Bernie Sanders Fans Criticize Him

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, A production of I Heart Radio.
Welget everything, So don't don't subbitches. It's Katie kicking it off.

(00:23):
I'll start again. That was no, no, nope, nope, nope.
That's it. It's Katie saying, subbitches, the worst year ever,
the podcast where we're all deeply ashamed of Katie. That's correct.
And I can't talk about the election. You let me
do this every week, disgust I can you know what
I'm disgusted by? Is virtually all of the candidates in

(00:47):
this election. Yeah, that the partial exception of the one
we're talking about today. I was about to say, is
that the partial exception. Yeah, it's good to remember that
they are all, indeed politicians, even the ones. Yeah, they're
all politicians. Yeah, they're all It's it's like remembering that
Jimmy Carter had people extra judicially murdered and supported the

(01:10):
violent crackdown on, for example, pro democracy protesters in Korea,
because they're all politicians. Are all politicians and just inherently
the to be called to be president. There's something deeply
wrong with you to fight for that hard, to want
to be the most powerful person in the world to
be in charge of people's lives, who lives and who dies,

(01:33):
drone strikes, all of it. There, there is something different
about you, and that is just good to keep in mind.
It's like, Okay, we've all been in relationships. You've all
we've all had those like fights with your your partner
that happened like out in a public place when you
don't really want to, but like it happens there and
then it's going on. If someone were to walk up
to you both while you're having like one of those
heated moments and be like, I think I know how

(01:54):
to fix this this little you would be like, what
a fucking asshole. And that's a person who wants to
be the president. That's all of them. They're all doing
that to the whole country. Like, I really do not
need your plan for this, Elizabeth. No, no, I don't
need you here. You are not helpful. But who is
it we're talking about today? Guys, you're talking about Pete.

(02:17):
Pete again. We're we're doing a Revampipete, but this time
we're imagining how his life would be different if his
first name had been Alex. Spoilers. It's shocking how little
changes wildly. Um, No, we're we're talking about Bernard Sanders,
who is uh, definitely like my front favorite candidate. I

(02:41):
think Cody's favorite candidate, Katie, he's not He's not quite
number one for you? Or is is that changed? Everything changes?
Everything changes? Um, you know, I I'm I'm watching stuff.
He's up there. It's him and Elizabeth Barren. For me,
I really do like him and I love Elizabeth. I
know there's a lot we'll get to Elizabeth. There's some
questions about what her medicare for all plan actually is

(03:02):
blah blah blah. But scheme, Yeah, in the grand scheme
of like the way the elections would work, we'd all
if Bernie Sanders wound up being the president this time
next year, we'd all be like, oh good, be very happy. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm completely comfortable with that adventual out. Yeah. That that said,
we'll we'll be getting into there's plenty of there's plenty

(03:23):
of darker chapters in the Bernie Sanders saga, and we'll
be doing that like we've done with everybody else. There's
no there's no crazy surf cult. Um, so it's not
going to be that episode. But for Bernie. Yeah, that
that would be if it turned out he and Tulci
Gabbard were in the same Hawaiian hinduce surf cult, that
would be it would be devastating, that would be amazing.

(03:45):
I would be so on board with that, just like it. Yes,
let's do it. Okay, Now I'm on board. Well, okay,
Well let's talk about double standards then, Robert. Yeah, you know,
if one candidates part of a weird surf cult, uh,
it's just off putting. But if two candidates are in
the same surf cult, suddenly I'm on board this new

(04:07):
this new wind taking American politics. And if three candidates
in a weird surf cult all decided to jump off
a bridge, as Joe Biden just joints too. He's like, well,
it seems like the way to go. That's called you
can get everyone to join that cult. It's called Lemur ship.
Thank you Lemurs. You know follows. I didn't get thumbs

(04:33):
up Lemmings ding it. That's called leming Ship. Cool. We
should talk about Bernie Sanders. We should talk about Bernie Sanders.
Bernard Montgomery Sanders. His middle name is not Montgomery. Sound good,
it's not. But I like the way it sounds. I
think you're going to pretend that's his middle name. I
think it's Bernard. I think it's Bernard Sanders. Yeah, like

(04:58):
the like the flavor, Yeah, marmalade. Anyway. Bernard Sanders was
born in September eighth, ninety one, just a matter of
weeks before the US entered World War Two. His father
was a Jewish Polish Polish immigrant who spoke English with
a heavy accent and had come to Brooklyn without a
nickel in his pocket. He worked as a paint salesman.
The money was not good, and Bernie's mother did not

(05:19):
earn an income. Now Bernie had one elder brother, Larry.
He didn't have much of an extended family because his
father's whole family was, you know, wiped out by the Nazis.
Uh So, young Bernard grew up poor and deeply conscious
of the reality of genocide. He doesn't recall his parents
talking about politics much, but he was a regular topic
of conversation with the Nazis. Said, you know, killed the

(05:41):
rest of the family. Um, which is the kind of
thing you talk about, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah, Now,
young Bernie grew up poor and really uh yeah, he
we'll talk about that more than a little bit. He
was cut from his high school basketball team, which was
hard to although probably less hard than the genocide. Um,

(06:01):
so it's a tough childhood all around. Now. Larry was
six years older than Bernie and was very politically engaged,
and Bernie credits his older brother with introducing him to
some of his earliest political ideas. When Bernie was a
young teen, Larry took him to meetings of the local
College Democrats chapter, and that was sort of his first
foray into politics. Um money or lack thereof, was the

(06:23):
defining reality of Bernard's childhood. In order to cope with
his father's low income, his mother, Dorothy, had to brutally
manage the family budget. Bernie would get in trouble if
he bought groceries from stores closer to their apartment with
slightly higher prices. Every single article you read about Bernie's
early life will mention often repeatedly that many of his
early memory earliest memories are of his parents fighting over money.

(06:44):
The Sanders family lived paycheck to paycheck, and economic anxiety
was a constant through line in his early life. He
told one interviewer quote, there were arguments and more arguments
between our parents, painful arguments, better arguments, Arguments that scared
a little boy's brain. That's that's seared through a little
boy's brain, never to be forgotten. And I think this
is one of the things I identify with most about Bernie,

(07:06):
because the most the strongest memories I have of my
childhood is of my parents fighting or even worse, like
quietly and nervously talking about money in their bedroom when
they didn't think I could hear. I think it's what
a lot of people can really really with Bernie. I
mean it is if you think about it, describing that
and so much of us, yes, have had times of
that kind of experience, but how formative it is, what

(07:27):
kind of relationship that establishes how we see ourselves in
the world. Anyway, it never leaves you, like, if that's
something you have in your childhood, it's with you for
the rest of your life. Um, And I don't think
it's been with most of the people who have been president.
Elizabeth Warren, I think Elizabeth candidate, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I

(07:48):
also think that sometimes that experience doesn't necessarily push you
in that direction like you can. Yeah, you know a
lot of the politicians who have like grown up poor
sort of view their success as like, well, this is
what you have to do. You gotta do this, and
you gotta this. Yeah, and then and it's the stick
tuitiveness the American dream look at me as opposed to

(08:11):
I think what he is more pointing to of the
like the stress and the anxiety and it's broken out. Yeah,
that it's broken And how how it can how that
can just affect every aspect of your life in a
negative way. Yeah, And I think there's a distinction between
it's not just that he grew up poor, it's that
he grew up with that anxiety. Because I have friends

(08:33):
who grew up kind of in a similar economic situation
to me, but they didn't have that experience of their
parents sort of arguing and fighting over money, and so
it didn't it didn't hit them in quite the same way.
I do think that's a critical part of it, is
that like that had that experience of having the poverty
bleed over into every other aspect of your life, and
like experiencing it is this like this this full immersive thing. Um.

