twice — and also making regular appearances on conservative programs that challenge establishment Republicans, from Laura Ingraham’s radio show to Sean Hannity’s TV show on Fox News. Ryan has also agreed to do local and regional interviews at the request of members who want his voice heard in their districts, ranging from Colorado to Missouri.

But Ryan may be creating a precedent that cannot be met by future leaders who may not possess his media skills. Though members have clamored for a more media-friendly leader — and Ryan is delivering for them — there are few Republicans in the party’s pipeline who can be as versatile on television as Ryan while also possessing the other skills necessary to be speaker.

To understand how complicated it can be to try to please members and TV audiences, it’s instructive to consider last October when pressure was put on House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California to convince conservatives to support him for speaker. McCarthy, whose candidacy met with resistance from House conservatives, blundered when he appeared on Hannity’s show and praised the committee investigating the Benghazi attacks for damaging the reputation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The comments embarrassed Republicans who had been insisting for months that the committee was above politics.

It remains to be seen whether Ryan will keep up such a grueling media schedule when he actually has to pass controversial legislation, such as spending bills to keep the government open. (The current version was written and passed in one of Boehner’s last acts.) Neither the House nor the Senate is expected to agree on any major policy proposal or law before the November election. Instead, Republicans and Democrats will use the little time they are in Washington to try to pass “messaging” bills or set a larger agenda for their parties. Ryan is already tackling that latter task, implicitly acknowledging the policy vacuum left by the GOP’s leading presidential candidates.

For now, Ryan seems to have learned a lesson from the end of the Boehner speakership, which is that if he does not speak for himself, others will fill the airtime with messages that might not reflect the leadership’s goals and priorities.

The question is whether it is possible to continuously rule two of Washington’s most unwieldy chambers: the House chamber and the media echo one. Ryan thinks he can, and if he does, he’ll change the expectations for anyone who might seek to succeed him.

Hillary Clinton beat out rival Bernie Sanders to win the Nevada caucuses after a frenetic final blitz of campaigning, denying Sanders a golden opportunity to capitalize on his early momentum and raising questions about where else he can win in the weeks ahead.

“Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other,” Clinton said at her victory party in the Caesars Palace casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Clinton went on to outline the problems facing the country, from “crumbling classes” in South Carolina to the toxic water in Flint, Mich. “Americans are right to be angry,” she said. “But we’re also hungry for real solutions.”

Sanders outspent Clinton 2 to 1 on TV ads in the state, and managed to build up his campaign operation to rival hers in size. But Team Clinton, which had been in the state since April under the direction of Barack Obama campaign alum Emmy Ruiz, was better organized. Clinton’s female-focused outreach strategy in Nevada paid off, with exit polls showing Clinton winning among women by 16 percentage points, reversing the embarrassing New Hampshire trend of women choosing Sanders. Clinton once led the state by large margins, but a poll last week showed she and Sanders in a dead heat. The former secretary of state canceled a campaign rally in Florida this week and spent an extra day campaigning in Nevada.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, where she campaigned actively to secure a victory. (Photo: John Locher/AP)

Her high-profile surrogates, including actress Eva Longoria and Cabinet member Tom Perez, flooded the state and held multiple events every day, out-campaigning Sanders’ team.

“We knew that the race was going to be tight, and we wanted to make sure that we left nothing on the field,” said Jorge Neri, Clinton’s Nevada field organizer.

Female voters who flocked to a casino caucus site Saturday morning said they liked Sanders but ultimately sided with Clinton, in part because they believed she would understand their issues better than Sanders.

“First of all, she’s a woman; she will understand a woman’s needs,” said Fernanda Breciado, 55, a housekeeping supervisor at Caesars Palace who was voting during her lunch break. “She has the support of the greatest president,” she added, referring to Bill Clinton.

Slideshow: Winners and losers in S.C. and Nevada >>>

Jennifer Palmieri, a Clinton spokeswoman, said Hillary’s performance with women was good news. “It’s one state, it’s one race, but that’s pretty good,” she said. “We understand we have work to do with white men.”

