Bernie Sanders speaks at Dominican University in San Rafael
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By Richard Halstead, Marin Independent Journal
Posted: 12/02/16, 11:09 PM PST | Updated: 1 min ago
193 Comments
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks Friday at Dominican University in San Rafael.
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks Friday at Dominican University in San Rafael. Sherry LaVars — Special to Marin Independent Journal
Speaking in San Rafael on Friday night, Bernie Sanders told a crowd of more than 850 people that they shouldn’t blame many of the people who voted for Donald Trump for his presidential victory.
The Vermont senator said they should blame instead the elite leadership of the Democratic Party, which for years did too little to address the economic pain of an increasingly large segment of the nation.
“I look at this election not as a victory for Mr. Trump, who wins the election as the most unpopular candidate in perhaps the history of our country,” Sanders said. “But as a loss for the Democratic Party.”
The event, held in Dominican University’s Angelico Hall in conjunction with Corte Madera’s Book Passage, was designed to promote Sanders’ new book, “Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In.” Sanders barely mentioned the book, however. As he did during his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders concentrated instead on the issue that has energized him throughout his political career: economic inequality. He said he doesn’t believe that all of the people who voted for Trump are racists or sexists or homophobes.
“I don’t believe that at all,” Sanders said. “I think a lot of people ended up holding their noses and voting for Trump because they are in pain.”
He provided a few choice examples of that pain. For example, he noted the fact that millions of Americans still lack health insurance and that many people with insurance have high deductibles that discourage them from seeing a doctor and can’t afford the medicine they’re prescribed if they do consult a physician.
Sanders said that half of people age 55 have no money saved for retirement, that on average men in Virginia’s affluent Fairfax County live 18 years longer than men in the state’s economically disadvantaged McDowell County, and that tens of thousands of people living in Baltimore, Maryland, are addicted to heroin.
“There are a lot of people in our country who are hurting and they are hurting very, very badly,” Sanders said.” The political establishment is not hearing their pain; the financial and economic establishment could care less about their lives; and the media establishment is not dealing with the reality of their lives; and along comes Mr. Trump.”
Wait, wait. America is already great, right?
“Top advisor says Hillary Clinton needed no prodding to concede to Donald Trump” [
Los Angeles Times]. So if that’s true, that would mean that Trump’s not a fascist, right?
“he Democratic National Committee leadership and the party’s operatives gambled with the lives of working-class people when they went all in for Hillary Clinton, a wildly unpopular candidate with an out-of-touch strategy. They lost that bet. Donald Trump won the election, and now we’ll be paying for their mistakes for the next four — or, god forbid, eight — years” [
Jacobin]. “You might think these elites would be chastened into reflection. ” No, the thought never crossed my mind.