Bernie Sanders Calls on Progressives to Ensure Joe Biden Becomes the ‘Most Progressive’ President Since FDR

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is encouraging progressives to rally behind Joe Biden (D) and emphasizing their role in ensuring that the Democrat Party’s presumptive nominee becomes the “most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Speaking at Monday’s People’s Action Rise Up 2020 Get Out the Vote launch, the former presidential hopeful urged progressives — many of whom remain disillusioned that their candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), failed to rise to the top — to do everything in their power at the grassroots level to elect Biden and ensure that he is the “most progressive” president since FDR:

“Do we agree with everything Joe Biden stands for? No, we don’t. I don’t,” Sanders told his progressive counterparts, emphasizing that the “immediate task is not only to defeat Trump, but to defeat him badly.”

“And then, after we help elect Biden, the day after, we stand up and do everything we can to make sure that President Biden is the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Sanders continued.

That means, according to Sanders, that progressive allies continue fighting for a range of issues that were central to his presidential platform — universal child care, free college, the cancelation of student debt, and universal health care.

The former presidential hopeful also stressed the importance of pushing through the crown jewel of his campaign: The Green New Deal.

“And we recognize and are going to work with Joe Biden to make sure we effectively address the existential threat of climate change. That we pass a Green New Deal and that we create many millions of good-paying jobs as we do that,” he said, also promising to “do everything that we can to end systemic racism in the country.”

Sanders, Biden’s former rival, formally threw his weight behind Biden in April following his departure from the race, asking individuals across party lines and ideologies to rally behind the former vice president.

“Today I am asking all Americans — I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republican — to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy which I endorse,” he said during an April live stream event with Biden.

“It’s no great secret Joe that you and I have our differences, and we are not going to paper them over. That’s real,” Sanders said. “But I hope that these task forces will come together, utilizing the best minds and people in your campaign and in my campaign, to work out real solutions to these very, very important problems.”

Indeed, the two, in a show of solidarity, developed the Biden-Sanders Unity task force, which released a list of radical policy recommendations. Those include rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement on day one, opposing private school vouchers, ending cash bail, and ceasing the construction of the border wall.