The state brought out tension between the two candidates. On Thursday, an exhausted-looking Sanders and Clinton crossed paths at a town hall focused on immigration issues in Las Vegas. Clinton took a poke at Sanders’ earlier criticism of Obama and her husband. “Maybe it’s that Sen. Sanders wasn’t really a Democrat until he decided to run for president. He doesn’t know what the last two Democratic presidents did,” she said as the crowd booed. In an interview with BET later, Sanders suggested Clinton was heaping praise on Obama merely to pander to black voters.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, gesture in front of supporters after she was projected to be the winner in the Democratic caucuses in Las Vegas on Saturday. (Photo: David Becker/Reuters)

Eleven miles away from Clinton’s victory party on the Las Vegas Strip, Sanders’ supporters reassembled at the Henderson Pavilion, site of the Vermont senator’s final pre-caucus rally the night before, to cheer on their candidate. Campaign officials originally planned to start the program at 5 p.m. local time, suggesting that they believed the caucuses would be close and the votes would take a long time to count. But Clinton was declared the winner at about 2:30 p.m., and Sanders wound up speaking earlier than expected. About 400 supporters, who were still streaming in when Sanders took the stage, clustered near the front of the 2,444-seat amphitheater waving “A Future to Believe In” signs.

“You know, five weeks ago we were 25 points behind in the polls,” Sanders said. “We’ve made some real progress.”

Sanders accepted his defeat, but it was hard to ignore the notes of defiance and even defensiveness in his remarks. He “applaud[ed]” Clinton’s campaign for being “very aggressive” — not exactly a compliment. He warned that Clinton’s “very wealthy and powerful super-PAC — a super-PAC that receives lots of money from Wall Street and special interests” would be coming after him in the weeks ahead. And he repeatedly argued that “momentum” was more important than victory.

“What this entire campaign has been about is the issue of momentum,” Sanders said. “Taking on the establishment is not easy. … It is clear to me and to many observers that the wind is at our backs.”

If Sanders could have pulled out a victory in Nevada, it would have gone a long way toward silencing critics who say he can only win among white voters, and lacks the broad appeal to be the party’s nominee. Entrance polls found that black voters went for Clinton 3 to 1, and while the same polls showed Sanders outpacing Clinton among Latinos, it’s likely those results were misleading.

In an email to backers, Sanders argued that even in losing Nevada, he had proven he could do well among a diverse pool of voters. “Nevada was supposed to be a state ‘tailor-made’ for the Clinton campaign, and a place she once led by almost 40 points,” he said. “But today we sent a message that will stun the political and financial establishment of this country: Our campaign can win anywhere.”

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks to supporters at a rally in Henderson, Nev., after rival candidate Hillary Clinton was projected to be the winner in the Nevada Democratic caucuses on Saturday. (Photo: Jim Young/Reuters)

That claim will be put to the test in the coming weeks as the Democratic nominating contest first moves on to South Carolina — where black voters typically play a decisive role and where Clinton leads Sanders by an average of 24 percentage points — before heading into a rapid succession of March primaries and caucuses widely thought to favor the former secretary of state.

“I’ve always believed March was going to be Hillary Clinton’s month,” David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and a current Clinton supporter, said this week. “The Texases of the world, the Georgias of the world — they become very important. Michigan becomes very important on March 8. And then March 15 is, I think, the most important day on the calendar — those large Midwestern and Southern states (Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio), where I think she will do very well.”

As the results came rolling in, top Clinton backers began to tout Nevada as a game-changer. “This victory had to overcome the momentum Sanders got in New Hampshire and the spin from the pundits,” said Robert Zimmerman, a Clinton fundraiser and Democratic National Committee member. “It really speaks to Hillary Clinton’s message and also the strength of their campaign organization.”

But in an interview with Yahoo News after Sanders’ speech, senior adviser Tad Devine disagreed, pointing to Massachusetts, Vermont, Colorado, Minnesota and “the Midwest” as contests Sanders could win going forward.

“I think [Nevada] proves that they are not in total meltdown,” Devine added, referring to the Clinton campaign. “And it proves that we can begin to coalesce a winning campaign coalition in America. This is just the beginning.”

