OUTTAKES From 2013 Playboy Interview With Bernie Sanders

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A couple of years ago, I spent many hours with Bernie Sanders interviewing him for Playboy magazine (the interview was published in October 2013). I've just received permission to post unpublished answers from him--just the nature of the editing process, nothing nefarious, but probably only one-third actually saw the light of day--along with the published part. Before getting into his actual views, a few things. So, there is no doubt where I stand: Literally, my last comment to him was "If you run for President, I will be there for you, okay?" So, I'm there: I'll do whatever it takes, whatever I can do, to elect him president.

Second, what struck me--and I think what strikes just about any crowd that listens to him, and the reason I think he will get massive support, is that people believe that he is saying what he honestly believes in. He doesn't need to put together a team of 200 people to tell him what he should believe in--he doesn't need ideas to be poll-tested. He actually has a set of consistent beliefs. To begin, you can go and read the full interview, and an update from Playboy here.

I also posted, back then, the whole PDF of the interview if you'd like it here.

From the update, these views are worth posting, and the commentary in bold is from the magazine:

SANDERS WAS TALKING ABOUT CLINTON FOUNDATION CASH IN 2013

Well, (Bill) Clinton was and is a very smart guy, but he is the guy who signed NAFTA. I like Bill Clinton, I like Hillary Clinton, but they live in a world surrounded by a lot of money. It’s not an accident that Clinton is doing a fantastic job with his foundation. Where do you think that money is coming from? The point being that Clinton was a moderate Democrat who was heavily influenced by Wall Street and big-money interests, and Obama is governing in that same way.
CLASS WARFARE WILL BE A MAJOR THEME
We are in the midst of intense class warfare, where the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are at war with the middle class and working families of this country, and it is obvious the big-money interests are winning that war.


THE 1 PERCENT WILL NOT BE BANKROLLING HIS ELECTION

When we were growing up and read about oligarchic countries in Latin America and elsewhere, did you ever think that in the United States one percent would own 38 percent of the wealth and the bottom 60 percent only 2.3 percent?


HAWKS WON’T LIKE HIS FOREIGN POLICY

We should do everything we can to avoid a hugely expensive cold war with China similar to what we had with the Soviet Union. We should also do our best, in a respectful way, to support those elements in China fighting for a democratic society.


SERIOUSLY, THEY’LL HATE IT

If you want to talk about nation building, I know a great nation that needs to be rebuilt. It’s called the United States of America. I would rather invest in this country than in Iraq or Afghanistan. Our roads and bridges and railroads and water systems and schools need rebuilding. We have been at war now for more than a decade. Our troops have done a tremendous job, but it is time for the people of Afghanistan to take full responsibility for their country and for waging the war against the Taliban. And in Iraq, I think it’s clear that nation building didn’t work very well.


HE’LL BE THE RARE CANDIDATE DISCUSSING CIVIL LIBERTIES

The way the drone program has been handled is a major reason I voted against the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Of course we must defend ourselves against terrorism, but I am not convinced Brennan is adequately sensitive to the important balancing act required to make protecting our civil liberties an integral part of ensuring our national security. Drone attacks that kill innocent people are immoral and create an enormous amount of anti-Americanism.


AND THE PATRIOT ACT

I think we can fight terrorism without undermining the Constitution. That is why I voted against the so-called Patriot Act. In my view, that surveillance law gives the government far too much power to spy on innocent U.S. citizens and provides for very little oversight or disclosure.


THE SENATOR IS NOT A FAN OF CAPITALISM

People have lost sight of America as a society where everyone has at least a minimal standard of living and is entitled to certain basic rights, a nation in which every child has a good-quality education, has access to health care and lives in an environmentally clean community, not as an opportunity for billionaires to make even more money and avoid taxes by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands. Can you argue that the era of unfettered capitalism should be over? Absolutely. Does this system of hypercapitalism, this incredibly unequal distribution of wealth and income, need fundamental reform? Absolutely it does. You have the entire scientific community saying we have to be very aggressive in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Yet you’re seeing the heads of coal companies and oil companies willing to sacrifice the well-being of the entire planet for their short-term profits. And these folks are funding phony organizations to try to create doubt about the reality of global warming.

