The Vast Majority: "Bernie Sanders Wants You to Fight" with Meagan Day

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🗓️ 7 May 2019

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

If we want to transform the United States in a socialist direction, we're going to need to do much more than elect Bernie Sanders as president. Nobody harps on this point more than Bernie himself. You can see it in his "not me, us" campaign slogan, or his emphasis in stump speeches on how massive industries like health insurance companies would mobilize against Medicare for All. President Bernie couldn't do much without a mass working-class movement at his back.

But that doesn't mean that such a movement and the Sanders campaign are two separate things — Bernie's campaign can help and has already helped bring those movements into being. Micah talks with Jacobin staff writer Meagan Day about it.

You can read Meagan's article "Bernie Sanders Wants You to Fight" here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/bernie-sanders-movements-not-me-us

And you can read her article "Wielding the Imperial Presidency" in the new print issue of Jacobin or here: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/02/wielding-the-imperial-presidency

Subscribe to Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.com/subscribe

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to episode two of The Vast Majority from Jacobin magazine.
0:09.5	I am Jacobin Managing Editor Micah Utrich.
0:13.6	Bernie Sanders is running for president again,
0:16.4	and some people on the left say that they're dreading
0:19.6	his participation in the Democratic primary was the first campaign in my lifetime where two people vying for
0:35.2	the presidency were having substantive debates about policy and one of them was
0:39.7	putting forward a strong left-wing agenda. And that was. I don't know why we wouldn't want to do that all over again. The alternative is much worse. And from that campaign, you know, there's stuff like sometimes in Chicago when me and Jackman editor Sean
0:55.4	Goody are sitting around. Maybe there's a little lull or feeling a little down because
1:00.5	everything in the news sucks. One of us pulls up the clip from
1:04.4	Bernie's debate with Hillary where Bernie says I am proud to say that Henry
1:09.5	Kinsinja is not
1:15.0	be excited for more moments like that in the lead up to 2020.
1:18.0	Like who knows what war criminals will get denounced this time around
1:22.0	like maybe we'll hear Bernie on the stump and I war criminals will get denounced this time around.
1:22.8	Like maybe we'll hear Bernie on the stump in Iowa
1:25.8	calling for Elliot Abrams to get dragged in front of the Hague.
1:28.9	Wouldn't that be great?
1:29.6	Wouldn't you want to see that?
1:31.6	But of course socialists believe that we have to look beyond
1:35.6	electoral campaigns because there are structural barriers to what socialists can
1:40.4	accomplish in office and you know the institutions of government under capitalism
1:45.0	are set up to block left-wing advances even if socialist candidates are
	...

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