Every four years, I feel the old juices flowing and hope pushes skyward, undaunted by the lack of encouragement from the left side of my brain where reason rules. Hence the Bernie Sanders sticker affixed to my car. I mean it. I will vote for him in the primary--though our New Mexico Primary is in June and long before that the Democrats nationally may have already decided the issue.
Bernie Sanders offers something else. I know why he is drawing standing-room only crowds to his appearances: he speaks the truth and he doesn't mince his words. He puts the emphasis of his campaign precisely where it needs to be placed"and where his audience knows it should be placed: our country has deserted the middle class and it has ignored poverty. He says it clearly: power has been used to produce great wealth for a very few while the momentum has gone out of the American Promise.
We need a President who would challenge Wall Street. We need a President who would close the off-shore tax havens of the 1%. We need a President who would unflinchingly confront the fossil fuel industry, Big Pharma, corporate medicine and all the other contributors to the destruction of the middle class and its dream of opportunity. But most of all, we need a President who would re-ignite this nation's flickering sense of itself as a country where the people count more than money does. Without that, we don't have democracy, we have oligarchy.
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This text also appeared in full in the Albuquerque Journal April 15, 2016
https://www.abqjournal.com/757440/bernie-sanders-knows-what-the-people-of-america-really-want.html
(Article changed on January 27, 2020 at 03:32)
(Article changed on January 28, 2020 at 01:05)
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