For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/obama-to-meet-privately-with-sanders
Obama to Meet Privately With Sanders
The president was seen as putting his thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton over Sanders in an interview this week.
By Gabrielle Levy
Jan. 27, 2016, at 9:42 a.m.
President Barack Obama will host Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for a private meeting in the Oval Office Wednesday, just days after Obama all but endorsed Hillary Clinton, whom Sanders is battling for the Democratic nomination.
The tete-a-tete will not be the first between the two men since Sanders joined the presidential campaign and has been in the making at least since last month, when Sanders was at the White House for the Congressional Holiday Ball.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest announced the meeting Tuesday, adding that there “will be no formal agenda.”
Although the president remains officially neutral in his party’s race to succeed him, he and front-runner Hillary Clinton know each other well, while Obama and Sanders briefly served together in the Senate.
Following their lengthy and often bitter contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Clinton grew close during the four years Clinton served as Obama’s secretary of state.
Obama’s interview with Politico Monday likely put a spring in Clinton’s step as she made her closing arguments to Iowans a week before they head to the caucuses. In the interview, Obama enthusiastically praised Clinton as a rival, a diplomat and a friend, declaring her experience made her as prepared as anyone could be on the first day of her presidency.
While the president refrained from criticizing Sanders – whose surging campaign in Iowa has drawn comparisons to his own upset victory over Clinton in 2008 – the president said Sanders has yet to face tough scrutiny on the national stage.
“If Bernie won Iowa or won New Hampshire, then you guys are going to do your jobs and, you know, you're going to dig into his proposals and how much they cost and what does it mean, and, you know, how does his tax policy work and he's subjected, then, to a rigor that hasn't happened yet, but that Hillary is very well familiar with,” Obama said in the Politico interview.
"You're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people don't, haven't seen before,” he said. “That's a disadvantage to her.”
Elected in 2004, Obama and Sanders were colleagues in the Senate for just two years: Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, was in the House of Representatives for the first two years of Obama’s Senate term, and Obama then spent much much of 2007 and 2008 campaigning for president.