What is striking about the above then and now is that he understood clearly the threat of the Kochs, big money and the way in which the Clintons (long before the current kerfuffle) are awash in corporate cash. And he would be the only person criticizing capitalism--contrasted to the warmed-over, Center for American Progress "Commission on Inclusive Prosperity" nonsense (you think that wasn't a poll-tested name?). To the unpublished material: There are 200 plus pages of transcript because I spent hours talking to him so I'll comb through to find additional material. Just because it's in the air, I'll start with thoughts about the challenges of running for president when he was musing about it (uh, where it says "PLAYBOY", those are my questions cuz yeah I'm just that kinda guy). What I think is quite instructive below is his view that 2/3 of the people agree with him on the issues--I agree with that--which he pointed out to downplay the idea that he's iconoclastic:

PLAYBOY: That’s ironic. You may have been asked this question. This seems like the perfect time for you to run for President, why won’t you do that? I know you’ve been asked this a million times, you’ve mentioned but the country is at a point where it’s ready to blow up.

SANDERS: Well, the answer is that to run a serious campaign, you need to raise hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s number one and I don’t think…

PLAYBOY: Which you could do, you could raise, assuming--let me just back it up and say what you’ve been saying, it’s almost as if you’ve been the Paul Revere or whatever analogy you want to use, everything you’ve said and everything you talk about is coming to pass and there are people out there that are hungry for that. I can understand if you don’t want to go through the arduous process of that, that’s a different issue but you could raise…I mean, Barack Obama proved it, you can raise money.

SANDERS: Barack Obama went to his friends the first time around on Wall Street.

PLAYBOY: That’s true, but he still raised a fair amount of money in small donations.

SANDERS: Yeah, but I’m not Barack Obama, okay? That’s the point. I do not take corporate money.

PLAYBOY: Small donations from regular people.

SANDERS: Yeah, but you need just a phenomenal number of small donations and a kind of an organization, so I appreciate the compliment.

PLAYBOY: You just said nobody is speaking about it, so—

SANDERS: Again, it’s hard to say what kind of media coverage one would get, right wing…Rand Paul, you know, trust me, these things are harder than they look on the surface and I’m not even talking about just money, money is huge, organization.

PLAYBOY: You would have thousands of people willing to work for you, all over the country, campuses, cities.

SANDERS: Tempting, I think people are hungering for a voice out there, that’s what I do think and what would be tempting would be to try to raise issues and demand discussion on issues that are not being talked about. Issues that you and I have talked about, inequality in wealth and trade policy, protecting the social safety net, moving aggressively on global warming, those are issues that are not being talked about and it would be tempting, but…

PLAYBOY: So why do you resist it so much? Let’s say you could raise the money, the people would be there—

SANDERS: Whoa, whoa, whoa, it’s too easy.

PLAYBOY: There would be—

SANDERS: Jonathan! We’re talking about the United States of America, you’re talking about having to put together an organization of tens and tens of thousands of people. Ross Perot can run as an independent because he’s a billionaire.

PLAYBOY: You could raise the money, given the way people can raise money now, particularly small donations over the internet and social media, there would be other people—I’m telling you, you could raise the money. I’m not saying that you could raise Barack Obama type, but enough to run a national campaign. You said there needs to be a voice out there, particularly—Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee probably for the Democrats, let’s face it. That’s not going to offer an alternative to the country.

SANDERS: No, it’s not.

PLAYBOY: She won’t even explain…nobody has even held her accountable for her vote for the Iraq War and that’s the kind of voice we’re going to have out there.

SANDERS: Well, I thank you very much, if I run I’ll make you my campaign manager.

PLAYBOY: Well, I won’t put it—look, I don’t know if you want me for the campaign manager but there are a lot of people out there who would put time into it and I think you should—I’m just asking, do you ever consider that given that there isn’t the voice that you just described, let’s put it that way.

