“Let us be clear. Above and beyond every other concern that we have with President Trump, please do not forget that his economic policies are precisely what the extreme right wing billionaire Koch brothers have been pushing for decades. During his campaign, Trump posed as a friend of the working class. Not surprisingly, however, the budget and healthcare proposals that he has brought forth are the most destructive for working people in the modern history of our country.
Mr. Trump: Do not tell us that you are a friend of the working class when you throw 23 million Americans off of healthcare, and make devastating cuts to education, senior needs, nutrition, housing and environmental protection. Meanwhile, at the same time, you provide $3 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1 percent. Your proposals were written by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class. You have cynically and dishonesty turned your back on the pain and despair felt today by working class people across this country.”
This One Line From Bernie Sanders' People's Summit Speech Is Important For Progressives
We have in recent years made enormous progress advancing the progressive agenda. Sometimes, what we all do is we look at today and think “well, that’s kind of the way it always was.” That’s not the case. Ideas that just a few years ago seemed radical and unattainable are now widely supported, and in fact, some of them are being implemented as we speak.
Bernie Sanders: British Labour Party won by "standing up to the ruling class"
"Just the other day, in the U.K., against all of the predictions, the Labour Party there won 30 new seats." Sanders told the crowd. "They won those seats not by moving to the right. Not by becoming more conciliatory. They won those seats by standing up to the ruling class of the U.K."
"The movement for economic, social, racial and environmental justice is not just growing here in the U.S. — it is growing worldwide," Sanders said to raucous cheers.
The UK election proved what the American left has been saying for years
For the past year, America's most prominent leftists have been pushing Democrats on a single message: Push an unapologetic leftist platform, with policies like single payer healthcare and free college tuition, and young people will show up like never before to beat back the conservative establishment. And now, in their eyes, the British people have proven their point.
The summit is happening amidst a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. Even after the 2016 primary, there is a hard divide between those who want the Democrats to support popular policies like single payer healthcare, and the party establishment that wants to rope in center-right voters and the ever-elusive moderates who might be turned off by Trump.
"There’s a voting coalition in America that Sanders helped reveal of working class people, young people and indecent," Waleed Shahid, a cofounder of #AllOfUs, a grassroots group working to push the Democratic Party to support more progressive candidates, said in an interview at the People's Summit. "If it can be expanded to include more voters of color, it could be a winning party for America. We need to make that coalition possible instead of talking to Romney voters."
And he offered some very honest criticism of the dem party
Speaking to a crowd of 4,000 activists, Sanders hailed the “enormous progress in advancing the progressive agenda”, saying the increasing House and Senate support for a $15 minimum wage and the opposition to the Trans-Pacific partnership showed the success of the movement.
But the Vermont senator said that establishment Democrats were standing in the way of further progress.
“The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic party is an absolute failure,” Sanders said.
“The Democratic party needs fundamental change. What it needs is to open up its doors to working people, and young people, and older people who are prepared to fight for social and economic justice.
“The Democratic party must understand what side it is on. And that cannot be the side of Wall Street, or the fossil fuel industry, or the drug companies.”
Sanders’s speech was rapturously received at the People’s Summit, a gathering of some of the most influential progressive activists and organizations in the country.
And the resistance grows on.