Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called for a “political revolution” in Iowa as liberal activists push him to challenge Hillary Clinton from the left if Clinton decides to run for president.
“We need a political revolution in this country,” Sanders said in Iowa on Saturday evening, according to CNN. “Politics is terribly important, and what happens in Washington and state capitals is also enormously important.”
In a Meet the Press interview that aired on Sunday, Sanders suggested he may want to start that political revolution as a Democrat. He said he may still run as an independent, but it would be tougher since he would have to set up a “50-state infrastructure.”
On Meet the Press, Sanders said that liberals, conservatives, and independents across the country are angry at Washington and the establishment press that they view as out of touch.
“[The] middle class is collapsing. I know that the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is growing mightily. I know there is profound anger at the greed on Wall Street and corporate America,” he said. “Anger at the political establishment. Anger at the media establishment. The American people want real change.”
Sanders said he has been taking on “big-money interests all of his life.” He then railed against the Koch brothers and the Citizens United decision that allowed for unregulated free speech in politics, which Sanders said “will go down in history as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever” because it is “opening up the road to oligarchy in the United States of America.”
Even though liberal billionaires like Tom Steyer and George Soros have poured millions of dollars into left-wing political caucuses while the mainstream media often give what should be considered in-kind donations to Democrats, Sanders singled out the Koch brothers as the source of evil.
“The Koch brothers are going to spend $400 million. Do you know what their agenda is?” Sanders said. “Do you know what they believe in? Let me tell you what they believe in. … They want to end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. More tax breaks for the rich and large corporations.” He added, “Nobody in America wants that except the billionaire class, and yet they are now able to put hundreds of billions of dollars into the political process. This is a real danger to American democracy.”