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton promised voters in Nevada she would pursue immigration reform in the first 100 days of her presidency. (Photo: David Becker/Reuters)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday night promised for the first time to act on immigration reform within the first 100 days of her administration, if she is elected in November. The declaration came less than 48 hours before the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, a state where nearly 30 percent of residents are Hispanic.

“Absolutely. We’re going to introduce legislation,” Clinton told a questioner at an MSNBC town hall, when asked if her White House would act within its first 100 days on immigration reform.

Clinton’s commitment to move so quickly on immigration reform, which last failed to clear Congress in 2013, was news to immigration advocates, who had not heard it from her before. And it stood in contrast to opponent Bernie Sanders, who faced the same “100 days” question not even an hour earlier, and said, “I’m not a dictator here. It has to do with a little bit of cooperation from the Congress. But it is a major priority when you have 11 million people living in the shadows. I think we owe it to them to move as expeditiously as we can.”

Of course, a president cannot formally introduce legislation in Congress; a member of Congress must. But administrations can send suggested bills to allies on the Hill, and Clinton said she would work throughout the campaign to get a head start on issues like immigration and even judicial nominations. Clinton’s move to position herself as more aggressive on the immigration issue, touting swift legislation, is an outlier in her overall approach of attacking Sanders by insinuating that he is prone to make promises he cannot keep.

SLIDESHOW – Clinton and Sanders go head-to-head in Nevada >>>

Both Clinton and Sanders said they would continue President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which have delayed exportations of DREAMers — undocumented young people who are enrolled in school or enlisted in the military — and also of undocumented parents of legal children. The Supreme Court is currently considering a legal challenge to those executive actions.

On the two Obama executive actions on immigration, Clinton added, “I will go further if it’s at all legally possible,” though such a scenario seems improbable, given that the Obama administration lawyers likely sought the most aggressive path possible to act on immigration issues in the absence of congressional action.

Earlier in the day in Nevada, Clinton released an emotional ad featuring a 10-year-old girl who was worried her parents would be deported.

The clear courting of Hispanic voters, both through the “first 100 days” vow and the aforementioned “Brave” ad, is a shift in strategy from the Clinton campaign, which had caused controversy earlier this week by downplaying Nevada’s diversity in order to manage expectations for her performance against Sanders.

Allies to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a longtime Nevada lawmaker who pushed for the state to become one of the first to vote in this year’s contest based on its diversity, pushed back on the Clinton campaign’s assertions that Nevada was composed of mostly white voters, just like Iowa. Reid was in the audience Thursday night for the MSNBC town hall and was praised by both candidates, who have served under him in the Senate Democratic conference.

Reid is retiring, but Democrats hope that his successor as leader can rule a majority in the Senate again after the 2016 elections.

Clinton was not subtle about that goal and what role immigration issues could play in flipping the Senate’s control from Democratic to Republican.

She said that if Democrats hold the White House and win back the Senate, perhaps “Republicans will see the error of their ways" and “stop using immigrants to divide the country.”

After the 2012 election, when Democrats held both the White House and the Senate, the Republican National Committee released a report exploring why the party had lost and cited the need to move on immigration issues and reach out to Hispanic voters as key to the GOP’s electoral future.

Three years later, Republicans — and their base supporters — seem to have moved to the right of where they were even then. So it appears that last item from Clinton is also a bit of wishful thinking.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is leading his fellow senators against confirming President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court before the November election. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Republicans and Democrats are already using the Supreme Court vacancy created by Antonin Scalia’s death Saturday as a political fundraising tool, entrenching partisan narratives that have defined both parties since President Obama took office and revealing dueling priorities for the 2016 elections.

Democrats are arguing that the immediate, outright GOP commitment to refuse even to consider an Obama nomination — not just block it on the floor of the Senate — is another example of the obstructionism that has characterized the Republican majority in the Senate. Feeling more confident about its chances of retaining the White House, the Democratic Party’s response has been largely driven by the goal of winning back the Senate majority it lost in 2014.

