Bernie Sanders Inspires All With People’s Summit 2017 Speech
He makes it clear: The time for Revolution is now.
At around 7:30 CST, at the McCormick Place — the largest convention center in North America, holding a rumbling crowd of four thousand activists and progressives running for office and/or working for political organizations, Bernie Sanders begins his energetic speech.
On a personal note, I want to thank many, many of you for your work on our presidential campaign. You understood something that the establishment, the pundits, and the corporate media did not know, and still do not know, and that is that the American people are profoundly sick and tired of establishment politics, and establishment economics.
Right off the bat, he criticizes the giants of the corporate media, the giants in the political machines called the Democratic and Republicans parties, and the giants in the 1% that control our economy. In one sentence, he criticized everyone that needed to be criticized for the continuing downfall of the middle class, and the continuing struggles of the working class. He continues further:
Jane and I just returned from the UK the other day. And I want to tell you what you already know, [that] is, that the movement for economic, social, racial, and environmental justice is not just growing here in the US, it is growing worldwide.
Thanks to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, in the recent election, although he may not have won the position of prime minister, he pushed not only the politics of the Labour Party farther to the left, but pushed their seats in parliament to a higher number by 29 seats, while the conservatives lost twelve seats. Not only is Corbyn similar to Sanders in terms of policy, he is also similar to Sanders in the way he was treated by the “liberal” corporate media, calling his policies unrealistic, and calling him unelectable. Sound familiar?
Despite all of the uphill obstacles, and hard odds, Jeremy Corbyn was the biggest winner in the UK election, while Theresa May was the biggest loser, making herself look like a totally incompetent politician.
Bernie Sanders continues, talking about his 2016 campaign accomplishments:
Together in virtually every single state, we won the votes of young people under forty, young people who are black, and white, and latino, and asian-american, and native-american — we won those votes by overwhelming numbers and we ended up, I believe, getting almost twice as many votes as Clinton and Trump combined among young people.
Surprise, surprise, millennials know exactly what they’re talking about. This shows that the progressive agenda and the progressive movement is gonna stay for a very long time until eventual success; the young people are the future, and so are their beliefs. This is very good news.
He continues, talking about more accomplishments for the progressive vision in general:
Because of the grassroots efforts of activists like you throughout this country, we have in recent years made enormous progress in advancing the progressive agenda. You know, sometimes what we all do, is we look at today, we say, “well, you know, that’s kinda the way it always was”. That’s not the case. Ideas that just a few years ago seemed radical and unattainable are now today widely supported, and in fact, some of them are being implemented as we speak. And I want you to appreciate what together we have accomplished — don’t take this for granted.
Five years ago, not a long time ago, with a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour — a starvation wage, if five years ago somebody here jumped up and they said: “Bernie, you know, we gotta raise that minimum wage to $15 an hour”, [the] person next to you would’ve said: “you are nuts, you can’t double the minimum wage at one time, can’t be done”. In fact, three years ago, what the Democratic leadership was talking about was $10.10 an hour. That was then. Today, federal legislation for a $15 an hour minimum wage — which I introduced in the Senate a few weeks ago, now has 31 cosponsors in the Senate, and 155 cosponsors in the House of Representatives. And $15 an hour legislation is being passed by city councils, and state legislatures all across America.
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Five years ago, if we were here, the majority political sentiment in this country among Republicans and many Democrats was that our trade policies were just great. What was the problem with NAFTA…or the TPP? So what if those trade policies cost us millions of decent jobs and drove us into a downward spiral — a race to the bottom. Our trade policies were great, that was five years ago. Today, the American people all across the political spectrum are saying that we need new trade agreements that work for workers, not just the CEO’s of large corporations. And I want to thank all of you for creating the movement that defeated the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Fun fact: During the 2016 election, then President Obama was going around the world trying his very best to keep the TPP alive amongst great pressure from the American people.
Bernie continues:
Today, the idea of a trillion dollar investment to create up to 15 million jobs — good paying jobs, by re-building our crumbling infrastructure is now widely accepted. Just three years ago, Not even five years ago, three years ago, I proposed a trillion dollar investment, [it] got virtually no support, had to cut it in half. But today, all across the political spectrum, people understand that we need repair our broken bridges, our roads, our water systems, our waste water plants, our levees, our dams, our airports, [and] we need to build affordable housing.
Another fun fact: Trump lied to the American people, saying that he was going to do just that. He would instead end up proposing the privatization of infrastructure.
Bernie proceeds to talk about the further advancements made in paid family and medical leave, the wage gap, free-tuition public colleges, universal healthcare, climate change, immigration reform and a clear path towards citizenship, and criminal justice reform.
And then later on, he addresses the 2016 election, and specifically, why Donald Trump became the President of the United States:
I am often asked by the media and others — how did it come about that Donald Trump, the most unpopular presidential candidate in the modern history of our country, won the election. And my answer is that Trump didn’t win the election, the Democratic Party lost the election.
Let us be very, very clear; the current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure. This is not my opinion, this is the facts. You know, we focus a lot on the presidential election, but we also have to understand that Democrats have lost the US House, the US Senate, the Republicans now control almost two-thirds of the governor’s chairs throughout this country, and over the last nine years, Democrats have lost almost 1,000 legislative seats in states all across country. Today, in almost half of the states in America, the Democratic Party has almost no political presence at all. Now, if that’s not a failure, if that’s not a failed model, I don’t know what a failed model is.
If that’s not the best analysis of the political situation in America, I don’t know what an analysis of the political situation in America is.
Bernie’s back baby, and he’s ready to steer the political revolution towards the entire power structure of America. Quoting Danny DeVito (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwZDhPt4i8E), we need you Obi Wan, in 2018 to campaign for progressives like you already are, and in 2020 to be the best presidential comeback America has ever seen.
