This book is about Bernie’s path from early 2016 during his presidential campaign, all the way up through mid-2018 and climaxing with his announcement to run for 2020.
Whether you think you agree with all of Bernie’s proposals or not, I think this is a great book to learn more about the progressive’s fight for equality. While it is certainly much easier to write in a book about your goals for the future than it is to attain them, Bernie’s ideas certainly sound like a great way to improve the lives of millions directly, and society, indirectly, as a consequence. Lifting up the working class, ensuring healthcare as a right, improving education, fighting for criminal justice and police reform: these have some how been charged as “socialist” ideas, when these are humanitarian ideas; ideas that can ACTUALLY “Make America Great”.
While Bernie does mention some of the difficulties in the 2016 campaign, the Trump presidency, and other issues, this book is overall one of empowerment. He talks about all of the grassroots campaigns and activities happening around the country to improve people’s lives.
“We must create a vibrant democracy where the voices of all people are heard. We must build a nation that leads the world in the struggle for peace, and for economic, social, racial, and environmental justice.”
“Our job, in the next two months, in the next two years, and into the future is to fight for a vibrant American democracy that resonates with love, hope, and prosperity.”
Bernie understands that more important than him winning the presidency is ensuring someone who truly cares about the people, wants to enact positive changes, and will uphold his aspirations in the quotes above wins. That is sure as hell not Trump!
Quotes:
“In school, we teach our kids to understand and appreciate the sacrifices that veterans made in defending ‘our way of life.’ But we spend too little time explaining to them what that ‘way of life’ means.”
“More and more mainstream media political coverage is devoted to gossip and issues of personality, and less and less to the major problems facing our country and the world. During the last presidential campaign, for example, there was almost no discussion devoted to climate change, the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet. There was hardly a mention that, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, 40 million Americans live in poverty, or that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of nearly any major country on earth.”
Meeting the Vermont Legend, Bernie, outside of my school!
“We must create a vibrant democracy where the voices of all people are heard. We must build a nation that leads the world in the struggle for peace, and for economic, social, racial, and environmental justice. And we must unite our country while repairing the damage Trump has done trying to divide us up.”
“Election after election, the United States has one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major democracy on earth. In 2014, when the Republican Party won landslide victories all across the country, almost two-thirds of the American people didn’t vote—the lowest turnout in seventy years.”
“Tragically, in our country, one out of five patients who get a prescription from their doctor is unable to fill that prescription. How insane is that? People walk into a doctor’s office because they are sick, but because of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, they are unable to afford the medicine they desperately need.”
“The reason we pay two times, five times, ten times more for medicine than other countries do is pretty simple. No other country on earth allows drug companies to charge any price they want for any reason.”
“How could someone who had run a hateful, racist, xenophobic campaign be elected president of the United States? How could someone who was seen on video boasting about his assaults on women be elected president of the United States? How could someone who had been involved in more than 3,000 lawsuits in his business career be elected president of the United States? How could someone who lied over and over again in the most shameful manner be elected president of the United States? How could someone who had little interest in or knowledge of public policy be elected president of the United States?”
“Trump’s inaugural speech gave me my clearest sense yet as to the kind of phony and demagogue he was. Other than his racism and xenophobia, it’s not clear that he really has any strong beliefs other than those that are politically expedient. As economist Bruce Bartlett once wrote about Trump, ‘He’s been on every side of every issue from every point of view as far as I can tell.’”
“Trump was once a significant contributor to the Democratic Party and considered himself more Democrat than Republican. Now he hates Democrats. He was once pro-choice. Now he is vehemently anti-abortion. He once actually believed in a Canadian-style single-payer health care system. Now he wants to abolish the modest Affordable Care Act. He once proposed a major tax on wealth. Now he wants to give massive tax breaks to billionaires.”
“Instead of trying to bring the American people together in all their diversity, as most presidents have attempted, Trump was prepared to stir up our worst fears and prejudices and turn us against each other for cheap political gain.”
“The truth was that the ‘small group’ that had most benefited from America’s prosperity were many of the billionaires who had supported his campaign, whom he had invited to the VIP section that day and who were now seated a few feet away from him. It was already clear that they would be the ones who would benefit most from the policies Trump wanted to implement. In fact, Trump would end up appointing more billionaires to his administration than any president in history.”
“In the evening, we learned that the Women’s March in Washington was attended by some 500,000 people. Trump wasn’t happy with it, but that rally attracted more people than his inaugural speech.”