For Republicans, the hardline stance against any potential nominee reflects the interests of leading presidential candidates in energizing the party’s base by turning the election into a referendum on Obama. But there are risks at the Senate level that such a tactic could backfire in moderate or Democratic-leaning states where those same frontrunners are not especially popular, dragging down the rest of the Republican ticket. In 2016, Republicans will be defending 24 seats in the Senate, including seven in states Obama won twice, and congressional GOP leaders have seen internal polling suggesting the Senate majority could be at risk if frontrunners Donald Trump or Ted Cruz become the party’s nominee.

After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would not cooperate in filling the Supreme Court vacancy, the Senate Majority PAC — the super-PAC created in 2011 by allies of top Senate Democrat Harry Reid to raise unlimited money for Democratic candidates — claimed that the Republican leader had made his entire caucus “more vulnerable.”

“Mitch McConnell’s partisan obstructionism isn’t just unprecedented, but it’s indefensible. His refusal to do his job undermines our country’s judicial system, and today he just made his entire caucus that much more vulnerable this November, especially considering voters are already fed up with dysfunction in Washington,” a spokesman for the group said. “So much for all that rhetoric about how the ‘majority is working’ under Republican control.”

Nearly all of the vulnerable Republican senators up in 2016 have lined up behind McConnell’s strategy: Rob Portman of Ohio, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. The one notable exception is Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who assumed Obama’s Senate seat in 2010 and is widely considered the most endangered Republican senator of the cycle. 

The GOP senators who are backing McConnell’s stance are counting on a couple of as yet unproven premises: first, that the number of conservative voters in their states who will be energized by the confrontation will outweigh the moderates or independents who may be alienated by it, and second, that they will all win their races and a Republican Senate will get to confirm a nominee in 2017. The most significant downside to blocking Obama now is the possibility that Democrats would win both the White House and the Senate and ultimately confirm a more liberal nominee than Obama is likely to choose in the present circumstances.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., needs to pivot quickly from his failed presidential campaign to his Senate reelection bid and is using the Supreme Court battle to do it. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

Meanwhile, conservatives and anti-establishment Republicans see an opening for themselves too. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who suspended his presidential campaign to focus on Senate reelection in November, has been the quickest in using the Supreme Court issue to campaign. He has leveraged the vacancy as a way to turn his presidential donor list into a source of funds for his Senate campaign. He’s sent out two fundraising emails since Scalia died, with subject lines of “I plan to lead” and “One heck of a fight,” respectively, to focus on his role in the Senate in blocking the nomination of a justice of Obama’s choosing.

“I plan to lead the fight to stop them in the Senate. Patriot, will you stand with me as I do everything I can to block President Obama’s attempt to silence the opinion of the American public?” his first fundraising email read. “The passing of Justice Scalia has made it more clear than ever that the role of the Senate is vital to maintaining liberty.”

In the second email asking for money, Paul said: “I’m not going to take it lying down and let the president have his way. I’m not going to let him change the entire process of law in this country without one heck of a fight.”

The question remains what that fight might look like in the Senate, whether Republicans will hold hearings and allow floor votes or forgo scheduling those basic processes altogether.

On Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who initially came out in support of McConnell’s position that no justice should be confirmed until 2017, told a local radio station he would “wait until a nominee is made before I make any decisions” on whether to convene a confirmation hearing.

The Senate is in recess this week and the White House is expected to send them a name for confirmation when they return. What happens next in the so-called world’s greatest deliberative body might not even include a formal debate, but it is sure to be partisan. The gamble, especially for Republicans, is whether their base voters are happier when senators are not doing their jobs.

The U.S. Senate should not act to fill the sudden Supreme Court vacancy opened up by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia until after President Obama departs office, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement Saturday.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as well as current Republican presidential candidates and Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, also came out of the gate opposing confirmation of a final Obama Supreme Court nominee.

The Republican majority in the Senate gives the party leverage for a battle with Obama over a new Supreme Court nomination. Any nominee would need 60 affirmative votes on cloture to proceed to final confirmation, meaning that Obama would be under pressure to choose a more moderate versus liberal justice in order to win the at least 14 Republicans he would need to support his nominee. Previous Senate majorities have given presidents of the opposite parties a list of preferred nominees and influenced selections by indicating whom they would confirm.

