Bernie's In

Tomorrow's my birthday-- but the present I wanted most came a day early. First on Vermont Public Radio and then on CBS This Morning, Bernie announced he's running for president. Responding to a question from John Dickerson, Bernie said "I am going to run for president, that's correct. Dickerson asked him what's going to be different this time and Bernie said, "We're going to win. We are also going to launch what I think is unprecedented in modern American history and that is a grassroots movement to lay the groundwork for transforming the economic and political life of this country.

"It is absolutely imperative that Donald Trump be defeated, because I think it is unacceptable and un-American, to be frank with you, that we have a president who is a pathological liar. We have a president who is a racist, who is a sexist, who is a xenophobe, who is doing what no president in our lifetimes has come close to do doing, and that is trying to divide us up.

When Dickerson asked Bernie about the crackpot Starbucks guy who has said he'd drop out if Democrats pick a conservative, corporate whotre like himself, rather than a progressive, Bernie dismissed Schultz as a billionaire who's essentially "blackmailing the Democratic Party."

"If you don't nominate Bernie Sanders he's not gonna run?" Sanders said of Schultz. "Well, I don't think we should succumb to that kind of blackmail."

>Dickerson pointed out that Schultz represents the argument that Democrats, in order to win voters in more conservative parts of the country, have to pick a candidate who isn't as radical.

"I think his deeper theory is, 'Hey, I'm a billionaire. Leave me alone. And let me make as much as money as I can without paying my fair share of taxes,'" Sanders countered, without acknowledging the point.

Earlier, Bernie told Vermont Public Radio host Bob Kinzel that "We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age. I mean, I think we have got to try to move us toward a non-discriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for."



And for those wondering... Bernie's 2020 platform:

• Medicare For All
• Green New Deal
• $15 Minimum Wage
• Criminal justice reform
• Free public college
• Break up Too Big To Fail banks
• Gender pay equality
• Paid leave
• Bring down Drug prices
• Expand Social Security
• Save Unions
• Dream Act

The centrists and "moderates" who try to shoot this down are the same kind of politicians who thought it was too radical to pass Medicare, too radical to pass Social Security, too radical to legislate a minimum wage, too radical to allow women the vote, too radical to emancipate the slaves, too radical to mandate free public education, too radical to declare independence from Britain. There will always be politicians like Status Quo Joe Biden and Billionaire Bloomberg and Amy Klobuchar. We're always better off ignoring them.