“And [Dwight D. Eisenhower] also reminded us that ‘every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete highway…’”
“It has become fashionable to bash the UN. And yes, the UN needs to be reformed. It can be ineffective, bureaucratic, too slow or unwilling to act, even in the face of massive atrocities, as we are seeing in Syria right now. But to see only its weaknesses is to overlook the enormously important work the UN does in promoting global health, aiding refugees, and monitoring elections, and in international peacekeeping missions, among other things. All of these activities contribute to reduced conflict, to wars that don’t have to be ended because they never start.
At the end of the day, it is obvious that it makes far more sense to have a forum in which countries can debate their concerns, and work out compromises and agreements. Dialogue and debate are far preferable to bombs, poison gas, and war.”
“Hatred and wars are often based on fear and ignorance. The way to defeat this ignorance and diminish this fear is through meeting with others and understanding the way they see the world. Good foreign policy means building people-to-people relationships.”
“The goal is not for the United States to dominate the world. Nor, on the other hand, is our goal to withdraw from the international community and shirk our responsibilities under the banner of “America First.” Our goal should be global engagement based on partnership rather than dominance. This is better for our security, better for global stability, and better for facilitating the international cooperation necessary to meet shared challenges.”
“Think about it for a moment: historically, when countries won terrible wars, they exacted retribution on the vanquished. But in 1948, the United States government did something absolutely unprecedented. After losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the most brutal war in history to defeat the barbarity of Nazi Germany and Japanese imperialism, the government of the United States decided not to punish and humiliate the losers. Rather, we helped rebuild their economies, spending the equivalent of $130 billion just to reconstruct Western Europe after World War II. We also provided them support to reconstruct democratic societies. That program was an amazing success. Today Germany, the country of the Holocaust, the country of Hitler’s dictatorship, is now a strong democracy and the economic engine of Europe. Despite centuries of hostility, there has not been a major European war since World War II. That is an extraordinary foreign policy success that we have every right to be very proud of.”
“But, I also want to be clear about something else: as an organizing framework, the global war on terror has been a disaster for the American people and for American leadership. Orienting U.S. national security strategy around terrorism essentially allowed a few thousand violent extremists to dictate policy for the most powerful nation on earth. It responds to terrorists by giving them exactly what they want.”
“We must rethink the old Washington mind-set that judges ‘seriousness’ according to the willingness to use force. One of the key misapprehensions of this mind-set is the idea that military force is decisive in a way that diplomacy is not.”
“Of course, that’s not how Trump sold his tax plan to the American people. During his campaign for the presidency, Trump repeatedly promised the American people that ‘the rich will not be gaining at all’ from his tax plan and that his bill would provide a ‘big-league’ tax cut for the middle class. He was lying. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, by the end of the decade, 83 percent of the tax benefits in Trump’s tax plan would go to the top 1 percent. Even more incredibly, the top one-tenth of 1 percent would receive 60 percent of Trump’s tax breaks. Meanwhile, 92 million middle-class Americans would actually be paying more in taxes over a ten-year period, including 8 million in the first year alone.”
“For my Republican colleagues, deficits are unacceptable when they result from investments in health care, education, affordable housing, or virtually any program that benefits working people. But when it comes to tax breaks for the billionaires and large corporations, deficits are no longer a problem. What hypocrisy!”
“In other words, in an act of extreme cynicism, after giving huge tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations, the Republicans will bemoan the size of the growing deficit and demand cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition assistance, affordable housing, and other programs.”
“I have never been asked why we are the only major country not to guarantee paid family and medical leave, why our people work some of the longest hours of any industrialized country, or why we have more people in jail than any other nation. Despite scientists telling us that climate change is the most serious environmental crisis facing the planet, I am never asked about how we can transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and toward sustainable energy.”
“Amazingly, poll after poll shows that a very strong majority of Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—want to protect the Dreamers. Some of the polls have support for the Dreamers at over 80 percent. We can’t get 80 percent of the American people to agree on their favorite ice cream, but they are united in support of these young people.”
“While there may not be any guaranteed answers as to how we end mass shootings, that does not mean we should not be doing everything possible to prevent them. These murders not only cost us innocent lives—in Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and so many other locations—but they also impact the fiber of our nation and sap the energy, hope, and optimism of our people. What kind of country are we when, time after time, sick people walk into schools and shoot down innocent children?”
“Bottom line here, Republicans are going to have to say that it’s more important to protect the children of this country than to antagonize the NRA. Are they prepared to do that? I surely hope they are.”
“I often get amused by my colleagues in Congress and the pundits on television who keep asking, ‘How can we turn Trump’s working-class supporters around? How can we make them understand that Trump’s agenda is for billionaires, not for them?’ Well, here is a wild and crazy idea not very often acted upon. Why don’t we go out and respectfully talk to them in the communities in which they live?”