Slideshow: Justice Antonin Scalia – A look back

But that pressure would vanish if Republicans cannot retake the White House in 2016 or hold their majority in the Senate. Many Republicans in D.C. are skeptical that the party will be able to do either, especially if Donald J. Trump or Ted Cruz win the GOP presidential nomination. These establishment Republicans have seen evidence that Trump or Cruz would create a drag on races lower down the ballot, such as the Senate races in November, and are worried Republicans could lose the Senate.

Republicans currently hold the Senate majority with 54 members, but 24 of those seats are being contested this year — including seven in states where Obama won twice.

If Republicans wait and Democrats win the White House and regain the Senate majority, a hypothetical President Hillary Clinton, for example, would have greater leeway to select a more liberal justice than Obama might have submitted.

But the politics could also work in Republicans’ favor, as mobilization for a Supreme Court nomination by a Republican president could cause conservative voter turnout to spike in 2016, helping candidates across the board. Democrats, of course, would similarly seek to boost turnout and support based on the nomination fight (or lack thereof).

There is precedent for the Senate to act in a presidential year on a confirmation. Justice Anthony Kennedy was chosen by Republican President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by a Democratic Senate on February 3, 1988 — also the last year of a lame-duck presidency.

But SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein does not see a scenario in which Senate Republicans will change their minds.

“Theoretically, that process could conclude before the November election. But realistically, it cannot absent essentially a consensus nominee — and probably not even then, given the stakes,” he wrote. “A Democratic president would replace a leading conservative vote on a closely divided court. The Republican Senate will not permit such a consequential nomination — which would radically shift the balance of ideological power on the court — to go forward.”

Democrats, of course, do not see it that way, but without the Senate majority, there’s little they can do but highlight what they believe is political negligence and then campaign on that. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called on Obama to send a nominee to the Senate, and Obama said Saturday night he would, indeed, nominate someone.

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, released a statement mourning Scalia and calling on Republicans to work with Democrats to replace him swiftly because failing to do so would weaken democracy “for partisan reasons.”

“I hope that no one will use this sad news to suggest that the president or the Senate should not perform its constitutional duty,” Leahy said. “The American people deserve to have a fully functioning Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the United States is too important to our democracy for it to be understaffed for partisan reasons. It is only February. The president and the Senate should get to work without delay to nominate, consider and confirm the next justice to serve on the Supreme Court.”

Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton at the PBS NewsHour debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Feb. 11. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

MILWAUKEE — Following a more than 20-point drubbing from Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire earlier this week, Hillary Clinton looked on Thursday night to use a nationally televised debate to reposition herself in the Democratic primary and make inroads with potential voters in Nevada and South Carolina, who will vote next.

In some ways, it’s an extraordinarily uphill battle. Sanders and Clinton have already cemented their political archetypes in this race against each other: The Democratic socialist senator from Vermont represents the idealistic wing of the party, and the former secretary of state, the pragmatic middle. Whether it was by intentional strategy or merely an inability to shift their core identities in the primary, the two politicians largely stuck to the same talking points they’ve used throughout the race. But Clinton seemed to redouble her focus on President Obama. For months, Clinton has claimed that she is the best protector of the Obama legacy, an experienced and adept lawmaker who can continue to make incremental changes on big policies, like health care.

Thursday night she made her Obama fight with Sanders a two-front war. Not only was she trying to send a signal to voters that she is the most capable Democrat in the Obama mold, but she also was attempting to paint Sanders as either unable or unwilling to safeguard the Obama legacy because he has, at times, been critical of the administration’s actions, like on extending massive tax breaks to the wealthy or cutting spending on domestic programs in deals with Republicans.

“We have a special obligation to make clear what we stand for, which is why I think we should not make promises we can’t keep, because that will further, I think, alienate Americans from understanding and believing we can together make some real changes in people’s lives,” Clinton said, near the top of the debate, an opening salvo that implied Sanders’ ideas are impossible to execute and might only serve to let down the base. At the same time, she sharpened her argument that Sanders is largely a one-note candidate protesting a government rigged in favor of the wealthy — a proposition she said she agrees with — and lacks the breadth of experience in both domestic and foreign affairs to be president.

