Cross post - Weekend with Bernie - Rolling Stone article

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/weekend-with-bernie-sanders-20150709

Weekend with Bernie

The early-state surge by a candidate to the left of the front-runner has almost become ritual in Democratic primaries: Bill Bradley in 2000, Sanders' fellow Vermonter Howard Dean in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008. But Sanders stands to the left of all of those insurgents. His opponent in the primary, Hillary Clinton, would be the first woman president; Sanders would be the first avowed socialist. He points to Europe, particularly Scandinavia, for examples on how this might work in practical application: generous social programs providing a baseline standard of living for all, dispatched by a robust, activist government and funded by higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy and reduced spending in areas like, say, an unnecessary $2 trillion war in Iraq.

Sanders believes that such progressive ideas have a broad popularity, not just among a lefty fringe but across the working class, even in red states. And yet progressive movements in recent years have wound up marginalized in the face of establishment pushback (Dean, the Occupy Wall Street movement) or else, as in the case of support for Obama, left as promises unfulfilled. Sanders believes that by keeping his focus on economic populism, he has a shot — a long one, he admits — at beating the historical odds. "Once you get off of the social issues — abortion, gay rights, guns — and into the economic issues," he says, "there is a lot more agreement than the pundits understand."

Indeed, in Davenport, Sanders manages to hold the crowd's attention for nearly two hours while focusing — relentlessly, indefatigably, at times in granular detail — on his policy agenda, a new New Deal by way of Oslo or Helsinki: a federal jobs program ($1 trillion of infrastructure spending over five years, creating 13 million jobs and rebuilding our airports, bridges, roads and railways); a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage; the breaking up of Wall Street banks that have become too big to fail; a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United; free tuition at all public universities; raising taxes on the wealthy and closing tax loopholes exploited by corporations; taxing carbon to curb the use of fossil fuels and promoting alternative-energy sources; free universal pre-K; a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care system; paid sick leave and a minimum of two weeks' paid vacation for all working Americans.