‘We Need to Transform The Democratic Party’: Re-electing Biden Just the Start, Sanders Says
Income inequality must become an important focus, senator says
Re-electing President Biden to a second term and defeating Donald Trump is not the end — but rather only where the real work begins for the Democratic Party.
So says Sen Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont independent who twice himself ran for the Democratic nomination.
Democrats have to return to their roots as the party of the American working class, in order to combat income inequality and make the nation fairer and more comfortable for all, said Sanders, who appeared Thursday as a guest on Stephen Colbert’s late-night TV show.
“There was once a time when the Democratic Party was the party of the working class. The Republican Party was the party of the rich and the bankers. Now they claim, suddenly, to be the party of workers and that’s certainly not true,” Sanders said. “I think the result of that is people are demoralized.
“Stephen, 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. People can’t afford healthcare, can’t afford to send their kids to college can’t afford housing. People are hurting and looking to Washington, they’re not getting much in response,” he added. “I think what we’ve got to do is we need what I call a nonviolent political revolution. We must get big money and billionaires out of the political process.”
Re-electing Biden and vanquishing Trump must be just the beginning, the senator said.
“We need to transform the Democratic Party to force those doors open so that ordinary people, young people, people of color, [and] working people can come in and drive an agenda that says, ‘We’re not going to be the only major country on Earth not to have healthcare for all people. We’re not going to have more income and wealth inequality than any time in our history,’” he said to applause from Colbert’s studio audience.
Creating such a world is not fantasy or Utopia, Sanders insisted.
“A nation that works for all, that’s not Utopia. It really is not,” he said. “We are the richest country in the history of the world. We have all kinds of technology that can improve human life. Our job is to make government work for everybody, and not just the billionaire class.”
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