Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…What do you think is the most powerful enduring impact you’ve had on American politics? Looking back, you’ve been in it for quite a bit. Well, I don’t know that I can give you a singular answer. I was mayor of this city and proud of what we accomplished here, proud of my accomplishments as a U.S. Senator. When COVID was devastating this country and we had a massive economic downturn, as chairman of the budget committee, I helped write the American Rescue Plan, which put a lot of money into people’s pockets. We cut childhood poverty by 40% by providing a child tax credit. We kept hospitals going, we kept colleges going, kept people from getting evicted, helped get public health out there, people getting the vaccines. I’m proud of that. But at the end of the day, I think what I have shown is that the ideas, gets back to the early part of this conversation, the ideas that I am talking about are ideas that are widely supported. So Donald Trump says, “Oh, Bernie Sanders is a far left.”, it’s like I’m some kind of extremist coming up with ideas that nobody supports. Everything that I talk about, raising the minimum wage, health care for all, a tax system which demands the billionaires pay their fair share, those are all popular ideas. But people didn’t know you got to run for president and have 20,000 people come out to your rallies and win 23 states. And they say, “Well, maybe those ideas are not so crazy after all.” And we’ve got to entertain them. The establishment doesn’t like that. They really don’t. They want to tell you, and this is their main, this is how they succeed. What they say, Lex, is, “The world is the way it is. It always will be this way. We got the wealth, we got the power. And don’t think of anything else. This is the way it is. You have no power. Give up.” They don’t say it quite that way, but that’s really what the intent is. And what we showed is, guess what? Running an outsider campaign, we took on the Democratic establishment, we came close to winning it. And we did win 23 states. And the ideas that we’re talking about are the ideas that working-class people, young people believe in. Yeah, you showed that it’s possible to win. And that’s an idea that will resonate for decades to come.…

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