(08:59):
I when I think about like the things I like
about Bernie Sanders and you know something I like about
Warren too. It's the idea of a candidate who at
least understands that, because I think it's a reality for
a lot of people in this country. It's that. Um,
it's that the finale of Malcolm in the Middle, where yes,
they're they're literally covered in ship and like rotting animal corpses,

(09:22):
and uh, she's talking about how, like Malcolm, you're gonna
be the president and there's nothing you can do about it.
You're gonna have to because you will be the only
one who's ever been in that position who will know
what it's like to live like we've lived and to
be like looked down on, uh no matter how hard
you try, no matter what you do, because of our
position in life. Um. And every time I see that,

(09:43):
I'm like, yeah, that's that's what it is. Yeah yeah.
So um back to Bernie Um. The neighborhood he grew
up in was a mix of secular Jewish families, Italians,
and Irish immigrants. Most of them were middle class, and
Bernie generally describes his family is lower middle class. They
seemed to have been the poorest from some of the

(10:03):
poorest folks on the block. Um, Bernie's mother, Dorothy, was
not happy with their living situation. She pushed her sons
to work hard in school so that they could do
better than she and her husband had done. Bernie later recalled,
my mother's dream was that someday our family would move
out of that rent controlled apartment to a home of
our own. That dream was never fulfilled. This kid who
grows up knowing that the American dream is not a

(10:27):
reality for a lot of people. Now in school, Bernie
excelled at distance running. He was a natural leader on
the track team and fairly popular. He got into his
first election during his senior year, a run for student
body president. His platform was focused around a promise to
raise money for a Korean orphan whose parents had died
in the war. Sanders lost, but the person who one

(10:48):
took his idea and executed it, starting a pattern that
became emblematic of his career. So the whole thing, and
oh yeah, it's it's it's him to a tea, it's
every every everything he does well. And you if you,
if you, if you talk, if you know about way people,
one thing they all say about Bernie is you cannot

(11:09):
keep him away from Korean immigrants like he is. He
is always surrounded by young orphan Korean show. It's his trademarking.
He won't stop eating from them. Some people it's been
very peaceful in Korea for a long time, so no
one really knows where he gets so many of those orphans.
It's a it's part of the mystique, the Bernie mistake. Yeah,

(11:31):
now no middle name, and where those orphans come from? Where?
Why it were there's so many orphans aready? Yeah, those
are the two things now. Bernie graduated from James Madison
High School in nineteen fifty nine, teen years before before
the first time it was ever actually cool to be
a young adult. Uh. He'd wanted to go to the
University of Chicago, but he picked Brooklyn College because right

(11:51):
as he graduated, his mother took ill. Bernie's friends recalled
that in his last year of high school he was
increasingly late to track practice and abnormally silent. His mother
died when he was just eighteen, and this is something
that always comes up in articles about Bernie, usually alongside
theorizing that this had an impact on a support for
Universe Visual Healthcare, and it probably did. Um Bernie understandably

(12:12):
does not talk much about this himself. Um, which, yeah,
why would you want to two hundreds of millions of people. Yeah,
it's a private thing. Um. Now, with his mother gone,
Bernie decided it was time to escape the neighborhood he
had grown up, and he left the state and he
finally started taking classes at the University of Chicago. He
joined a dizzy variety of left wing groups, the Congress

(12:34):
for Racial Equality, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, the
Student Peace Union, and the Young People's Socialist League. He
protested against the colleges, segregated housing in a agranst segregated
public schools. He was arrested at one of these marches
and charged with resisting arrest. The fine was twenty five
dollars or approximately two point three million dollars in modern money.

(12:55):
So you know, he's he's, he's he would call him.
It seems like a good ally, but skin out there,
um some during the during the Civil rights movement years,
so you know, you get you get points for that
before everybody was talking about being a good ally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um.
In Chicago, he met Deborah Sanders in nineteen sixty four,

(13:15):
the year he graduated. He married her now Bernie was
just twenty three and his father had just died, leaving
him leaving him a very small inheritance. Bernie and Debora
took the money, which is about dollars, and used it
to buy property now near Montpellier, Montpellier, Montpellier, Montpellier. You know,
it's one of those cities Mountain Pillers mount the Mountain
of pillars in Vermont. He bought a mountain made out

(13:38):
of pillars in Vermont. Uh. And he wanted to live
out in the country at this point, away from the
city and experience, you know, a different sort of life.
And for two years he and Deborah lived in an
old maple sugar shack with a dirt floor, um like
basically a hovel. Uh. They divorced in nineteen sixty six,
but there don't seem to be hard feelings. In two sixteen,
she told The Daily Mail, I really don't want to

(13:58):
say much. All I can say is I believe in
Bernie Sanders and I'm a strong supporter. I mean, they
were young and lived in all Yeah, they were young,
a dirt check. Yeah. One thing you will get from
Bernie at this period is that, uh, it doesn't seem
like his relationships ended badly, but it does seem like
he was kind of bad at providing a comfortable environment

(14:20):
and a lot of I'm going to guess that might
have had a factor in the way that things didn't
work out. A lot of people were like, I don't
really want to live in the dirt building with you, Bernie. Yeah.
I mean, as as he learned growing up, anxiety can
put a strain on relationships. I love your idealism, but
I eat more like a bed. Yeah, like a floor,

(14:41):
not a lot. I'm I'm on board with with with less,
but maybe a floor. Maybe that's what drove him to
want to be the president. It's like, fine, I'll get
I'll be in the house, then I'll get you out.
This is all just this is all just part of
Bernie's long con to get a floor. He's just trying
to to get a floor so that he back. Yeah,

(15:03):
he was to get Debbie back. You know, Deborah, this
this house was full of floors. There's no not a
not a dirt floor in site. Mm hmm. Now Bernie
stayed in Vermont after the divorce. In March of nineteen
sixty nine, he bought another property even further away from
civilization four days after buying it. His first son, Levi

(15:23):
Noah Sanders, was born to a woman named Susan Mott. Now.
During this time, Bernie worked mostly as a carpenter, and
he was by all accounts terrible. People who are still
his friends today, who have been his constant supporters for decades,
all agree he was a garbage carpenter. Um, So Bernie's
do not hire Bernie Sanders to build you a bookcase?

(15:45):
That is, he's He's like the opposite of great story. Exactly.
It would be kind of cool if he and Harrison
Ford opened up like a carpentry shop. Um, But not
if you got Bernie on one of those days, you
would really want Harrison doing the job. Now, Bernie also
worked as a writer and was slightly better at this job,
but as we'll cover later, not a lot. Uh. He

(16:08):
made very little money at this point in time, and
he never really found a career for himself until at
age thirty, he stumbled into politics. On October twenty three,
nineteen seventy one, Bernie went to a meeting of a
political party called the Liberty Union. This was an anti
war party active in Plainfield, Vermont, where he and Susan lived. Now.
During the meeting, a call went out for someone, anyone

(16:31):
to run for US Senate under the party platform. No
one else seemed particularly interested in. Bernie volunteered. Um, so
this is his his entrance into politics. Now, he was
not a natural campaigner. Um. During his first radio interview,
he was so frightened that the microphone picked up the
sound of his knees hitting against the table. He wrote
in his book Outsider in the House, A strange thumping

(16:54):
noise traversed the airwaves, and a few calls that came
and expressed no doubt that this career was to be
short lived. Who was this guy, one of the listeners asked, So,
he's not He's not one of these people whose charisma
immediately everyone's like, this man's going to be president one day. Uh.
He He kind of seems like a gawky, nerdy socialist
kid who lives in a dirt shack. Yeah, he's just

(17:15):
a passionate weirdo. He looked like he was eighty at thirty. Yeah,
he's he has looked at the same age since about
nineteen seventy five. Yeah. Now, Bernie ran for Senate in
a nineteen seventy two special election and he failed. He
ran again for governor the same year and he failed
at that. Then he ran for Senate again in nineteen

(17:37):
seventy four and he failed. And he ran for governor
again in nineteen seventy six and he failed. At no
point did he get more than six percent of the vote. Um,
So he's not you wouldn't say great at this so far.
M I was going to mention this in my section
when I get into the politics of it. But yeah,
and is um nineteen seventies six gubernatorial run he ended

(18:01):
up getting I think, like eleven thousand votes, which is
not more than ever got um Um, but that was
like the high point I think of the liberty union
parties engagement with people. It also kind of siphoned off
votes from the Democratic challenger and the Republican one. But anyway, Yeah,

(18:25):
so he's That is interesting that even his failed campaigns
got more votes than successful ones. Interesting. I wonder if
he took really awkward photos in front of the Holocaust
Memorial in Berlin. I bet he didn't. He didn't think
Maybe maybe Pete has a lock on that now, but

(18:48):
maybe it's something Bernie did. But like Pete Pete copied
it and he's gonna it's like it's like it's like
with the It's like with the orphan. Yeah, Bernie's just
being like, damn it, that was my thing for it
and my wife talking about how sexy I was in
front of the monument to the greatest crime in human history.
Damn it. Uh. Yeah, influencer photos in front of the

(19:10):
Holocaust Museum for all who wanted. Yeah, I can't wait
to see President Trump selfie in front of the Holocaust Museum.
That's gonna be a real it's gonna be a real treat. Well,
he's a really it's I bet it's gonna be where
he chooses to plug Michelle Malkin's new book now. Um

(19:32):
so yeah, Well, well, Bernie threw himself running into office.
He barely managed to keep his small family alive. Uh.
He did have a floor at this point, so you
could say he moved on up. He rented a brick
duplex that had basically no furniture or food in it.
Most of most of his friends say it was just
library cards and notebooks full of scribblings. So yeah, Bernie's

(19:57):
that guy. His son LEVI, who I have to tell
you his son apparently always called him Bernard. Um. Yeah,
I feel like if my dad was named Bernard, I
would absolutely do that. Yeah. Now his suddenly by had
an upstairs bedroom and Bernie shared custody with Mott and um,
the nature of their relationship is kind of unclear, I

(20:19):
think to everybody, which is not our our our business.
I've never heard any allegations that she like hates him
or anything. Um. But one thing you will find if
you look for anti Bernie sort of interpretations of his background,
which I did because that's part of our job on
this UM, is that he was this sort of idea
that he was a deadbeat dad during this period. Um.

