US Senator Bernie Sanders on Saturday returned to the place of his birth to deliver the first rally speech of his presidential campaign, vowing to defeat “the most dangerous president in modern American history” in US President Donald Trump.
The Vermont independent confidently voiced to a crowd of several thousand people in the New York borough of Brooklyn that he would first beat the crowded field of his rivals for next year’s nomination, with much of his liberal, populist agenda now considered mainstream Democratic policy.
“I want to thank all of you for being part of a campaign that is not only going to win the Democratic nomination, that is not only going to defeat Donald Trump, who is the most dangerous president in modern American history, but, with your help, we are going to transform this country and finally create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent,” Sanders said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
He told the crowd that his campaign would say “loudly and clearly that the underlying principles of our government will not be greed, hatred and lies.”
Sanders returned to Brooklyn College, which he once attended, for a rally emphasizing his personal story, as the working-class son of a Jewish immigrant who grew up in poor housing.
“I did not have a father who gave me millions of dollars to build luxury skyscrapers, casinos and country clubs,” Sanders said in another dig at Trump. “I did not come from a family that gave me a US$200,000 allowance every year beginning at the age of three.”
For his second presidential campaign after losing the Democratic nomination to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, Sanders said that the main planks of his platform would be “Medicare for All,” a minimum wage of US$15 per hour and climate change.
Many are long-held principles previously dismissed as too radical by more moderate Democrats, but are now more widely accepted talking points as he squares off against several other progressives who have embraced many of his issues.
Following November’s midterm elections, the Congressional Progressive Caucus — cofounded by Sanders in 1991 — wields more power than at any time in its history.
US senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand — all presidential candidates — cosponsored his Medicare for All legislation in 2017.
Warren, Booker and Harris have all proclaimed support for the Green New Deal, an ultra-progressive platform to combat climate change that was unveiled this month by US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising liberal star.
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