Bernie Sanders took his campaign to the heart of Hillary Clinton’s base Thursday — bashing the former first lady at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network for taking millions from “wealthy special interests.”
“If you think — and I don’t mean to be disrespectful — that you can run for office, have a super PAC and raise tens of millions of dollars from wealthy special interests and then go out and take on the big money interests and protect working families, well if you think that, you have a very good candidate out there, and it is not Bernie Sanders,” Sanders said, drawing a chorus of “Ooohs!” from the mostly black audience at the Sheraton New York.
The fiery Vermont senator cited the problems facing the United States, including the declining middle class, a “corrupt” campaign-finance system and the fact that millions of young people leave college deep in student-loan debt.
“If you believe those issues can be addressed by establishment politics, and establishment economics, you have a very good candidate to vote for, but it’s not Bernie Sanders,” he said, drawing laughter and cheers.
He also slammed members of the Washington establishment for having their priorities all wrong.
“How is it we have trillions of dollars to spend on a war in Iraq we never should have gotten into but then we are told we don’t have the funds to rebuild inner cities in America? I disagree,” he declared.
“We are going to invest in education and jobs for our kids, not jails and incarceration. It cost less to send kids to college than to lock kids up,” he said, adding that cops who break the law should be punished if found guilty.
Tempering his remarks somewhat for Clinton supporters at the conference, he also offered some praise for his opponent.
“She’s an extremely intelligent woman with a wonderful résumé, a whole lot of experience,” he said. “I’ve known her — we’ve been friends for 25 years. You know, in a campaign, things get heated up, but I have a lot of respect for her.”
Sanders wasn’t above a bit of pandering, boasting of his support for Jesse Jackson’s presidential bid in 1988, when Sanders was the mayor of lily-white Burlington.
“That wasn’t a popular thing to do. I had to take on the whole Democratic establishment in the state of Vermont. I stood up — I’ll never forget this — in a meeting in Burlington, Vermont. People turned their backs on me . . . He won the state of Vermont,” Sanders recalled.
In a no-lose move before the Democratic crowd, he also took a shot at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
“Now is the time for blacks, whites, Latinos [to] come together to tell the Donald Trumps of the world, ‘Sorry I’m not going to divide us up, we’re coming together,’ ” he said.
Earlier, Sharpton gave Sanders — who has struggled to win over black and Latino voters from Clinton — some advice on how to interpret audience feedback.
“If you hear someone say ‘Amen, go right there,’ they’re not heckling. If you hear someone say ‘Hillary,’ that’s heckling,” Sharpton said to peals of laughter.