(20:41):
And there there is a little bit of evidence for
aspects of this. Uh. Darcy Treville, one of his fellow
Liberty Union members, described his apartment in this period as
stark and dark. Another friend said the electricity was turned
off a lot. I remember him running an extension cord
down to the basement. He couldn't pay his bills. So
Bernie is like stealing his power and not able to

(21:01):
keep keep the lights on when he's taking Yeah, you know,
I mean I have a difference. I do slightly connotation
of what a deadbeat dad is, there's more. Yeah, yeah,
I just I will say, for the record, I kind
of want a president who had to steal power at
some point to um, speaking as someone who has stolen

(21:25):
a lot of electricity from a variety of buildings over
the years. Um. In fact, some some of you steal
electricity just for the love of the game, you know. Yeah,
you know, even if you don't need to see it anymore.
You're like, yeah, I need that, Yeah, just over the library.
I just need to feel, just to feel. For one. Now,

(21:47):
Mott was apparently which is his his son's mom, and
I guess on again this quasi relationship. It's very unclear
what the extent of their relationship was, but she was
around regularly, would suggests that she Ernie had a decent relationship. Um.
The piece of evidence you'll see most regularly cited to
suggest that Bernie, you know, was a deadbeat dad failed

(22:07):
in his duties as a provider was a testimonial in
a local Vermont paper from nineteen one. Now, this was
over a tenant's rights bill, and the testimony was by
Susan mott Uh. In the newspaper, she complains that the
bill does not go far enough to protect single mothers
on welfare. Um. So it's basically her being like I,
I think this tenants rights bill isn't good because you know,

(22:30):
I'm a single mother on welfare and it's not going
to do enough for me. So people who do not
like Bernie have taken this, the fact that you know,
his the mother of his child was living as a
single mother on welfare, and and identifying that way as
evidence that Bernie was, yeah, a deadbeat dad. Um. The

(22:51):
article that I found on vetting Bernie uh went by
the title deadbeat dad how Bernie's craven political ambition kept
him from supporting his young child. So it's not not
a subtle not a subtle take. Now that doesn't sound fair.
What what? What? What side of the political spectrum? Do
you think that came from? Very liberal? Yeah, you're uh yeah, yeah.

(23:19):
Vetting Bernie is a project of the people's view, an
organization with the slogan restoration not revolution. Um. Yeah, it's
pretty it's pretty inane. Yeah, I bet they love Pete
Bootage is picture in front of the I think I
say we take their perspective with a lot of grains assault.

(23:42):
I mean that, Yeah, headline, Uh, dead be dad? How
Bernie's craven political? Don't you don't you don't you think
that's biased. Somebody not having the money like his wife
or his ex whomever, his ex girlfriend, her being on

(24:03):
welfare and considering herself calling herself a single mom does
not make Bernie a deadbeat dad. It means that, I
would say, that's a stretch. Means there I could see
Bernie being an absent minded dad. I could see Bernie
being really cerebral. I could see him being difficult as
a dad. I suspect he was not somebody that forgets

(24:26):
you know, I mean child Anyway, it builds itself as
a progressive and liberal democratic source on the web, but
seems to mostly focus on smearing Bernie Sanders and to
a lesser extent, attacking Elizabeth Warren and the editor in
chief seems to have deep ties to the healthcare industry.
So I think that's all we need to know about

(24:49):
that time, Every single time, that was good. I'm also
in researching this is trying to find like give me
the give me the good stuff. Yeah, um, and almost
everything is just a version of what you just described. Yeah, No,

(25:10):
there is there is some actual dirty, dirty dirt that
we will be talking about dirt. Uh No, but that
it's hard to do because literal dirt. Yeah, it was
just dirt. Um. But you know this is this is
something that some people will attack him on. And whether
or not you think, I will note that this is
basically the attack that growing up, all conservatives had for

(25:34):
all socialists is that they were all exactly like Bernie Sanders, Uh,
living in sin, out of wedlock with their their the
mother of their child, and uh, it's subsisting on welfare
and stealing power. Um. So he is absolutely that guy.
Do have to know that, Yeah he was. He was

(25:54):
a hundred percent that guy. Um. But that is also
why a lot of people love him. Um. And whether
or not you do depends on your your views on
that sort of thing. But you know what you should
love regardless of your views, products and services. The products
and services that every we can all socialist, capitalist, communist, Marxist,

(26:16):
khmar rouge, we can all agree that products and services
are a necessary part of society. I can't live without him,
if I'm remembering. They were big fans of advertising. So
smile a thought to pol pot and listen to these
ads together everything. But yeah, we're back. We're back talking

(26:51):
about Bernie Sanders. Tell us the next exciting chapter, Robert.
Let's uh yeah, so you know, uh, Bernie, Bernie is
clearly a guy who's willing to sacrifice personal comfort in
the comfort of his family for the sake of of
pushing forward on his political ideals. That's that's the kind
of guy he is at this period. Um. Now, from
the beginning, he described himself as a nineteen thirties radical,

(27:13):
not a nineteen sixties radical. Um. The hippie era kind
of passed him by. He was never the kind of
like free love, peacenick sort of guy. He was always
kind of an old style, labor loving, rabble rousing socialist. Um.
He was the kind of guy who in nineteen twenties
would have gotten into gunfights with mine owners. Um. That's
the that's the sort of sort of fella Papa Bernie is. Um. Now.

(27:37):
His speeches from this time are incredibly consistent with things
he says today. Uh. And in fact, I don't think
you'll notice any difference in anything he's say, Like this
could all come from twenty nineteen. But I'm gonna read
you a quote from the Bennington Banner in nineteen seventy one,
this is what he told them in America today, if
we wanted to, we could wipe out economic hardship almost overnight.
We get a free medical care, excellent schools, and decent

(27:59):
housing are all. The problem is that the great wealth
and potential of this country rests with a handful of people. Yeah. Interesting, interesting,
interesting point. Yeah. Yeah, And so he's been he's been
on the exact same line for the entirety of his career,
and I think, yeah, that's something I guess we all
know that, and then preparing for this yeah, yeah, but

(28:22):
it is certainly something to admire about him, I think personally. Yeah.
Even there, their ads take advantage of it a lot too,
where you basically, uh, take a speech from the eighties
that he's given at a speech from two years ago,
and they splice it together basically, and you can't tell
because again, he's looked exactly the same exactly. But one

(28:46):
interesting thing is that, while it's true he's been talking
about a lot of the same things, if you actually
look into his record, and again this is coming up later,
there's some ship that he did and that he does
that is very inconsistent with the image cheaper trace, which
is one of the things will be we'll be talking
about a little later. So that is that is an
interesting thing to keep in mind right now. For years,

(29:07):
Bernie ran unsuccessful campaigns and barely managed to make a
living through a combination of welfare and freelance writing. His
main employer was the Vermont Freeman, an all weekly paper
in Burlington. One of the articles he wrote for this
little uh was effectively a zine, wound up biting him
in the ask come the two thousand and sixteen election.
It was called Man and Woman. And I'm going to

(29:28):
read the entirety of this column. Oh, I was going
to try to do it in my best Bernie Sanders voice,
but I don't have a Bernie Sanders voice. No, I
don't worry about it, So I don't think I'm going
to try. But I'm going to read this. Can you
just try it? Like, just like the opening, a man
goes home and masturbates in his typical fantasy. A woman

(29:49):
on her niece, a woman tied up, a woman abused.
See that's a terrible Bernie saying. But there's a lot
going on here with what you're actually saying a woman
in with her man, Katie, a woman enjoys intercourse with
her man as she fantasizes about being right. Yeah, rape
by three men simultaneously. That's the line that you run

(30:10):
into a lot. This man and woman get dressed up
on Sunday and go to church or maybe to their
revolutionary political meeting. How if you are looked at the
stag man hero tough magazines on the shelf of your
local bookstore, do you know why the newspapers with the
articles like girl twelve raped by fourteen men sell so well?
To what in us are they appealing? Women for their
own preservation are trying to pull themselves together, and it's

(30:31):
necessary for all of humanity that they do so. Slavishness
on one hand breeds pigness on the other hand, pigness
on one hand breeds slavishness on the other. Men and
women both are losers. Women adapt themselves to fill the
needs of men, and men adapt themselves to fill the
needs of women. In the beginning, there were strong men
who killed the animals and brought home the food, and
the dependent women who cooked it. No more, only the

(30:52):
roles remain waiting to be shaken off. There are no
human oppressors. Oppressors have lost their humanity on one hand,
slavishness on the other hand, pigness six of one, half
a dozen of the other. Who wins? Many women seem
to be walking a tight rope now. Their qualities of love, openness,
and gentleness were too deeply in messed with the qualities
of dependencies, subservience, and masochism. How do you love without

(31:12):
being dependent? How do you be gentle without being subservient?
How do you maintain a relationship without giving up your
identity without getting strung out? How do you reach out
and give your heart to your lover but maintain the
soul which is you? And men? Men are in pain too.
They are thinking, wondering what is it they want from
a woman? Are they at fault? Are they perpetrating this
man woman's situation? Are they oppressors? The man is better.

