BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders says he’ll decide by March whether to launch a 2016 presidential campaign and, if so, whether he’ll seek the Democratic nomination. Either way, Sanders says he wouldn’t run just to nudge the debate to the left.
“I don’t want to do it unless I can do it well,” he told The Associated Press. “I don’t want to do it unless we can win this thing.”
[…] Sanders said the issues about which he’s been railing for all these years are only becoming more dire. The wealth gap has grown, and the middle class, he says, is “collapsing.”
“You have one family, the Walton family of Walmart, owning more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people,” he said. “We have 95 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent. You have millions of families unable to afford to send their kids to college. People are desperately worried about whether or not they are going to retire with dignity.”
Sanders has a 12-step plan that he says will restore the economy and especially the middle class, most of them dependent on higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Among the proposals: A $1 trillion infrastructure building program that would “create 13 million decent-paying jobs”; more worker-friendly international trade deals and legislation to strengthen unions; and transforming the U.S. energy system “away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.”
He says he’ll make a “gut decision” about running for the presidency – and, perhaps, challenging Democratic favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton.
He will. He’ll announce in March. What he’s trying to decide is whether he’ll run as an Independent or as a Democrat.
Bernie would be in the strongest messaging position if he runs as an Independent. But that would cost a boatload of money just to get ballot access.
So the smart move is to run as a Democrat.
Bernie needs to go before a few murder boards in the next 90 days in order to sharpen the answers to the questions he’ll be asked about his numerous attacks on the Democratic Party.
Honesty is the best policy for Bernie. He should tell us that the system is rigged in favor of the two parties so it would be an exercise in futility to run as an Independent.
Once he begins taking Hillary and the oligarchs apart brick by brick everybody will forget all about his socialist leanings. Or perhaps those very policy positions will take him over the finish line.
Hillary for Sing Sing.
Sanders for President.