“I said that Trump was ‘try[ing] to divide the American people. You have presidents who have been conservative, liberal, and progressive. But every president has understood that when you get to the Oval Office, your job is to bring our people together. Now, for cheap political reasons, what we’re seeing is a president who is dividing us up, a president who is pushing racism and sexism and xenophobia.… This country has struggled for too long fighting bigotry. We’re not going backward. We’re going forward.’”
“A 1966 Gallup poll found that almost two-thirds of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of Dr. King.”
“Dr. King always understood that the ‘inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.’ As he stated in 1968, ‘What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?’”
“We should not tolerate a situation in which, if current trends continue, one in four black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetime or where young black males are nine times more likely to be killed by police officers than other Americans, while rates of police killings for Native American and Latino men are also disproportionately high. We must not accept a reality where, according to the Department of Justice, blacks were three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop compared to white motorists.”
“Today in America, more than 2 million people are in jail, disproportionately black, Latino, and Native American. That is a greater number of inmates than in any other country on earth—including China, which has a population four times greater than ours and an authoritarian government that does not tolerate dissent.”
“In case you didn’t know it, we still have the equivalent of debtors’ prisons in the United States. There are tens of thousands of Americans now in jail because they are too poor to pay a traffic ticket or some other municipal fine. When people can’t pay those fines, cities arrest and keep them, sometimes for weeks, in jail.”
“If you can believe it, in 2018, the Controlled Substances Act continues to treat both marijuana and heroin equally as Schedule 1 substances. You may like marijuana or you may not, but very few informed people believe that marijuana should be treated similarly to a killer drug like heroin. And yet, in 2016, there were approximately 587,000 arrests for marijuana—roughly one per minute. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports that from 2001 to 2010, there were 8.2 million marijuana arrests, 88 percent of them for simple possession.”
“It will shock no one, I suspect, to learn that the vast majority of people in jail are not only poor but have limited levels of education. The Literacy Project Foundation has found, for example, that fully 85 percent of juvenile offenders have trouble reading. It costs significantly more money to incarcerate someone than to send that person to college. Wouldn’t it make sense for us to invest in education and job training rather than in jails and incarceration?”
“When we talk about criminal justice reform, that discussion must include police department reform. All of us want to live in safe communities, want to keep dangerous people off the streets, and want to see criminals apprehended. That means we need to have good police departments with well-trained, well-paid professionals on the job who are proud of the important work they do.”
“Police officers spend far, far more hours learning how to use their weapon than learning de-escalation tactics or how to deal with mentally ill people acting out. That has got to change.”
“Every young person, regardless of the income of his or her family, should have the opportunity to get the education they need to get a decent job and make it into the middle class.”
“For well over a year now, every U.S. intelligence agency that studied the issue has made it abundantly clear that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton. In a rare showing of bipartisanship, the intelligence committees of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate reached that same conclusion, as did the entire Senate and the House. Just a few days before the Trump-Putin meeting, Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced a set of indictments of twelve members of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, for their involvement in the election. This follows other indictments against Russian nationals issued months before.”
“The late senator John McCain, someone I did not often agree with, was right when he wrote that the Helsinki summit was ‘one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.’”
“The Democratic Party will never succeed if it continues to concede half the states in the country to right-wing Republicans. It cannot be a party of the East Coast, the West Coast, and a few states in between. It must be a fifty-state party…”
“The American people want commonsense gun safety legislation. The Republican leadership offers thoughts and prayers.”
“We must move forward to universal voter registration. If you are eighteen years of age and an American citizen, you are registered to vote. End of discussion. No state can be allowed to deny anyone that basic democratic right. We must also make it easier for people to vote by moving Election Day to a weekend and increasing early voting opportunities. And we must end the outrage of millions not being able to vote, many of whom are people of color, even after they’ve served their time in jail for having committed a felony. We must strive for the United States to have one of the highest voter turnouts in the world, not one of the lowest.”
“Our job, in the next two months, in the next two years, and into the future is to fight for a vibrant American democracy that resonates with love, hope, and prosperity. While Trump and his allies want to foment hatred and divisiveness—based on the color of our skin, our nation of origin, our religion, or our sexual orientation—our job is to bring people together. While Trump and his allies are pushing an agenda that benefits the wealthy and powerful, our job is to stand with the working people of our country and create a nation in which all Americans live in dignity and security.”
“We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction.”
“[A] great nation is judged not by how many billionaires and nuclear weapons it has, but by how it treats the most vulnerable—the elderly, the children, our veterans, the sick, and the poor.”
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