Rolling Stone magazine is making a set of short documentaries about the presidential candidates and this one looks at the campaign of Bernie Sanders. I like how he uses the term oligarchy to describe the US.
Playboy magazine had interview with him back in 2013 and in the light of his candidacy, they have put online some things he said that did not appear in the print edition, where he blasts the super-wealthy for having the audacity to suggest cutting benefits and raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to 70, condemns trade pacts that enable them to shift jobs overseas, attacks the Department of Justice for not putting the top bankers in jail, and points out that when the Democrats controlled both the White House and Congress, they still gave big breaks to the wealthy.
In another interview he points out that Social Security can be made perfectly solvent if the cap on income subject to withholding is lifted from its current value of around $118,00 and people earning $250,000 or more are made to contribute at the same rate as everyone else.
(You can go to Sanders’s website to join the campaign and contribute and here to see where he stands on the issues.)
I was registered as Independent, but I switched to Democrat so I can vote for Bernie in the primaries. He’s the first candidate in my voting life that I’ve truly been excited about (I’m 24, although I didn’t become politically engaged until age ~22, so I have virtually no experience). I’m doing what I can to spread the word about his campaign, and I haven’t heard from a single person who isn’t very open (if not very pleased) to the idea of a Sanders presidency — and that includes my rather conservative in-laws.
I think, for the most part (in my rather red neck of the woods), that even working to middle class conservatives are attracted to his populist rhetoric. It doesn’t hurt that he’s an older white male (but if the ends justifies the means), and he is really pushing the economic issues that average Americans are really concerned about, instead of pushing social issues that tend (senselessly) to divide.
I’m not convinced he can win, just because I really fear big corporations could actually switch votes or cause an “accident” or who knows what… But I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
Carbonfox, it’s a delight to see someone your age (younger than my son) this enthusiastic about a political race. You’re doing the right things to improve Bernie’s chances.
Unfortunately, I’m on the opposite coast from you and even in my bluish city he is perceived as FAR left and assumed to be unelectable as a result. We shall see.