Even so, throughout the evening, Clinton tried to shoehorn her political history into a more progressive version of itself, a recognition of Sanders’ inroads with the grassroots left and younger voters who likely cannot remember much of her husband’s administration.

For voters about to hit the polls this week and next, there were a few important takeaways from Thursday’s second one-on-one bout between Sanders and Clinton, and Yahoo News was on the scene to spot them.

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Hillary Clinton speaks during the Democratic presidential primary debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Feb. 11. (Photo: Morry Gash/AP)

1. Obama was the third Democrat onstage: Clinton moved swiftly to try to cast the debate between the two candidates as who liked Obama more: “You know, Senator, what I am concerned about, is not disagreement on issues, saying that this is what I would rather do … calling the president weak, calling him a disappointment, calling several times that he should have a primary opponent when he ran for re-election in 2012, you know, I think that goes further than saying we have our disagreements,” Clinton said.

Sanders shot back, “Well, one of us ran against Barack Obama. I was not that candidate,” sticking a pin, at least temporarily, in Clinton’s attempt to reduce the issue of which candidate supported the president more to a zero-sum proposition. While such a line of argument might woo some voters within the party, there is some risk for Clinton in aggressively tying herself to the president. Sanders has already tapped into frustration among the liberal base and independent voters that Obama was not progressive enough and did not fight hard enough for their issues.

2. “Vigorous agreement”: Perhaps one of the reasons it has so far been difficult for Sanders and Clinton, in particular, to truly differentiate themselves from each other and fellow Democrats is their persistent “vigorous agreement,” as Clinton put it on Thursday night. Despite Clinton’s attempt to position herself as the true Obama heir, the word “agree” was uttered nearly a dozen times throughout the course of the debate. Clinton said she “completely agree[d]” with Sanders on criminal justice reform and “vigorous[ly]” agreed with him on trying to fix income inequality. For his part, Sanders insisted he was almost always in agreement with Obama, though he defended his right to disagree with Obama when Clinton attacked him for being critical of the incumbent. The harmony in their positions could play to Sanders’ advantage, since he tends to speak in more sweeping generalizations, while Hillary gets more granular, opening herself up to more specific critiques.

3. Difference on immigration and the child migrant crisis: Sanders and Clinton’s exchange on these two related and important issues — given the upcoming caucuses in Nevada, a state with a 30 percent Hispanic population — was perhaps the most significant of the night. This was one of the few policy areas where they diverged starkly and with some detail. On the child migrant issue, Clinton has taken the Obama administration position that the children who are leaving dangerous communities in Central America to seek asylum in the United States should be sent back to their home countries as a message to parents to stop sending them. And she struggled to sound as empathetic as Sanders, who does not believe the children should be sent back, as she made her argument.

“I made it very clear that those children needed to be processed appropriately, but we also had to send a message to families and communities in Central America not to send their children on this dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers,” she said, after Sanders criticized her position on the issue.

On immigration reform overall, Sanders tried to explain to a national audience why he voted against a 2007 bipartisan immigration reform bill. It’s a disagreement that neatly encapsulates the divergence in approach between him and Clinton. Sanders voted against the bill because he believed the incremental change to the system was not enough to justify the legislation’s flaws, a complicated position to take with voters who are less familiar with legislative process. Clinton, on the other hand, argued that some change at that point would have been better than none at all in order to tout her vote on the measure (and, by extension, her overall view of politics).

Sen. Bernie Sanders makes a point during the Democratic presidential primary debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Feb. 11. (Photo: Morry Gash/AP)

4. Women’s rights and abortion still a secondary discussion in debates: Clinton spent much of her career in the Senate being a champion for women’s health and reproductive issues, and yet it’s not one of the positions she talks about often on the national stage. She has focused more on her national security bona fides from her time as secretary of state and other issue areas that she perceives as weaknesses for Sanders (e.g., gun safety). But Thursday night, Clinton finally brought up her strength on this issue, even if in a fleeting moment, in response to a question directed at Sanders about whether he would be “thwarting history” if his campaign stopped the first woman from being elected president. When Clinton name-checked Planned Parenthood and NARAL, the pro-choice advocacy group, Democratic women on social media erupted with similar “about time” messages.

