The Eight-Hour Speech That Made Bernie Sanders A Household Name
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2019
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On December 10th, 2010, Bernie Sanders gave a marathon speech on the floor of the Senate protesting a tax deal negotiated between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and then-Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders was upset that the package included tax cuts for high-income Americans.
Though his speech failed to sway hearts and minds in the Senate — the deal passed with a bipartisan super-majority — but gained traction online and to helped establish Bernie Sanders as a progressive standard-bearer.
This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, and White House correspondent Tamara Keith.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. |
| 0:05.2 | I'm Usma Khaled, I'm covering the 2020 campaign. |
| 0:07.8 | I'm Scott Detro, I'm also covering the campaign. |
| 0:09.8 | And I'm Tamer Keep, I cover the White House. |
| 0:12.1 | And this week, we're going to take a close look at the top four leading Democratic presidential |
| 0:17.0 | candidates. |
| 0:18.0 | We each took a candidate, dove into their rise as a politician, and focused on a moment |
| 0:22.2 | in their life that was a turning point for them professionally or personally, which is |
| 0:26.6 | why we're calling this series Turning Points. |
| 0:28.7 | Pretty clever, huh? |
| 0:29.7 | So, today, Scott, we're going to dive into Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' life. |
| 0:35.2 | You did that piece. |
| 0:36.2 | So, talk to us about how you actually decided on the moment that you chose. |
| 0:39.8 | Yeah, one of the big things about Bernie Sanders is how consistent he's been over the decades, |
| 0:44.5 | and you can look at speeches he gave as Burlington Mayor, or a congressman, or a Senator, or |
| 0:49.8 | presidential candidate. |
| 0:51.2 | And they're like, often almost identical. |
| 0:53.4 | And there's been a lot of stories written about the early points of his political career. |
| 0:58.3 | So I was thinking differently, and I was wondering, what is the moment where Bernie Sanders |
| 1:02.0 | went from Bernie Sanders to Bernie Sanders' national iconic progressive figure? |
| 1:07.1 | And the interesting answer is that there's a very specific moment. |
| 1:10.1 | You know an exact time of day because it was this filibuster that he delivered on the Senate |
... |
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