(31:33):
You lied to me, he said, she did in parentheses.
You said that you loved me, that you wanted me,
that you needed me. These those are your words, they
are but as reality. In reality, he said, if you
ever loved me, or wanted me, or needed me, all
of which I'm not certain, was ever true, you also
hated me. You hated me just as you have hated
every man in your entire life. But you didn't have

(31:54):
the guts to tell me that you hated me before
you ever saw me, even though I was not your father,
or your teacher, or your sex friend when you were
thirteen years old, or your husband. You hated me not
because of who I am or what I was to you,
but because I am a man. He did not deal
with me as a person as me. You lived a
lie with me, used me and play games with me,
and that's a piggy thing to do. And she said,

(32:16):
you wanted me not as a woman or a lover
or a friend, but as a submissive woman or a
submissive friend or submissive lover. And right now where I
head is, uh, right now where my head is, I
balk it even the slightest suspicion of that kind of demand.
And he said, you're full of shit. They never again
made love together, which they had each like to do
more than anything, or never saw each other ever even

(32:39):
one more time. And that's the end of the column.
There's a lot to unpact. There's a lot going on there.
I think Bernie was having some real problems with his
relationships at that point, and I think he got paid
like five dollars to write a column about it. I
say he's not the best writer, like I said, he's
he was bad at carpentery and he was not very

(33:00):
good at right like oh man, Yeah, he definitely was
had some frustrating relationships ship going on. Yeah, he was
having trouble. They're kind of grateful they didn't have the
Internet and some big some big ideas that are worth exploring,
but then kind of lost the thread. There's definitely some
aspects worth exploring in there, and some aspects that are

(33:21):
just like, Bernie, Man, you need to talk about this
with your girlfriend. This is this is clearly a y'all
sort of thing. It's very intense, and I can see
why he'd have trouble and relationships. I don't know. Yeah,
and yeah, I think the not being great writer aspects exacerbated, Yeah,
contributes to just being like you're I think you might

(33:41):
have a point, but I don't think you're doing it. Buddy.
Well then you lost the point. Yeah, exactly, your your
sex your third sex friend when you're thirteen years old?
How old were you? Bernie? So yeah, you know, there's
like yeah, like yeah, there's there's a couple of elements
of this that are like you can identify this, and

(34:02):
there's some that like, Bernie, you're talking about some real
specific stuff for an all weekly that you wrote. This
seems like an individual person that you're arguing with through
the pages of this newspaper. Yeah, every quote just like,
who said that, Bernie? You know, uh, it's a bad article. Um.

(34:24):
How when it when it came back up, I think
mother Jones is the one who published it, and it was,
you know, briefly a big story. And Bernie's apology for it,
he basically said it was a dumb article then and
it's a dumb article now, which is yeah, that's about
where No. Um, obviously, I don't think that should change

(34:45):
anyone's opinion opinion about whether or not to vote for him.
A shitty article he wrote when he was thirty. Um,
but it is definitely a dumb article, and it's a
delight to share. It's a delight to share. Really. I
wish I had a good Bernie Sanders accent, but I don't.
I do feel like I would have really detracted from
what was actually being said. Yeah, we needed you. I'm

(35:07):
pleased that you give it a shot. But I briefly
considered reading it as Sean Connery. But there's some unfortunate implications.
That's for a live show. Sometimes there were there were
moments in that where I'm like Sean Connery would say that. Yeah,
there were some moments there were. I think Sean Connery
has shouted that to multiple women. Yeah, I think we

(35:29):
should get Sean Connery to read it some day. Anyway,
Please continue to get him on the pod. Yes, let's
see what Sean Connery thinks about Pete Bud. No, let's
not so if he's not, Yes, we're going to do
it now she's shaking her head. Yes, Okay, back to
Bernie now. In nineteen seventy four, Bernie wrote an article
for The Bennington Banner advocating the removal of time limitations

(35:51):
for unemployment benefits. He'd been on unemployment for several months
in nineteen seventy one, where they're not you consider this
all a bad thing? Is you know, depends on your
political perspective. But he definitely advocated for looser restrictions on
welfare as a result of his experience living on welfare.
UM Now. By nineteen seventy one, Bernie's political career was

(36:14):
out of gas. He'd spent his entire adultful adult life
broke as fun, and he had very little a show
for it. So he quit the Liberty Union and started
his own business, making cheap short films about Vermont and
New England, focusing on issues that he felt were ignored
by the schools. He called it the American People's History Society.
He advertised for his nonprofit via pamphlet. His biggest project

(36:34):
was a thirty minute color documentary about Eugene Deb's, an
American socialist who ran for president from prison. He's a
pretty cool dude, actually, um and clearly like Bernie's political hero. Um. Now.
For three years, Bernie tried to make this new venture work.
He considered himself out of politics, but then in nineteen
eighty his friend Richard Sugarman, a college professor, showed him

(36:57):
a breakdown of the vote tallies from his past election.
He pointed out that while bernie statewide numbers were crap,
he'd done really well in the city of Burlington. Maybe
he should just run from mayor or perhaps president of
the coat factory. Um no, no, just coats. Nothing else.

(37:18):
Whatever else they tell you is a lie. Now. Uh,
Bernie decided to run from mayor uh any won by
ten votes in March of lass and overnight, Yeah classic Bernie.
I hope it happens again, but by ten million, because
if it's just by ten votes, that might provoke horrible,
unspeakable violence. Um so he Yeah, he won by ten

(37:41):
votes in March of nine one, and overnight Bernie became
a national news story. The same year Ronald Reagan had
taken office. Uh. And so it was kind of a
big deal that in that same year and avowed socialist
had won an election in Vermont. Rolling Stone called him
the Red Mayor in the Green Mountains, which is sounds
like a Ralph box sheet movie. Um. But yeah, Bernie

(38:03):
made news all over the country. Yeah it does. I
think they were being positive. It was Rolling Stone in
the eighties. So yeah, Um, Bernie made news all over
the country. He made it into Dunesbury. Uh. He also
started making a real salary for the first time in
his life, thirty three thousand, eight hundred dollars a year.

(38:24):
Um so, no more dirt floors for Bernie. Regulations Bernie. Yeah,
he's stealing power from the nice buildings now Now. Bernie
would go on to win several more elections in the
mayor of Burlington finally married the woman who was still
his wife today, Jane Sanders. Their honeymoon, appropriately enough, was
a trip to the United to the Union of Soviet

(38:45):
Socialist Republics Romantics. Yeah, I I take all of my
my first dates to the U S s R. Which
requires that time machine, which requires time machine noises. I mean, yep,

(39:08):
that's the one. Goddamn, that's the one. Those are this
time machine noises that keep me single for it's time
to stop. Van Anderson got up and was like, no,
it was deeply uncomfortable over the Yeah, that one was
really bad. I blame you, Robert. You brought this on

(39:29):
to us. You should, you should blame me. But I
feel like my punishment was hearing Cody make a sound
that was clearly the sound of an erect penis banging
around in between somebody's thighs. Just exactly how that sounded. Yeah, yeah,
which is how a time machine sounds. Yeah. I'm not
the scientist here. I didn't invent time travel. I'm just

(39:51):
Doc Brown did, and he's a notorious, perfect, perfectly two
thumbs down on this whole bit. Yeah, it's it's a
terrible bit. Uh. Sanders framed the ten day visit to
the U s s R as a cultural exchange, observing
the strengths of both systems and trying to learn from them.
And he also criticized, Yeah, it's honeymoon to the USSR
to learn about politics. He's not a not a classic romantic.

