Bernie Sanders announces moving the political revolution forward in the 2020 presidential campaign — February 19, 2019
Bernie said:
“We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign. And now it’s time to move that revolution forward, and make sure that that vision — those ideas — are implemented into policy.“
Here is the key section of the transcript of Bernie Sanders announcing our political revolution, on Vermont Public Radio with Bob Kinzel.
He expresses his key values, key policies, and overarching goal in 3 minutes and 12 seconds.
Here is the transcript of that section:
0:44–3:56
And what I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — our belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics, in town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country.
I’m running for president, I think, for two basic reasons Bob:
Number one, I think the current occupant of the White House is an embarrassment to our country — I think he is a pathological liar. Every day he is telling one lie or another. And it gives me no pleasure to say that.
But I also think he is a racist; a sexist; a homophobe; a xenophobe; somebody who is gaining cheap political points by trying to pick on minorities — often undocumented immigrants.
And I cannot recall, certainly in my lifetime, and I think in modern history, that we’ve had a president who actually goes out of his way to try and divide the American people up, based on where we were born, or the color of our skin, or our gender, or whatever it may be.
So, you know, I think what a president has gotta do is bring our people together, not divide us up.
That’s certainly one reason I’m running.
And the second reason is, that in the 2016 campaign, as you’ve indicated, we made a lot of progress in bringing forth ideas which, three years ago, people were saying:
“Oh Bernie these ideas are radical. And they’re extreme — the American people, you know, won’t except them.”
Well, it turns out that three years have come and gone. And many of those ideas that I talked about, you know —
- That health care is a right, not a privilege, that we’ve gotta move to a Medicare-for-All system single-payer program. Very, very popular.
- The idea that we have got to raise the minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour — there are now five states in this country that have passed that legislation. And I hope Vermont will follow. And I believe it will pass the U.S. House of Representatives. And we’re gonna have a heckuva fight in the Senate. That has gained enormous momentum.
- The idea that you work 40 hours a week in the richest country in the world, you should not be living in poverty. That’s an idea whose time has come.
- When I talked about making public colleges and universities tuition free, and lowering student debt, that was another issue that people said was too radical. Well, that’s also happening around the country.
- Climate change — you know I got laughed at three years ago, when I said climate change is one of the great crises facing our planet. Well, people are not laughing now. And they understand that we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel.
- And criminal justice reform…
- And immigration reform…
- And the need to fight racism, and sexism, homophobia…
All of those ideas I think are are a lot more popular, now than they were three years ago. So…
We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign. And now it’s time to move that revolution forward, and make sure that that vision — those ideas — are implemented into policy.
Here in 22 seconds, Bernie calls for a million Americans to join his effort to join him:
5:20–5:42
We’re trying to get — unbelievably, in an unprecedented way — a million people who are going to get involved in the campaign, not only to win the Democratic nomination, not only to win the general election, but also to be involved in the process which transforms our country and creates a government that works for all of us, and not just the few.
Link to the interview on VPR with Bob Kinzel.
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