“I was very proud to get the endorsement of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, because I’ve been a leader on these issues. I have gone time and time again to take on the vested interests who would keep women’s health care decisions the province of the government instead of women ourselves,” Clinton said. “I’m very proud that NARAL endorsed me because when it comes to it, we need a leader on women’s issues. Somebody who, yes, votes right but, much more than that, leads the efforts to protect the hard-fought gains that women have made, that, make no mistake about it, are under tremendous attack, not just by the Republican presidential candidates but by a whole national effort to try to set back women’s rights.”

When Yahoo News asked Clinton top aide John Podesta after the debate why this hasn’t come up more in these settings, Podesta suggested that the question came up because there were two female moderators onstage (though the abortion question was not actually asked; Clinton brought it up herself). He noted that she has been talking about those issues on the trail and that people know her record on women’s health matters.

5. A debate about Henry Kissinger? In a moment that might have seemed anachronistic for younger voters or for viewers who did not watch last week’s debate, Sanders and Clinton had an extended back-and-forth over Henry Kissinger and who is a “friend” of his and who is not. Last week, Clinton said she was “very flattered” to receive praise from the Nixon national security adviser and secretary of state, and this week, Sanders prepared to pounce, trying to attack Clinton broadly on her foreign policy worldview because he is not as adept as fighting her on the nuanced specifics. But the moment revealed a lot about how staged debates are and how campaigns work on these sorts of set pieces ahead of time. While Sanders uttered the attack line onstage — “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend, and I will not take advice from him on foreign policy” — his campaign was ready to blast out a detailed, citation-filled press release on the 13 ways in which it believed Kissinger was awful, and then his aides hammered this point home in the spin-room post debate. Nothing about these affairs are spontaneous and everything happens for a reason, in this case, either the whim of the candidate who regretted not having a quip ready when Clinton name-dropped Kissinger last week or the fact that liberal websites did pounce immediately and the campaign knew it had an audience. 

MILWAUKEE — On foreign policy, Bernie Sanders does not go after Hillary Clinton with policy precision; he attacks her credibility with red-meat heaves attractive to the liberal base.

In Thursday night’s Democratic debate, Sanders repeated one of his trademark attacks — and one that worked for Barack Obama in 2008 against Clinton — that he opposed the Iraq War and she did not. But he went further in drawing a binary and philosophical contrast by reminding viewers of Clinton’s comments from last week’s debate, that she was “very flattered” to get praise from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, who served under President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford, is maligned especially among Democrats for his handling of the Vietnam War and for leading a foreign policy that his critics believed undermined democratic governments around the world, while supporting dictatorships that promoted human rights violations.

And while the reference might not have resonated with the under-30 demographic that Sanders dominated in Iowa and New Hampshire, it was a reductive, symbolically potent bit for baby boomers who may be undecided or unsure of Clinton’s overall worldview. It echoed criticism that emerged on liberal-leaning websites last week at the time of her original remarks.

“I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend, and I will not take advice from him on foreign policy,“ Sanders said, calling him the “most destructive” secretary of state in American history.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger during an interview in New York in the summer of 2015. (Photo: Richard Drew/AP)

Sanders’ team may have felt it missed an opportunity to hit Clinton on Kissinger when she brought up the controversial diplomat at last week’s debate. But this time they were ready. In fact, the campaign issued a press release within seconds of the exchange, listing 13 “egregious acts” he committed in his tenure, including allegations of launching an illegal war in Cambodia and supporting apartheid in South Africa (later in the debate Clinton name-dropped the late South African president Nelson Mandela as one of the figures in politics she respected the most).

Clinton defended her interactions and comments on Kissinger by saying that as secretary of state she listened to a variety of voices and opinions, weighing some more than others. She also questioned whether Sanders takes foreign policy issues seriously, citing recent media reports that said the one aide he referred to as an adviser only had briefed him once.

"I don’t know who you get your foreign policy advice from,” Clinton quipped.

“Well, it ain’t Henry Kissinger,” Sanders replied.

It’s unclear whether re-litigating American foreign policy from 40 years ago will resonate with voters, but Clinton and her campaign obviously believe foreign policy is her strength and any quick move toward that advantage is likely to frustrate the candidate and team who have prioritized showcasing her nuanced and broad grasp of issues she tackled as secretary of state.