(40:13):
I just don't know why his relationships don't work. Yeah. Now,
he criticized his own country while he was on foreign
soil with his nation's biggest enemy, which piste off a
lot of people. I'm gonna quote now from a Washington
Post article on the trip. As he stood on Soviet soil, Sanders,
then forty six years old, criticized the cost of housing

(40:34):
and healthcare in the United States, while lauding the lower
prices but not the quality of that available in the
Soviet Union. Then, at a banquet attended by about a
hundred people, Sanders blasted the way the United States had
intervened in other countries, studying one of those who had
accompanied him, I got really upset and walked out, said
David F. Kelly, who had helped arrange the trip. And
was the only Republican. And Sanders is entourage. When you
are a critic of your country, you can say anything

(40:56):
you want on home soil. At that point, the Cold
War wasn't over, the arms race wasn't over, and I
just wasn't comfortable with it. So I don't have an
issue with that. Other people did. Yeah, Um, so Sanders. Um.
One of the things people criticized him for is that

(41:16):
he was kind of like making foreign policy statements in
in attitude, taking foreign policy attitudes even though he was
the mayor of Yeah, a city of forty people with
no connections to the outside world. Most Americans don't know
Burlington is anything but a coat factory. Um. But he
had as mayor of foreign policy because, as Bernie said,

(41:40):
I saw no magic lines separating local, state, national, and
international issues. How could issues of war in peace not
be a local issue? So that was his justification for that. Um.
Maybe Vermont was just boring might be a more realistic explanation,
but either way, the trip had its origins in the
visit that a Soviet choir had made to Burlington the
year before. Sanders had taken stage during the performance and said,

(42:01):
this is the enemy to the crowd. Um. The goal
of the visit was apparently to find a sister city
for Burlington's in the Soviet Union. Um. And yeah, it
seemed to be a good trip and it would prove
to be a critical time for Mayor Sanders for a
number of reasons. Bernie was impressed by the Soviet attention
to public health care and public housing, but he wasn't
very impressed by the obviously terrible quality of the homes

(42:22):
themselves and of everything else in the Soviet Union. Um,
it wasn't doing great by that point. Yeah, I think
that's kind of relevant. Like even the article pointed out like, yeah,
he didn't praise the quality of it. It was Yeah, yeah,
he was not. It would be inaccurate to say that
he came there and was just like a Diet in

(42:44):
the wool communist. He's the guys that was like, Oh,
these guys got some things right that we're not getting right,
and maybe we could all learn from each other and
have a make better systems for ourselves. Speaking of the
Soviet Union, you know what the Soviet Union loved from
If there's one thing the Soviet Union loved it was advertising.

(43:04):
Huge fans of advertising get those private companies advertising enjoy
a double dose of classic Soviet capitalism together. You're back

(43:26):
and we're talking about Bernie Sanders in the Soviet People's Paradise. Uh,
where he got naked, uh and drunk and sang Woody
Gut three songs with a bunch of Soviet oil workers,
Which sounds like a night I wish i'd been at.
I bet that was a fun one. What a romantic honeymoon?
What what a great honeymoon. You're just there with your

(43:48):
beloved who can't stop talking about socialism and Woody Guthrie
and hanging out shirtless with Soviet oil workers. Uh. Yeah,
that's the life she does. She does now, I'm gonna
quote from the Washington Post again describing this this beautiful moment,

(44:10):
which is on videotape and you can watch for yourself.
On one of the last days of the trip, officials
in Yaroslavel took their vermonters to a worker's retreat in
an oil refinery for a classic Russian celebration, a trip
to the sauna and a bath in cold water, wrapping
themselves in towels and then putting on toga style sheets.
Sanders and his colleagues gathered around a table lined with
vodka bottles. A video of the event show Sanders bare

(44:31):
chested listening into light to Russian folk songs. In response,
Sanders and other Americans sang the Woody gut Thrie ballad
this land is your land. It would have been a normal,
boring kind of diplomatic exchange, except we had just come
out of the sauna, he said, And I think we
were probably naked the sauna. I certainly hadn't brought a
bathing suit. We were bare chested with towels on. Alan
Reuben and in Turnist it was on the trip recalled
it similarly, saying, I remember the togas, the vodkas. I

(44:54):
don't remember anyone not drinking vodka Sanders, he says, was
his jolly and light. I don't think we see that often.
He genuinely that way. So that's good after some vodka
in a sauna. Sure, who wouldn't be that way usually?
But he's approving. I don't. I don't see him naked
full of vodka. But alright, one day I wish we

(45:16):
saw him that way more. Inauguration day, fingers crossed. You
know what, this is my promise of the listeners of
this podcast. I will be on camera naked and filled
with vodka if Bernie Sanders gets inaugurated next year, I
will make that happen. We will build a sauna. So
keep that in mind when you're voting. Keep that in

(45:36):
mind when you're voting or not. Just out there. And
if if Pete, if Pete Bottages wins, I will take
a cringe worthy selfie at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. You'll
do the Pete Day. Yeah, I'll do the Pete dance
on on one of the mark You'll go to You'll
go to Apple Great Tragedy at night and and sing

(46:00):
songs from Rent on the Table. Yeah. Either that or
maybe maybe maybe actually we could all go to Dokau
and get a video of me dabbing. That'll be good,
That'll be all right. I want to hear more about
so Uh. In his job as mayor of Burlington, though
Bernie was not always the man would he Guthrie would
have wanted him to be. When dozens of anti war
activists marched on the local ge plant, which manufactured gatling

(46:23):
guns that were being used to suppress socialist movements in
Central America, Bernie Sanders sided with the union leaders and
the plant. According to Jim Condon, a friend of Sanders
and a Vermont legislator, quote, there were protesters who were
unhappy that General Electric was manufacturing gatling guns at the plant,
and so they would lock themselves to the gates and
engage in civil disobedience, and so the mayor, Bernie finally
got the cops to go in and arrest the protesters.

(46:46):
The g plant was one of the largest providers of
jobs in the city, so it was economically important that
the plants stay open and the people who worked there
went to work. Bernie himself said of this decision, I'm
not going to throw three thousand people out of their
jobs at union wages and created oppression. He added in
another interview, you cannot split the movement and push workers
to one side and have peace activists on the other side.

(47:07):
You can help you if you put them in jail,
you can. Yeah, well, it's uh, it's a complicated moment
in his history. Um and I found that quote in
a Daily Beast article titled Bernie Sanders loves this one
trillion dollar war machine. It's about the F thirty five
stealth fighter plane, which the program is headquartered in Vermont.

(47:29):
And this plane is one of, if not the most
famous boondoggles in the history of military spending. Um. It's
like a trillion dollars. It's it's a it's enough money
to fix a significant chunk of this nation's infrastructure problems
over budget UM and will probably never be a useful
machine of war when finished. It's it's a disgusting and

(47:53):
like indefensible waste of resources for the species UM on
par of any they're stupid thing that's ever been done. Um.
And it is also, I should state, a plane that
would only be useful in a kind of war that
would end human civilization. We don't need an F thirty
five to fight the Taliban, but not a lot of

(48:15):
stealth fighters doing good in that war. But we can
make them, though, But we can make them. We can
spend all the money we're not spending on Flint's water
supply on them. This is a good country. UM. So
Bernie's a big fan of this plane because it provides
a lot of jobs in his state. UM and he's
two twelve reelection campaign, Bernie ran against a Republican who

(48:35):
was against constructing the F thirty five. Since it was
a waste of money. Bernie's argument for the F thirty
five was that this was the plane of record. It
was going to be used and go somewhere, and it
had to go somewhere in the US, and so he
thought it might as well feed money into Vermont. Um.
So we're not talking about a guy who's uncompromising in
his ideology. Um, Nor are we talking a guy who's

(48:57):
quite as consistent as he might want you to believe.
I think that there's positives and pluses and negatives to this,
you know, like, yeah, it is disappointing in some aspects
because we see him as this hard line, uncompromising person
and and that's a fear you're thinking, you want your
president to be able to do, you're going to have

(49:18):
to compromise. So I guess there is something good about that,
but also, yeah, it's disappointing to see he's not quite
the you know, it hasn't isn't always the persons, especially
with this, particularly like the other that is, uh, did
you understand about that? And how we do not need
to make that. But he's a politician and you're playing

(49:39):
the political game anyway. Speaks a lot to his just
His approach to pretty much everything is that of like
framing it, uh in the economic view and being like, well,
I don't want to shut down this plant, so I'm
gonna do this, and it's all. It all sort of
comes back to the economy and jobs for him, it
seems anyway. Yeah, Well, because he's um, he's a one

(50:04):
of the things that like when conservatives get on is
they they they'll call him a communist or something or
say that he's for some like like he's he's not.
He's not in favor of some global workers revolution. He's
a guy who wants to make the United States work
and thinks that common sense socialist policies will make the
United States work, and I think that's better than what
we have. Um. This is where I run into issues

(50:26):
with him because I don't think he made the right call.
I think he probably, like on an objective political level
in terms of getting reelected and maintaining his born in
Burlington's Yeah, I'm sure that was the right call, um.
In terms of morality, I don't think it was the
right call um, And he's made other calls like that.
In nineteen he voted against a bill that would have
prohibited the purchasing of tanks and armored carriers by police. Um,

(50:48):
so he's not always you know. And he said stuff
like talking about like you need to have a border
in order to be a nation. Like he's he's a
pro borders guy, and I'm generally not. So he's he's
not a wild eyed radical. He's a guy who has
been making a pretty reasonable and middle of the road,
which should be in a sane country, would be the

(51:10):
middle of the road sort of statement about the way
things need to change to make our society functional. Um.
And it's it's wild to me that he's considered such
a fringe candidate by so many people because he's he's
really that that's really as much of a sign to
fucked up politics are as anything. Um, Because he's he's
not he's not far out in the weeds, like like

(51:33):
with a che Guavara tattoo on his lower back. Um,
you know, he's he's pretty much just like, Oh, it
would be need if we could take some of these
things that work about socialism and stick them on our
capitalism to make it better, because it's fucked up now
it's just healthcare and housing. And he's okay with those unions,
making gatling guns to suppress socialist governments in Latin America.

