http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/bernie-sanders-where-we-go-from-here-w452786
Some choice quotes:
The money shot:
I agree with basically every point Sanders makes in this interview. Right or not people did not believe that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party had their backs and cared about their issues, and the way to get back in the game is 1) acknowledging the reality that so many people are hurting and need help (instead of "American is already great") and 2) nominating candidates that genuinely want to help everyone and not just their biggest donors. No more "we can't do single payer healthcare or even a public option, how about some insurance company handouts?", no more "$15/hour is too much, let's do $12.50", and no more "free trade" deals that are mainly about furthering the advantages of the richest companies in existence. The Democrats are not getting anywhere by massively compromising themselves before even trying to get laws passed, especially with the modern Republican party in the picture.
Now obviously there will always be people who won't be swayed by economic policy, those who just want to hurt groups they don't like or set fire to everything. And Sanders is probably optimistic when he says, "Do not believe that the vast majority of the people who voted for Trump are racist, sexist or homophobes." But optimism and at least trying to reach people with a progressive platform is important, and assuming that those voters are unreachable and irredeemable is an easy way to reach apathy. And if the worst thing you can accuse Sanders of is naivety then his way is clearly better than the complete failure that is the rest of the Democratic party.
The senator and his staffers were obviously sorting through a variety of emotions, and it was hard not to wonder what might have been. But Sanders admonished himself once or twice not to look back. "It's not worth speculating about," he said.
Instead, Sanders laid out the dilemma facing the Democratic Party. The Democrats must find their way back to a connection with ordinary people, and this will require a complete change in the way they do business. He's convinced that the huge expenditure of time and mental effort the Democrats put in to raise more than $1 billion for the Clinton campaign in the past year ended up having enormous invisible costs. "Our future is not raising money from wealthy people, but mobilizing millions of working people and young people and people of color," he says.
The senator's sweet spot as a politician has always been talking about the problems of the working poor: the economic struggles, the anomalous-across-the-industrialized-world story of a decline in life expectancy among rural Americans. But those same voters just lost any sympathy many Democrats might have had by electing the race-baiting lunatic Trump. Exactly how much courting of such a population is permissible? Is trying to recapture voters who've made a racist choice in itself racist?
Sanders believes it is a mistake to dismiss the Trump movement as a monolithic expression of racism and xenophobia. Trump's populist appeals, sincere or not, carried the day, and Democrats need to answer them. Trump pledged not to cut Medicare or Social Security, promised to support re-importation of prescription drugs from other countries, and said he'd reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. Sanders insists he and his staff are going to try to hold him to all of these promises. How they'll manage that is only a guess, but as ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders could easily force the Republicans into votes on all of these issues by introducing amendments during the budget resolution process, which begins in January. "Were those 100 percent lies that [Trump] was telling people in order to gain support?" he asks. "We'll find out soon enough."
Some choice quotes:
How you create a sustainable global economy that protects the poorest people in the world is a very important issue for me. But you surely do not have to do that by wiping out the middle class of this country. I think we have a right in this country to hold corporate America accountable for gaining the benefits of being an American corporation, while at the same time turning their backs on the American working class and the consumers who helped create their profits and their wealth.
I think if there's a lesson to be learned from Trump's success, it is that timidity is no longer the path to success. The Democrats have got to start thinking big. During my campaign, that was one of our slogans: Think big, not small.
We have got to get the American people to understand that as citizens in a democratic society, they have rights. They have a right to make sure that their little children have decent care, and that their older kids can go to college. They have a right to breathe clean air, and to make sure that the planet we're leaving our kids is going to be a healthy planet.
They have a right to do that, and the only way you do that is to think big, not small. But implicit in that, thinking big, is [recognizing] that the brakes on all of this, the things that are holding us back, are the power of corporate America and Wall Street, the insurance companies and so on. If you're not prepared to challenge them, then you can't think big.
You talked about giving Trump a chance to earn your support. What did you mean?
There are areas where people like me could work with him: rebuilding the infrastructure, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, re-establishing Glass-Steagall, raising the minimum wage. Those are ideas that we can work on. Now, was he being totally hypocritical and just saying whatever came to his mind that he thought could attract votes? Or does he believe that?
Where there will not be any compromise is in the areas of racism or sexism or xenophobia or Islamophobia. This country has struggled for too many centuries to try to become a less discriminatory society. We've made progress that we should be proud of, and we're not going back to an era of racism and sexism and discrimination. On that there will not be any compromise. But you're really asking, are there areas that we can perhaps work together? If he remains consistent with what he said on the campaign trail, we'll see.
The money shot:
Is there any way to read that except as a massive repudiation of Democrats?
No. I can't see how any objective person can. It speaks to what I just mentioned; we cannot spend our entire life I didn't, but others do raising money from wealthy people, listening to their needs. We've got to be out in union halls, we've got to be out in veterans' halls, and we've got to be talking to working people, and we've got to stand up and fight for them.
This is how screwed up we are now. When you have a Republican Party that wants to give huge tax breaks to billionaires, when many of their members want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, when they don't believe in climate change, when they've been fierce advocates of unfettered free trade I'm talking about pre-Trump why would any working person, when they want to cut programs for working people, support them?
I think we know the answer. We know what the Karl Roves of the world have been successful in doing. They're playing off working-class people against the gay community, or African-Americans, or Latinos. But that only works when you have not laid the foundation by making it clear to those workers that you are on their side on economic issues.
I agree with basically every point Sanders makes in this interview. Right or not people did not believe that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party had their backs and cared about their issues, and the way to get back in the game is 1) acknowledging the reality that so many people are hurting and need help (instead of "American is already great") and 2) nominating candidates that genuinely want to help everyone and not just their biggest donors. No more "we can't do single payer healthcare or even a public option, how about some insurance company handouts?", no more "$15/hour is too much, let's do $12.50", and no more "free trade" deals that are mainly about furthering the advantages of the richest companies in existence. The Democrats are not getting anywhere by massively compromising themselves before even trying to get laws passed, especially with the modern Republican party in the picture.
Now obviously there will always be people who won't be swayed by economic policy, those who just want to hurt groups they don't like or set fire to everything. And Sanders is probably optimistic when he says, "Do not believe that the vast majority of the people who voted for Trump are racist, sexist or homophobes." But optimism and at least trying to reach people with a progressive platform is important, and assuming that those voters are unreachable and irredeemable is an easy way to reach apathy. And if the worst thing you can accuse Sanders of is naivety then his way is clearly better than the complete failure that is the rest of the Democratic party.