07/03/2024
From Bernie Sanders to the American People:
"The primary is over. This is it. The election will once again be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And, frighteningly, at this point most polls have Trump in the lead.
The question we now face is a simple one. How do we defeat Trump and his right-wing extremist allies in the House and Senate? How do we elect more Progressives to Congress?
And, frankly, the answer is complicated by the reality that the Democratic establishment is ill-prepared to do that. They have relatively little support within the working class. Their support among the Latino community is declining. And they are even seeing a drop In support from the Black community - historically the Democrats' strongest base of support. Their support among young people is declining. The Democrats are also weak in terms of generating grass-roots activism or excitement.
We have to do things differently.
While most Democrats will focus their attention on Trump's indictments, his insults and outrages, our job is to be laser-focused in reminding people of the fraud and pathological liar for working people we all know Trump to be.
For instance:
This is a president, Donald Trump, who said he was going to provide health care to everyone, yet tried to throw 32 million people off of health care and has pledged to continue to try and accomplish that goal.
This is a president who said he was going to stand up for working families and who promised to pass tax reform legislation designed to help the middle class, yet 83 percent of his tax benefits go to the top 1 percent.
This is a president who promised to take on the pharmaceutical companies. He said they were "getting away with murder." Yet, drug prices continue to soar and he appointed a drug company executive as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
This is a president who promised to take on the greed of Wall Street, but then proceeded to appoint more Wall Street titans to high positions than any president in history.
This is a president who appointed vehemently anti-labor members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
This is a president who believes climate change is a "hoax", and appointed agency leaders and judges who consistently undermined our ability to move toward sustainable energy and protect the environment.
This is a president who said he would do "everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens," yet went out of his way to attempt to deny them from getting the health care they need and allow discrimination against them in the workplace.
This is a president who brags about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade and denying reproductive rights to millions of women across the country.
This is a president who said that if he won that America would be respected again around the world, yet as a result of his anti-democratic and incompetent policies has succeeded in significantly lowering the respect that people all over the planet have for the United States, all while embracing right-wing authoritarian rulers around the world.
This is a president who not only rejected his own defeat and attempted to incite an insurrection to stop Congress from certifying the election, but worked overtime to make it harder for people to vote and easier for billionaires to buy the outcomes of elections. I happen to believe that if Trump is elected once again this November, the 250 year old experiment of modern democracy in this country may very well come to end.
The truth is, Donald Trump sold out the working families of this country once, and if he wins again all of the anti-worker, anti-democratic policies he pursued during his first term will only be magnified. He is a menace to working people whose rejection of climate science threatens the future of this planet. We have to appreciate how unbelievably severe the current moment is.
This is not the message most Democrats trying to defeat Trump will communicate, but it one we must relentlessly remind the working people of this country about ahead of November's elections.
So there it is. A lot of important work ahead of us"
