During the 1990's, when he held a seat inside the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. as Vermont's congressional representative, 2016 Democratic party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wrote a book that Verso published, titled Bernie Sanders: Outsider In The House, in which Sanders stated the following:
"In 1976, as the now `perennial candidate' of the Liberty Union, I ran for governor again....I ended up with 6 percent of the vote....
"After that campaign I decided to leave the Liberty Union Party....
"....With politics behind me, I...began building, reasonably successfully, a small business in educational filmstrips. I wrote, produced, and sold filmstrips on New England history for elementary schools and high schools....
"In 1979, after discovering that....college students I spoke to had never heard of....Debs, I produced a 30-minute video on his life and ideas....The Debs video was sold and rented to colleges throughout the country, and we also managed to get it on public television in Vermont. Folkways Records also produced the soundtrack of the video as a record....
"....I now had a business career....The Debs video was a success and I was now beginning to think about a video series on other American radicals--Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Paul Robeson....My media production career came to an end in 1980....
"....In Congress, I chair the 52-member House Progressive Caucus which has 51 Democrats and me, people with whom I have an excellent relationship....
"....Forward now to 1996....Bill Clinton is a moderate Democrat. I'm a democratic socialist.
"Yet without enthusiasm, I've decided to support Bill Clinton for president....I will vote for him, and make that public....A Clinton victory could give us some time to build a movement, to develop a political infrastructure to protect what needs protecting, and to change the direction of the country....
"The problem with a third-party or independent candidacy, as I had learned back in my Liberty Union days, was that although people will often agree with the candidate's position, they are skeptical of his or her `electability.' So it was of major importance that, shortly before the election, the Burlington Patrolmen's Association endorsed my bid for mayor. They did so because I promised to listen to the concerns of cops on the beat and open serious labor negotiations with their union...
"Vermont is a rural state in which tens of thousands of people enjoy hunting....During hunting season thousands of kids go out with their fathers and mothers to hunt....I am pro-gun, and pro-hunting...."
No comments:
Post a Comment