Bernie Sanders is out with a new book today
aimed at teaching young Americans how to win in progressive politics.
And even though he himself didn’t win in 2016,
he’s leaving the door open to another run in 2020:
— Are you running again?
— Well, it’s a little bit early to be talking about that.
Let’s focus on the issues impacting the American people.
— We’ll take that as a yes.
— As Sanders looks towards that possibility,
he seems to be changing his strategy…
and his tone.
— In just over a year,
Bernie Sanders went from presidential primary loser
to the de-facto leader of the Democratic Party.
— Let us welcome the senator from Vermont,
the Honorable Bernard Sanders!
— Recent polls show he’s the most popular American politician.
And he’s raising money without even trying—
bringing in $1.5 million in the first half of the year
by sending just four fundraising emails.
— I have been introduced on many occasions.
I can’t quite recall an introduction like that.
Thank you very much.
— He’s done this without actually becoming a Democrat.
— You are talking to the longest-serving Independent in the history of the United States
— But he’s still sort-of embracing the party.
— If you want to be critical of Democrats, I’m with you.
There’s a lot that we can criticize.
So the place that I am in right now is to try to transform the Democratic Party—
to open it up to people like you!
— This is a shift from his much more direct 2016 campaign rhetoric.
— What the system is designed to do,
what corporate media is designed to do,
is to tell you that we cannot achieve real change,
that the only thing you can accept is incremental, tiny changes.
— Remember,
he’s the guy whose rabid fan-base almost derailed last year’s Democratic National Convention.
Waging that campaign, divisive as it was,
earned Sanders a seat at the Democratic Party table.
And he wants to keep it.
Even Ralph Nader,
an outsider presidential candidate in his own right,
understands why.
— I think he wants to win.
And short of winning,
to be strong enough inside the Democrat Party
to push them toward a more progressive agenda and away from the Wall Street corporatist agenda.
— But that sort of undermines his image as this Independent-reformer-outsider guy.
— No, I don’t think he’s compromised his major agendas.
I think that’s the way he lives with his conscience.
He said, “Yes, I’m on the inside.”
“I’m surrounded by corporate Democrats,”
but I’ve got a much bigger base out there than they have,”
“and maybe I can push them in terms of their own survival, in 2018 and 2020, in my direction.”
— There is a general national consensus
that the Democrat Party is beginning to move more
in our direction than in the other side’s direction.
— One way Sanders could pull the party in his direction
is by threatening to use his grassroots army to primary challenge establishment Democrats—
something many of his supporters want.
— Do you think he should support primary challenges?
— Absolutely.
The primary challenges make our party better.
— Doesn’t that risk, though, alienating some of the Democratic voters that he is courting?
— Yeah, I mean, I think what really matters is supporting candidates
who are going to be in the right place on the issues.
— But on his biggest policy push,
Medicare for All,
Sanders isn’t ready to drive a wedge in the party.
— Would you back primary challenges to Democrats who don’t support Medicare for All?
— Uh, that’s political gossip, which I’m not particularly interested in.
— Well, how are you gonna move them forward?
— And when Sanders explains his decision to play the long-game,
he now sounds more like a politician than a revolutionary:
— You yourself admitted to NPR that
there’s no chance of it passing with Republicans in control.
So why are you pushing a plan that you think can’t pass?
— Now, that’s not the right question—
I mean, nothing that’s significant if we want to pass,
and I hope and believe we will, Medicare for All.
A good majority of the American people believe we should expand Medicare to all people,
and we have got to organize effectively in every state in this country to make that happen.
— Well, why talk about it if you can’t get it done right now?
— Because that’s the way change always happens.
Why do you think the minimum wage now all over this country is at $15 an hour?
Do you think that happened overnight?
People have been talking about it for a long time.
What about gay rights?
What about women’s rights?
Things don’t happen overnight.
And especially when you’re taking on the entire political establishment,
you have to begin someplace.
And our job now is to mobilize people to talk about the advantages,
the cost effectiveness, the human right that health care is.
So you’ve gotta start someplace, and that’s what we’re going to do.
Thank you.
— What do you say to Democrats who say you’re gonna…?
— The thing is,
if Bernie is serious that he wants to get priorities like Medicare for All done eventually,
he needs the Democratic Party establishment to work with him.
So in April,
Sanders tried to appease them by joining DNC Chairman Tom Perez on a “unity tour.”
It was partly designed to convince Sanders’s supporters the DNC wasn’t totally evil.
It… didn’t work too well.
— Let me thank Tom Perez for his remarks.
— Boo!
— And Sanders can’t play too nice with the party anyway—
because he built a movement railing against it.
He has to be careful not to lose that authenticity.
So just a month later,
when he spoke to a conference full Bernie diehards,
the Democratic Party was the enemy again:
— The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic party is an absolute failure.
— This frenemy status drives the party establishment crazy.
But Sanders knows they have to live with it…
— Alright, can I see that baby cow?
— …because the bloc he controls is critical to their future,
at least through 2018.
— Oh my God!
— Oh, he’s so tiny.