Hourly workers, on strike and organized by the Fight for $15, crash the media room at the Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee. (Photo: Meredith Shiner, Yahoo News)

MILWAUKEE — Dozens of demonstrators advocating for a $15 minimum wage made their way through the glass doors of the Union Ballroom here on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s campus and into a large makeshift media workspace set up for Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, taking their cause to the heart of the nation’s political reporting corps.

The protest — organized by the Fight for $15, a national union rights group — was comprised largely of young, black fast food workers from Wisconsin, where 46 percent of workers make less than $15 hourly, according to the organization. It began inside the student union just an hour and half before a Democratic presidential primary debate was set to go live nationally, and after protests had built up outside the building, where the temperatures hovered around 15 degrees.

The relative quiet of the press room, which had been filled with the sound of clicking computer keys and reporters eating their dinners, was broken by the protesters carrying picket signs calling for a $15 minimum wage and chanting, “You want our vote; come get our vote!” and “We work! We sweat! Put $15 on our check.”

After a few minutes, the peaceful protesters were escorted to the lower level of the Union, where they continued to grow in number and volume, as University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee students and reporters looked on. It was a scene vaguely reminiscent of the labor protests that occurred in the rotunda of the Capitol in Madison, Wis., almost exactly five years ago, when Republican Gov. Scott Walker vowed, and ultimately succeeded, to bust unions in the state that invented them.

Kendall Fells, national organizer and director of the Fight for 15, told Yahoo News that many of the young food-industry workers on strike and at the debate are planning to vote for the first time, although they have yet to decide on a candidate and are focused on a single issue set: fair pay and the right to organize.

“Fast food workers have been going on strike in this country since Nov. 29, 2012. Today over 1,000 workers — fast food workers, home care workers are out here, child care workers, adjunct professors — what they’re saying is they want $15 an hour and a union,” Fells said. “They don’t care if you’re a Democrat, you’re Republican, they don’t care if you’re running for dogcatcher or running for president, they want $15 and they want a union. … A lot of these workers have never voted before but are going to be voting in this election, and they’re going to make sure their voices are heard.

Protesters begin to congregate in the atrium of U.W.-Milwaukee’s student union an hour before the Democratic debate was scheduled to begin. (Photo: Meredith Shiner, Yahoo News)

Ayesha Lee, a 19-year-old Milwaukee resident who works at a McDonalds two miles from the debate, took the microphone to address the energized crowd, telling them that it was time that politicians took worker rights issues seriously and delivered on higher wages, instead of merely saying that they understood the plight of low-paid workers.

After her speech and over the beat of drums and chants from her fellow demonstrators, she told Yahoo News she is just trying to make enough money to pay for college.

“I wanted my voice to be heard,” Lee said, who added that some of the U.W.-Milwaukee students joined her and fellow workers in their demonstration. “I want to school. I want to go to college. I’m trying to go to [Milwaukee Area Technical College].”

Lee said she has not decided for whom she will vote in her first opportunity to participate in a presidential election, but that she would be interested to hear what the candidates had to say, just yards away on the debate stage.

“They need to earn my vote. Right now, they’re not earning my vote because they’re not speaking to us — they need to fight for $15,” she said.

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders does support a $15 federal minimum wage and has participated in protests at the United States Capitol in Washington with food services employees who work there. When asked about whether that was enough to support him, Lee said that she still needed to hear more.

“That’s only one sound, one voice. We need more than just him,” she said.

Hillary Clinton supports an increase of the minimum wage to $12 and has said that $15 would be a near-impossible goal given the current composition of Congress, which is run by Republicans.

For the demonstrators in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, however, the legislative logistics of increasing their pay seemed to be of less consequence.

“These workers are working for companies and work in situations where they have no say-so. A lot of these fast food workers are being burnt on the job, anywhere from minor burns to third-degree burns, being told to put butter on it,” Fells, the organizer, said. “What this is about is about workers pulling themselves out of poverty. If you work in this country 40 hours a week, you should be able to have a roof over your head, clothes on your back and food in your stomach.”