00:01Hello, Senator Sanders.
00:02First of all, I want to thank you for showing West Virginia some love.
00:07And my belief, and I think the belief of everybody here, is that West Virginia is not going to
00:12succeed until the American working class succeeds as a whole.
00:19So having said that, my question is this.
00:22How do we get the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, who is just as guilty of taking money
00:28from billionaire causes to embrace a progressive working class agenda, because it's about time?
00:37What's your name?
00:38Max.
00:39You're going to lead it, Max.
00:41Look, Max is absolutely right.
00:48I am here in Mingle County and proud to tell you I'm the longest serving independent in
00:53the history of the United States Congress.
00:55All right?
00:56I caucus with the Democrats, because they're better than the Republicans.
01:00But you're absolutely right.
01:02Anyone here thinks that the Democratic Party has not been significantly captured, and there
01:08are a lot of good people.
01:09I don't want to say this is true of everybody, because it's not.
01:12But if the leadership has not been captured by that same bloody billionaire class, you'd
01:16be wrong.
01:17They have.
01:18And what we've got to do, you can do one of two things.
01:22For one, you can simply move to take over the Democratic Party.
01:26All right?
01:27It ain't as hard as it looks like.
01:30That means coming to meetings.
01:31Take it over.
01:32Run your own candidates.
01:34Okay?
01:35You know, somehow you think, I've got to impress upon people.
01:39You know, I was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, largest city in Vermont in the early
01:4580s.
01:46That's the bloody thing about how to run a municipality.
01:49But I wanted to learn, and I'm not dumb.
01:52You can get, run for office, learn.
01:55You can do it.
01:56You can do it.
01:57So that is the main thing.
01:58This state was once the stronger, one of the strongest democratic states in the country.
02:04And I think people gave up on the Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party gave up
02:08on them.
02:15So take it back.
02:18Don't ask.
02:19Take it.
02:20I mean, this is an unprecedented moment in American history.
02:23We've got to be bold.
02:24You want the Democratic Party to change?
02:26You guys change it.
02:27And by the way, if you could do it here in West Virginia, you will have a profound impact
02:34on politics all over America.
02:36So we'll look to this state.
02:39All right, I'm going to get going.
02:45I've got to get going.
02:46But this has been a great meeting, and I really, I do feel very comfortable here in West Virginia.
02:53And it's very much like Vermont.
02:54We want you to come up and visit us.
02:57So let me end the way I began.
02:59There are people who want to divide us up, maybe racially.
03:02There are people who want to divide us up, blue state, red state.
03:05Let's not accept that for a moment.
03:07Every one of us is an American.
03:10We are proud of this country.
03:13We want to do everything we can to address its serious crises.
03:17Thank you all very much.
Comments