(51:56):
You know, it's not his preference, but he's not gonna.
He's not gonna, You're not gonna go to the mat
against it. Now he's got better on some of that,
you know. Um. So yeah, that's that's that's the kind
of guy Bernie is. Um. And I should note that,
you know, a lot of this was taking these stances
was probably not in line with his wishes. I'm sure

(52:17):
he would have preferred to have shut down that plant too.
But Burlington, despite its reputation, it's a pretty working class town. Um,
it's not a hippie left wing stronghold, and Bernie faced
significant opposition after taking office there. According to the Nation Quote,
in his first two years in office, the city council
refused to allow Sanders to hire more than a handful
of staff. Well, the intrenched bureaucrats and city hall sought

(52:37):
to thwart his initiatives. Randy Cammerbeek, the city's planning manager,
tried to sabotage everything that Bernie proposed. Recalled Michael Monty,
who worked in that agency. He told us not to
allow Bernie to have any visible successes. He figured Bernie
would be out of office after his first turn. After
he was reelected nineteen and voters swept into more progressive
city council, Sanders gained a stronger foothold in city Hall

(52:58):
with the support of local Republicans and business leaders. He
committed created the Community and Economic Development Office, set to
carry out his vision for more affordable housing, more locally
owned small businesses, greater community engagement and planning, and job development.
And this is where we get into something that I
think is is kind of cool about Bernie. Uh. He
was very successful in stopping the rise of housing prizes
and revitalizing the local economy. He used a budget surplus

(53:19):
to fix up roads downtown, and he partnered with local
businesses to improve downtown Burlington. When he found out that
the federal program subsidizing an apartment complex in his city
had a loophole that allowed landlords to convert the buildings
into luxury condos, which would have forced people out of
that affordable housing, he responded with rage. His housing aid
later recalled Bernie, pounded his fist on the conference table

(53:39):
and in his office and told the owners, over my
dead body, are you going to displace three thirty six
working families. You are not going to convert north Gate
into luxury housing. Sanders pushed through a number of sweeping
reforms and got state funding to purchase and rehab the buildings. Today,
the North Gate apartments in Burlington are owned by their
tenants and still provide a forcible, affordable housing for working

(54:00):
as families. His record as a mayor was, you know,
not all one sided. Um. But he was reelected again
and again, and eventually, in two thousands six, he was
sent by the people of Vermont to the Senate and
there he remains. And that's what I wrote about Bernie
Sanders from my high school project. That's so good. Thank
you for Bernie. Mhmm, what do you guys want to

(54:24):
talk about? Yeah, we were just like making giving you
to their Look, we're not sure. So you covered a
lot of the stuff that I think there's a lot
of overlap and I love that. Um. You know, I
was going to talk focus more on his political career, UM,
and you've certainly touched on this. UM. The first point
I wanted to make is looking at his history of
elections and losses, but perseverance, you know, so he ran

(54:49):
for governor several times, ran for Senate several times. Uh.
The only position that he won out of hand without
you know, having previously lost is air that was by
a very low margin. Even after he was married. He
ran for the House of Representatives but lost his first time,
and then you know, ran again and was elected and

(55:11):
took office in UM and and and I think that's
where a lot of us start to know him. You know,
this was very helpful, all this backstory. UM. But you know,
immediately once he was in there, he founded the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, was a consistent opponent of George W. Bush's administration.
He of course voted against the Iraq War and quickly

(55:34):
established himself, as you know, being an opposition to tax
cuts that benefit the wealthy and corporations. He was re
elected seven times after that, usually by wide margins. Then
in two thousand and six, Sanders ran again for the U. S. Senate,
and this time he easily won. And in sixteen, well,
I don't need to tell you when I happened in
twenty sixteen, but I mentioned this again bringing back to

(55:56):
that point of UM. I think it's interesting. It speaks
to his resilience and like the fact that he keeps
coming back that you know, his his ingrained desire uh
two to make a difference with people. I think that
that's the charitable of course, I think he's a politician,
but he genuinely cares about improving people's lives. Um. And

(56:18):
also speaks to how uh he how he's worked his
way through politics, that he's taken time to win people over. Uh.
And you can look at it and be like, well,
look at all the elections he's lost, but you can
also see historically he's run for things and then one
after that. So I just I put that out there

(56:40):
because if you can, you can get elected easier if
you compromise more and sort of reframe what you say.
But for the most part, he says what he means
and just has continued to make the case and people
have caught onto it. Yeah, such as with Medicare for all.
Obviously he is the first person to have been championing

(57:02):
this and now it is something that we all talk
about and uh it's perhaps the most important issue that
people are voting on. Um. You know. According to his website,
his Medicare for All plan would be a national health
insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive healthcare
coverage with no networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays,

(57:24):
no surprise bill um. And then everybody's Medicare coverage would
be expanded to include dental hearing vision UH, inpatient outpatient services,
mental health, substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, etcetera. Um.
You know. And how will he pay for it? You know,

(57:44):
he's made No, he hasn't obfuscated the fact that, yes,
taxes will go up, uh for businesses. And Katie, it's
not like we have an extra trillion or two dollars
sitting around in planes that don't work that could go
towards that. Yeah, it's not like that, you know. But
the whole argument being that you might spend a bit

(58:07):
more in your taxes, but you would otherwise spend that
money on premiums. Ultimately you'll be saving money, um. You know.
And he also says that his plan will save money
by using government collective bargaining to lower prizes of pharmaceutical
companies um. And thinks that this would save the government
when thirteen billion a year. UM. And you know, so

(58:27):
I think that this is probably the strongest Medicare for
all plan that we are seeing. That will get into
it a bit more, and we talk about Elizabeth Warren Um.
He also has his his wealth tax plan, you know,
at tax on those with a net worth of over
thirty two million, so the top zero point one percent
of households. Uh, they would have a progressive tax rate.

(58:48):
And this progressive tax rate would be a one percent
tax on households of two adults with over thirty two million,
meaning that they would pay about five thousand dollars in
a wealth tax, which honestly isn't that much when you're
making that much money after right, it's after you make
the initiative, and then that goes up with each subsequential
bracket that you get into, so it goes up to

(59:08):
two for people that earn fifty two d and fifty
million dollars a year, you know. And then it would
um be different if it's a single household. And Bernie's
team claims that would raise about four point three five
trillion over the next ten years, um. And what would
he want us to use that money for? He would
like to use it to fund universal childcare, affordable housing

(59:31):
plan and some of it would be used to fund
Medicare for all as well. This isn't that different from
Elizabeth Warren's Wealth Tax Plan um, except that she would
be using some of this money to support HBC use UM.
But he does have a plan for that as well.
I think also it's just the amount and the percentages. Yeah, tally,
he's going to be farther. Yeah, I mean, I'm just

(59:55):
saying like inherently like at its crux, they aren't drastically
to front um. But yes, different rates and all that, um.
But he also has you know, free College for Everyone plan,
which would eliminate tuition at for year public colleges and universities.
And this applies to all prospective students, regardless of economic status, um,

(01:00:16):
and it would cost the government. Is college currently expensive
because like like with Bernie Sanders, is electricity, I just
stole books from a Barnes and Noble's really expected that
was very affordable. Really, it's really expensive. And you know,
I think that the real way, and I'm just positing
this to increase equality an opportunity is through education. So

(01:00:39):
if we really want to fix this, we need to
make sure our broken system, we need to make sure
that people have access to it. I think that's where
he's coming from. But I don't know. I don't know.
What if what if instead of that, we just provided
additional extension cords so that everyone could steal power from
the local I think that. Um. I think that his
his free college for everyone's plan include extension courts. So

