Bernie Sanders Is Coming to Portland on August 9 (and Everyone Is Going)

Hillary Clinton will be here too this week, but you can't afford to go to that event.

By Lizzy Acker

If there's one thing the people of Portland love, it's the most liberal possible probably-not-viable candidate for president.

In 2000 when Al Gore visited our fair city, his message was almost drowned out by Ralph Nader supporters protesting him as a "Republi-crat." Nader went on to get a healthy 5 percent of the popular vote in Oregon. And on Sunday, get ready for a massive and totally free Bernie Sanders rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, featuring the Great White Hope from Vermont himself, Beeeeern-ie Saaaaaan-ders.

Things have changed a little since 2000, when the field was a monotonous line of white and gray-haired men and Nader was the upstart with a lady running mate that even plenty of liberals wouldn't vote for because he was so out there. Somehow, Bernie Sanders, your classic, aging, white male politician, has come out as the furthest left candidate against a woman and is basically a socialist compared to our current commander in chief, who, if you'll remember, is an African-American Gen X-er.

But the people of Portland aren't embarrassed about letting their conservatively liberal freak flags fly by supporting an old white dude for president; according to a since-deleted tweet over 9,000 people RSVP'd for the Rose Quarter rally within two days of its announcement (speculation on Reddit is that the campaign asked that the tweet be deleted since they don't want info on RSVPs announced yet). The capacity of the Memorial Coliseum is 12,888, so it's a good bet the place will be filled and then some on Sunday.

At the rally, Sanders promises to address the major tenets of his campaign: getting big money out of politics, dealing with income inequality and climate change and making college affordable. Want to go? All you have to do is RSVP for the rally here and hope the government isn't putting you on some sort of list when you sign up.

Want to see his main competitor and probable-nominee Hillary Clinton this week? Well, she'll be in town on Aug. 5, but her event is invitation-only, costs $2,700 if you get one of those invites and is taking place at the home of "Democratic Party insiders Win McCormack and Carol Butler." So you're not going to that.

And just to keep things a little interesting on the Democratic side, since they don't have Donald Trump, Joe Biden is apparently thinking about running for president, too. Will he inappropriately touch his way to the White House? For now, we can only speculate. In the meantime, unless you plan to be joining your fellow Portlanders in a major session of Sunday preaching to the choir next weekend, avoid the Rose Quarter on Aug. 9.

Power to the people is going to be terrible for traffic.

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