Unfortunately, like wide-legged denim, choker necklaces and whooping cough, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is back. On Tuesday, America’s favorite Uber driver announced that he’s running for president in 2020 after suffering defeat to the insufferable Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“I am asking you to join me today as part of an unprecedented and historic grassroots campaign that will begin with at least a million people from across the country,” he wrote in an email to supporters following an interview on Vermont Public Radio, CNN reports.
As it stands the Democratic field looks like the early days of the Wu-Tang Clan, with more members than any of us can name. Unfortunately, Sanders will enter this race with enough steam to push past the other no names to be one of the frontrunners. Basically, he’s the Method Man of the field (Kamala Harris is Ghostface and Cory Booker is U-God).
Sanders has moved from America’s favorite grandpa with the wild ideas about how to improve the country to becoming “...one of the most popular politicians among Democratic voters and his policy agenda—a suite of progressive proposals to expand health care, broaden the social safety net and make higher education free — has been embraced by many of the Democratic party’s leading figures,” CNN reports.
“I can tell you very happily, and I think any objective observer would confirm what I’m saying, is that in the last year and half or so, the Democratic Party has moved in a far more progressive direction than they were before I ran for president,” he said in an interview with CNN last year.
Sanders and his supporters truly believe that America’s favorite disheveled tax preparer has the best chance of dethroning President Donald Trump next year. Sanders, who has called Trump “a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction” — also set out loftier goals on Tuesday.
“Our campaign,” he said, “is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice,” CNN reports.
And in a message to rich and “powerful special interests,” Sanders warned: “They may have the money and the power. We have the people.”
Sanders couldn’t beat a hobbled Clinton in 2016. Hell he couldn’t even win the black vote against Clinton who was fighting off a soundbite calling black youth “superpredators” and saying “we’ve got to bring them to heel.”
According to CNN, “Hillary Clinton beat Sanders by about 57 points among black voters in the average of states with an exit poll, which is a devastating margin when you recognize black voters make up about 20 percent of the Democratic base.”
But it might be fun to see America’s favorite get all riled up one last time before suffering a career-ending defeat to Harris or maybe even the Raekwon of the field who’s yet to throw his name in the race. Yep, I’m looking at you Beto O’Rourke.