(01:01:01):
I think that that's one way. Okay, but so but
actually so Pete actually offers tax incentives on extension of
courts though. Yeah, but that doesn't count for inflation. Okay,
I have a question, do you do you guys know
if like any of these plans for education of anything
to do with like like medical school and like law
school and things like that, or is it just on
undergrad I believe it's undergrad. Um, I know, not enough

(01:01:27):
of what I've been focusing on undergrad and trade school. Yeah.
I'm just thinking of my brother who was like three
hundred thousand dollars in debt to become an oncologist. Yeah. Um,
but you know, if you decide so if you decide
to get to do nothing greet like on cology trying
to hear cancer, you know, is not anybody gets cancer? Yeah? Yeah,

(01:01:52):
we're not talking about um, universal health care because people
get cancer, all right. No, his plan also in Dud's
student loan reform, lowering interest rates. Um. But he's also
proposed a bill that would cancel current student loan debt.
Uh And that would be funded by attacks on Wall Street. UM.
And you know, like Warren, he wants to invest one

(01:02:14):
point three billion every year in private, nonprofit historically black
colleges and universities and minority minorities serving institutions. UM. And
that's all great. You know, we're familiar with a lot
of his stances right now. He's you know, on immigration,
he's called for the breakup of ICE and CBP and
wants to reinstate and expand expand DOCCA, dismantled deportation centers,

(01:02:37):
and reunite families, allow more refugees. All of this. He
wants to end the prosecution of whistleblowers using the Espion
Espionage Act. All of that's great and um. And and
let's talk about Israel real quickly, because Bernie uh It
is perhaps the most vocal critic of Israel's policy towards

(01:02:58):
Palestine amongst any of the candidates. You know, he's long
criticized the US is support of Israel and says that
aid to Israel Israel should be contingental on how they
treat the Palestinians. Uh. He would also like some US
funding to be used as humanitarian aid in Gaza. Just
last week, he's speaking at a j Street conference and
suggested that the U. S should condition aid to Israel
and even give some of that aid to Palestinians. Um.

(01:03:21):
Which makes him not a favorite with Israel. And I
guess one of the main criticisms of his stance on
Israel is the suggestion that if we send funding to Gaza,
then we're also funding Hamas, which is obviously equating the
people of Gaza with Hamas. You know, that's a talking
point of people like Ben Shapiro and those those lovely
human beings. On this is uth Standers says, conflating an

(01:03:43):
effort to address that crisis with support for Hamas is
part of an effort to dehumanize Palestinians and continue the conflict,
which I agree with. Um. Uh an interesting thing to know, uh,
and this comes this is actually our our good friend
Katie Golden wrote about this in a script for some
More News or other show. UM. But that in times

(01:04:03):
of peace support for Hamas actually drops uh. And and
that's interesting to just keep in mind that during times
of conflict, the Palestinians tend to turn to Hamas for
protection because they don't have any other options, which is why,
of course it's in everyone's best interest to foster peace
as an attempt to diminish their sway in the region.
If you're in an open air prison and you've got

(01:04:26):
no one to protect you, then what are you gonna do? Right?
I mean, it seems very unreasonable that the Palestinians side
with a moss during times of conflict, because you know,
when when, for example, there were those attacks in the
United States in two thousand one, we did not begin
to irrationally support our military industrial complex in a variety
of overseas adventures well beyond anything that could have been

(01:04:49):
construed as a reasonable reaction that didn't happen here. Um,
let's talk a bit about some of the stuff that
he's received some push back on. Um. One would be guns. Um,
those of us here have different relationships with guns. Um,
but for exactly quasi sexual Yeah. But you know, for

(01:05:14):
it's pretty well accepted for a liberal h to be
more anti gun in general pro gun regulation. UM. But
Bernie has always expressed a belief in the right to
own arms, also a belief in some gun control UM.
In nineteen eight he supported an assault rifle ban. In
he voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act due

(01:05:38):
to mandatory waiting periods. UM. But for the most part
through his political career, h Sanders has believed that most
gun controlled decisions should be left to the states. Even
following the Sandy Hook massacre in he expressed some skepticism
about whether he would support new measures that Obama was

(01:05:58):
proposing at the time, which included an assault weapons band.
He did ultimately vote for it. UM. But you know
that comes back to also he catering to his state
and the people that vote for him, and you know,
playing the game of being a politician. UM. But his
stance has Yeah, go ahead, Robert, Yeah, I mean, just

(01:06:19):
it's just Vermont is I'm not sure if you're aware
of this gun by population. So yeah, it's a reasonable move. Yeah,
I I do understand that. But it just seems like
an important thing to bring up because that is something
that people talk about when they're talking about Bernie Sanders. UM.
But It's it's important to note that is a stance
has evolved a lot since then. Um. Now his gun

(01:06:40):
control platform includes taking on the n r A uh
and it's affecting Washington, expanding back around checks, ending the
gun show loophole. Uh. You know, banned a stale and
distribution of assault weapons, other things too. You guys can
check out his website. I'm not going to just read
his website to you, but I just make the point
that he has had some there's been some controversy, some

(01:07:00):
criticism of him in this issue in the past, and
he has done some evolving. Um. The other thing I
wanted to bring up was this pro life pro choice
controversy that kind of bubbled up. Uh in um, it
seems worth noting Uheen Sanders campaigned for a Nebraska mayoral candidate,

(01:07:21):
Keith Mellow, who has co sponsored bills restricting abortion rights. Uh.
And and that rubbed a lot of people, including myself,
the wrong way at the time. You know, back then,
people were it was post and people were really upset
that he wasn't endorsing other Democratic candidates, uh, which you know,

(01:07:42):
really could have helped them in their races. But he
did endorse this man of all people um and Sanders
defended his decisions, saying, quote, the truth is that in
some conservative states there will be candidates that are popular
candidates who may not agree with me on every issue.
I understand it. That's what politics about, uh and claims quote,
if we were going to protect a woman's right to choose,

(01:08:04):
at the end of the day, we're going to need
democratic control over the House and the Senate and the
state governments over this nation. Uh. And we have got
to appreciate where people come from and do our best
to fight for the pro choice agenda. But I think
you just can't exclude people who disagree with this on
one issue. And I get that sentiment, but I disagree.

(01:08:24):
I think I think that's a line in the sand
at this point. For me, I don't think that we
can have Democrats in office that aren't pro choice. Doesn't
mean that people have to get abortions, but they have
to support that. The Democrats believe in women's reproductive rights.
And even the logic behind that is a little off
kilter because if you you're saying that you need democratic

(01:08:46):
control in order to protect women's rights, but if some
of those Democrats yeah, and granted this mean as a mayor,
but in general that really really, uh actually hurt my feelings.
That's the long way to put it. But like, this
is somebody that is an advocate in a bulldog and
fights for people that need need him and and and

(01:09:11):
women are obviously obviously this is greatly important. And you
know a lot of pushback on on this and from
people that are die hard Bernie fans would say, like, look,
look to his record, and that's true. He has been
really pro women's reproductive rights and it's important to note.
But I, um, that bothers me. That really bothered me. Yeah,

(01:09:32):
he's he's not perfect. He Uh. One thing that's interesting
to me is we go over all this stuff Katie,
is that in his background, he's a guy who is
not willing to compromise on the things that are important
to him to make himself more palatable for election in
the in the first place, like he was pretty strong
about like like he's he's been pretty consistent about the

(01:09:54):
mainlines of his campaign. But once he is in office
and once he's sort of like like in in that mode,
he's been very willing to compromise and uh, compromising fat
and in some cases on his beliefs and stuff in
order to stay in power and in order to kind
of like further the goals that he has, which is like,

(01:10:14):
that's um, not necessarily a bad thing. It's kind of
the people who do that tend to stay in politics
for a long time rather than getting kicked out again.
It's being a politician. It's being a politician like they
like they all are. Politician is not a politician. Yeah, Cody,
did you have some stuff you wanted to bring up?
Um briefly, Yeah, um, uh you mentioned sort of activism

(01:10:41):
during that brief period, UM, And I want to talk
about that a little bit, just because I think it
speaks a lot to sort of what we're talking about
and where he has started and how that is sort
of always been true for him despite like these various
compromise we've talked about, UM, because he hasn't really talked
about his activism a lot. Um. He won't really tell

(01:11:01):
these stories. UM. Some surrogates will, but like he's not like,
oh yeah, let me tell you about all these times
I got arrested. Um. But it was a brief period. UM,
when he lived in Chicago. Um, he was the like
you said chairman of the university chapter of the Congress
for Racial Equality or CORE UM. He eventually merged that
with the Student Non Violent UH Coordination Committee UH. During

