all photos by Jay from TV
Every weekday I videotape an early-morning show from New York called " Morning Joe," which features a loud-mouthed Republican, Joe Scarborough, and an attractive but overwhelmed Democrat, Mika Brzezinski (daughter of the former National Security Advisor) who debate politics and many other subjects for three hours, usually accompanied by a coterie of interesting guests. I watch it late at night (running through the commercials) before I turn to Charlie Rose's show and bed. Lately I have been noticing a rising clamor on this topical show about Hillary Clinton, her candidacy and her growing email and foundation scandals. I still think she is the most qualified of all the Presidential candidates, but there is a rising possibility that she may face unexpected obstacles to locking in her nomination. At the same time, I watched the Junior Senator from Vermont, bespectacled disheveled 73-year old Bernie Sanders, stand on the grass in front of the Capital Building and declare that he is running for President of the United States....and that he is confident he can actually win the election. Then last weekend I spent 90 minutes watching Sanders give a speech.....and I was stunned! Stunned 'cause I agreed with everything that he said....everything.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is the liberal standard-bearer.
There is no question in my mind that voters want a candidate who is centered on the economy and the plight of the disappearing midde class. All other questions are secondary and will not determine who will be the next Chief Executive. Now there are two more people in politics whom I relate to, admire and would vote for because they represent the economic values which I personally seek...Senator Elizabeth Warren, of course, and Bernie Sanders. I have written here on Hufffington several times about Senator Warren and how much I admire her grit, determination and savvy common-sense approach to our dire economic plights. But she keeps saying that she is not a candidate and will not run. (Although she did meet this weekend with V.P. Joe Biden, who took the Amtrack to Washington just to spend an hour in a private meeting with her. What a ticket that would make! But it won't happen.)
So I must look elsewhere for the answers I seek....and Bernie Sanders is giving them to me. Hillary also, to a degree, who traveled in a van nicknamed Scooby to Iowa and New Hamprshire, talked about millionaires and hedge-fund guys not paying their fair share of taxes but seems to be back in the pocket of those same Wall Street guys. The smart writer at Rolling Stone called this "fake populism." He said that nothing will really change with tax loopholes if she is elected. As I indicated, I have been listening to and reading about Vermont's bad boy Senator Sanders and he really lays it into those special-interest people with savage abandonment. As someone wrote, "he is a hit with supporters who are hip to the differences between a politician stomping for votes and true advocate for working people." On Saturday once again I heard him lay out his platform, and tears welled as I heard him promise to push for a $15 hourly minimum wage, to introduce legislation which would make public colleges tuition-free, and then he capped it with a promised bill to invest $1 trillion for infrastructure improvements across the country, you know- fix those rotting bridges and decrepit schools and which would create 13 million new jobs. I heard him promise that - if elected - he would fight to break up those six big Wall Street banks which almost brought us down in 2008. He said in his speech that these banks control some $10 trillion in assets and hold almost half of the mortgages and credit card debt in the country. Six banks! Incidentally, I have researched his environmental record and it is spotless. He fought the Keystone Pipeline from the moment it was announced, and continues to do so. Obama, Clinton....not so. His official statement included this: "The peril of global climate change, with catastrophic consequences, is the central challenge of our times and our planet." That's our Bernie. Enviromentalist Wiliam McKibben said that Bernie Sanders isn't running against Hillary Clinton, he is running against the Koch Brothers, the richest two men on the plant, and their oil-and-gas interests. "Vulnerable people across the country are awfully happy to have a loud Brooklyn-accented voice demanding real fundamental change. Run, Bernie, run!"
It should be noted that Bernie's home state, the feisty second-smallest Vermont, does not have party registrations for its politicians. He has been an Independent socialist for as long as I can remember, but he does vote with the Democrats and will be fighting for the Democratic nomination in the primaries. Which means that he will participate in all of the debates! So even if he does not win the nomination - he's still a long shot - he will certainly influence the party politics and the party line, much as Elizabeth Warren has done with Hillary's camp thusfar. (On the trade bill, for example.) New Hampshire, the first primary and one of the most important, has always had a warm spot for Bernie....and I suspect he will make a strong showing there. Those people like to dig in and get some candid answers, his specialty.
Watched the rally in Los Angeles, where 27,000 people turned out downtown to cheer him on. In Phoeneix, 28,000 devotees turned out. Crowds like these are not being seen by any other candidate but the dangerous despot, Donald Trump. On Charlie Rose, Sanders pounded away at the imbalance between the ultra-rich and the ordinary people. The top ½ of 1% has more wealth that the bottom 90%. He called it "unacceptable that in an era of unprecedented new technology, American are working longer hours for lower wages while multinational corporations and the wealthiest families are doing phenomenally well." I vividly remember his comment: "From 2013 to 2015, the 14 richest Americans increased their wealth by $157 billion and the Waltons - of Walmart fame - own more wealth than the bottom 42% of Americans." He told Charlie that the greed of the wealthiest families in America is a "psychiatric" issue and compared their desire to accumulate more wealth to drug and alcohol addicts who always want more. "Income inequality in the U.S. is one of the defining moral issues of th era."
I read a blog, OpenSecrets.org, which dug into the Clinton and Sanders financial campaign records. Hers were enormous sums from major Wall Street players while Sanders' top donors were all unions representing working people - teachers, pubic employees, postal workers and the like. They noted that his top donor, the Machinist/Aerospace Workers Union, has only given him $95,000 in the 17 years of his political career. He told the Wall Street Journal this week: "The kind of response we're getting really stuns me." He went on to say that in the 3½ months he has been running, some 400,000 people donated an average of $31 to his campaign. That would be a blob on Hillary's record. At his Capital speech, he said that he has never solicitated or taken any corporate money and he will not do so during his run. I suspect we will continue to see a groundswell of small donations from all left-leaning folks as his campaign gets into its swing. It will just be a drop-in-the-bucket of what Hillary and Jeb will spend...but it's honest money from working people. On Gwen Eiffel's Washington TV show, the savvy panel said that once the Elizabeth Warren people realized that she really isn't running, many moved into Bernie's camp, from the more casual to the top professional political leaders: Kurt Ehrenberg, the Run Warren Run political person in New Hampshire, and Blair Lawton, the point person in Iowa, are now both working for Sanders. Today's Time on its last page has an interview with Bernie: "The United States has a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality where the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%, where almost 20% of our childen are living in poverty, 40 percent of African-American children are living in poverty. We are moving rapidly toward an oligarchic form of society where a small number of families control not only the economy but our political system as well. It is imperative that we develop a strong political movement that says to the billionaire class they can't have it all."
If Sanders' message of economic populism wins over New Hampshire's notoriously fussy Democratic voters, he will be a viable challenge to Hillary's nomination. Am I shouting into the wind? Perhaps...but as my esteemed colleague William Bradley said here on Huffington, if Sanders were to defy the odds and win the nomination with his truly people-oriented platform which directly challenges the corrupt system, it would be a historic victory for working people across America.
So, yes, Senator Bernie Sanders is worthy of serious consideration.
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