SANDERS: I wish that there was that voice, whether I’m the right person or not, I have my doubts, but thank you very much. And by the way, I should tell you, people like me do not often make it into the United States Senate. Do you see that plaque in front of you?

PLAYBOY: This one here?

SANDERS: Yeah, you know who that is?

PLAYBOY: No, who is that?

SANDERS: That’s Eugene V. Debs.

PLAYBOY: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so Debs ran for President.

SANDERS: Debs ran for President on more than one occasion and he got six percent of the vote, point being that people with my politics don’t often make it to the United States Senate and I’m proud of the work that I’m doing here, I’m proud of representing the State of Vermont, I’m comfortable doing that.

PLAYBOY: In 2016, though, you would get a pass in terms, you wouldn’t be giving up your seat to do it.

SANDERS: All right, we’ll talk about that next time.

PLAYBOY: He obviously doesn’t want to go there. But I’m going to come back to that someday. I understand that you’re hesitant.

SANDERS: I do, I honestly appreciate your support on that, but…

PLAYBOY: I won’t push you again on that right now. Do you think of yourself as an iconoclast in that way, in what you talk about?

SANDERS: Well, I mean, I’m very proud to be the longest-serving independent in American Congressional history, that’s no small thing.

PLAYBOY: Is your iconoclasm, have you always been that way?

SANDERS: I don’t see myself…you know, it’s not like I wake up in the morning and say, I’ve got to be different than everybody else. Everything that I have told you, Jonathan, I believe has the support of most of the people in the country. I am amazed that I have colleagues here who have the great courage to tell their constituents that we should give tax breaks to billionaires and cut social security. That’s very courageous and brave, I am not that courageous. I tell people that we’ve got to stand together to fight for the middle class.

PLAYBOY: I hate to tell you, you just made the argument again, I’m not going to go back to it, he just made the argument again to run for President, right, didn’t he?

SANDERS: It is true, everything that I’ve talked with you, there’s very little—very little—that I have said to you that doesn’t have the vast support of the—the real question is, why aren’t there more people raising these issues? The poll came out, we just saw it yesterday, two-thirds of the American people think that we should lift the cap on taxable income for social security. You understand what I’m saying? Two-thirds of the people! I introduce legislation to do that, is it very brave? I’ve got two-thirds, what’s brave is to cut social security, that takes a lot of courage to do what the people don’t want to do. It astounds me that in fact you have two political parties who day after day after day do exactly what the American people do not want them to do and do not do what the American people want them to do.
[emphasis added]

cont'

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/29/1381236/-Bernie-Sanders-What-He-Actually-Believes-In-In-Depth-Interview-With-New-Unpublished-Stuff#

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1. The Business Roundtable...

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SANDERS: The way I phrase it is that we are in the midst of an intense class warfare, where the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are at war with the middle class and working families of this country, and it is obvious that the big money interests are winning that war. They are winning the war in terms of their lobbyists providing tax breaks for people who don’t need it and then fighting for cuts for working families. Here’s a story that didn’t get a lot of attention. You know what the Business Roundtable is?

PLAYBOY: Mm-hmm. Yep.

SANDERS: They are the board of the largest companies, CEOs of the largest companies in the world. They came to Washington last month. Here’s what they said, and all of these guys are making millions of dollars a year. All of them have wonderful retirement programs. Some of them are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They came to Washington and said, “The Business Roundtable proposes that we raise Medicare eligibility age to 70 and Social Security eligibility to 70 years of age.” Could you imagine the chutzpah of guys who are worth, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars with retirement packages the likes of which Americans couldn’t even dream, average Americans, and then proposing them. This is class warfare, and they’re getting cockier and cockier and cockier. They think nobody can stop them. And unless we bring forth the political revolution in this country, a real grassroots movement, they’re probably right. That’s where we are.

PLAYBOY: That is pretty astonishing that they have that gall, the chutzpah.

SANDERS: To come to Washington. Can you imagine somebody who’s going to get a golden parachute of tens of millions of dollars, perhaps, who is going to have, you know, not a worry in his or her life them coming to Washington and saying “I want you to raise Medicare eligibility to 70?”