(01:11:26):
that time, the group became aware of various instances of
housing segregation on campus. So Bernie organized a sit in UM.
He gave rousing speech outside, and thirty three students went
and did a sit in UM at the university. It
was actually apparently the first civil rights sit in the
Chicago had ever had. Yeah. UM, it also kind of

(01:11:49):
worked the university. University president George Beatle agreed to make
a committee to explore the university's housing policies. Interesting b
E A D L E. Sorry, I'm still a Beatle UM,
and so he they made that committee. Bernie was on
that committee. UM. He also agreed to sort of hear
questions and comments from students about this issue. Though it

(01:12:12):
became clear as maybe that phrasing pointed to that there
would be a committee to explore the university's housing policies. UH,
it didn't really go anywhere. It was it was kind
of lip service, and he was not really open to
hearing anything from the students. So in response to that,
Bernie wrote in the school paper. It was a bit

(01:12:34):
of a tongue in cheek piece kind of meant to
rile Beatle up and also get students to submit questions.
And I just wanted to read a brief passage from
this because I think it points to just kind of
what like a little stinker he's always been, um and
sort of this anti establishment not taking any guff attitude. UM.
To some people, it might appear that the university was

(01:12:54):
attempting to go back on its word at the present moment. However,
we in Core do not publicly hold these thoughts. We
maintain our belief in President Beatles quote sincerity, in Dean
Wicks quote good faith, and in Ray Brown's quote liberalism. Uh.
And the whole article reads like that. It's just this
very uh dry, uh, tongue in cheek sort of attack

(01:13:18):
on the administration for not doing what they said they
would do. UM. And he sort of urges students to
ask a bunch of questions to them. UM. Another story
you won't hear him really tell is when he was
living in Chicago, he just mean the day posting flyers
about police brutality because it was something he cared about. UM.
And eventually he realized that there were some cops following

(01:13:41):
him and taking the flyers down. So at the end
of the day they sort of like they walked up
to him and said are these yours and handed him
the pile of flyers that they had taken down while
following him. UM. Very cool. He marshat Washington in n
UM and in a different case of segregation for housing,

(01:14:01):
he changed him. This was actually a few days before that,
that march in Washington. He chained himself to bulldozers and
other protesters to protest that. You'll probably see this photo
of him being arrested passed around a lot from that. UM.
And those are like the main stories you'll hear because
his actual activism was brief. If you if you consider

(01:14:21):
it like that, like the like I'm going to organize
men do this, We're gonna do with sin, We're gonna
do that. UM. But I think it does speak to
uh where he comes from and what he has always
sort of believed in this general idea of equality and justice. UM,
because he was just this like Jewish kid going to

(01:14:42):
all these civil rights marches, like it was kind of
rare at the time. This is like in the early sixties,
being that passionate and like willing to again for a
brief period, but willing to literally literally change change yourself.
There was at the time when this was happening, the
vast majority of white people, particularly white people in his position,

(01:15:03):
didn't take part in the civil rights movement. He did. Well, yeah,
that's why we're from calling back to the beginning, one
of the original allies, right, Like he was putting his
body on the line and whatever you can say about
his record, and um, yeah, he should be proud of that,
and we should be proud of that. Yeah. Um, that

(01:15:24):
was that was very rare during that time. Um. Yeah,
And he sort of carried that that attitude in general,
I think throughout his career. Um, even when he was
there's this interesting article from the Daily Beast Mayor Bernie
Sanders created an eighties trans Mecca and Burlington. Um, and
it's just it's he's always sort of had this about him,

(01:15:46):
even when when he first became mayor of Burlington. Uh.
Anyone writes sexy essays, it's probably a bit more that
one pretty more open minded than you're. Probably a little
more open minded. Um. But even when he was running
with the Liberty Union Party. Uh. Part of the platform

(01:16:08):
was abolishing all laws related to discrimination against homosexuality, which
again very very rare. Forty years ago and when he
was mayor Burlington, a bunch of gay rights organizers planned
the first Pride parade there and most of the community
and other politicians were very, very opposed to it. Bernie
came out very vocally in favor of it. Um. Herod

(01:16:29):
a memo part of that read, in our democratic society
and a democratic society, it is the responsibility of government
to safeguard civil liberties and civil rights, especially the freedom
of speech and expression. In a free society, we must
all be committed to the mutual respect of each other's lifestyle. Um.
And he has always sort of had that civil rights
uh mindset. Yeah. Um. And then two years after the parade,

(01:16:53):
he signed a city ordinance that prohibited housing discrimination against
the gay community. UM. And just sort of generally, this
is an interesting quote from amber Lam may um about
just Burlington and Vermont and sort of I guess the
Sanders effect. Um. From what I understand, Sanders didn't do

(01:17:13):
anything specific for the gay community. He just treated them
like he treated everyone else. He gave opportunities and the
gay community took him up on them, juxtaposing that with
this other this other quote from a Lana cleverly not
saying he didn't do anything, but his actions show that
he feels that everybody should be treated as equals. Everybody
should have equal rights, regardless of their situation and regards
with their gender. He's fought for all of that and

(01:17:34):
made it way easier for everybody in the community, not
just for trans people, but for everybody. And they talked
about how they were able to walk around uh freely
and free of judgment there and when they go to
other places they don't necessarily feel that. UM. And I
just think it's uh, it's something he's always had. There's
an interesting clip from They're talking about clean water bill

(01:17:58):
and uh, a congressman is railing against it, and in
the midst of that, he refers to homos in the military. Um.
And then he talks for like three more minutes, UM.
And then it's Bernie's turn to talk, and he's like,
I want to bring the gentleman back over here. I
have a question for him. When you were you just
talked about homers in the military, and he just like
ships on him for a while uh and talks about

(01:18:21):
how like that's really disrespectful to Americans but also the military,
and he like really pinpoints that, um taking the time
from his time two focus on this one little phrase,
UM and this it's like what sixteen years before, don't ask,
don't tell end um And Uh, Yeah, I just think

(01:18:43):
that there are those moments we know we often talk
on the show about like people evolving their opinions, and
they've they've grown on this issue and there's certain issues
like that and like gay marriage and just all the
stuff we've been talking about that he's always had, UM
and whether or not he continued that activism or whatever
throughout I think he's always had like the heart of

(01:19:04):
an activist and organism and a fighter for equality and
civil rights. UM. And I just wanted to sort of
point to that because I love him, your present hate

(01:19:25):
whatever else you can say about the guy, and there's
a lot you can say about the guy. He's always
treated people like people and that's pretty rare. It's really rare,
especially like politicians back in the day, and as a
politician and yeah, they're just see sort of issues where
it's like the right side of history from the very beginning.
There was no evolution necessary for that, and I think

(01:19:48):
that speaks to again, I hate him, So I'm not
gonna no. No, you are a big fan of Tulsi
Gabbard's UH cult leader. Yea, who you are writing in UH? As?
I can? I would. I would call myself a Tulci Guibert. Yeah,
you're You're secretly very good at this. I will be

(01:20:11):
writing in Theodore Kazinski as I do every year. Obviously
I wouldn't, I would. I would think less of you
if you didn't. Katie. Are you voting for uncle uncle
Ted too? Yeah? Absolutely excellent? Or with our votes locked down?
All right? Yeah, she could be a good VP for

(01:20:33):
Ted only only for Yeah. Yeah, she could put a
bomb together and mail it to a stranger. I believe that. Sure,
she's definitely got that in her wheelhouse. Absolutely, she serves
some times in the military, exactly. I think Pete would.
Pete would. There was so many great options, so a

(01:20:53):
lot of great people to help Uncle Ted with his crusade.
I don't know why we want to always keep winding
up on it head. We should probably just did our
Bernie Sanders, I'm sorry, nonsense, Roberts. We always talked about. Yeah,
let's see you were. You were just as culpable as
I was. And you know it. I never bring him

(01:21:14):
up either. I'm I'm a I'm a guy bird. Alright,
you you it up? Alright, Sovie hates this. It's time
for us to wrap things up. Thanks for listening to
our extra long episode, guys, all about Bernie Sanders. You
can check us out online at Worst Year Pod, both
on Instagram and the Twitter, and we've got a store

(01:21:36):
with Birch check out those products and services we talked
about earlier. Also, we will not be releasing an episode
next week Thanksgiving week, Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it,
but we will be back the week after with a
new episode on Wednesday, December four. Cool, cool, guys. What

(01:21:57):
do you got to say for yourself? Of I'm just
get to paraphrase Robert Um no comment. Thanks guys, thanks
so much, all so much, Robert and Cody, thank you,
thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And that's
an episode. Thank how you do it? Everything everything so dump,

(01:22:23):
it's got to get I tried. Worst Year Ever is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
My Heart Radio, visit the I heart radio, app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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