= new reply since forum marked as read
It's as clear as an endorsement of Sanders as Chomsky will ever get, I think.
What he was addressing was a question about Sanders being a "socialist." First of all, the interviewer did not say "democratic socialist." Strike one against the interviewer. Chomsky basically said that Sanders is not a socialist, but a "decent, honest New Dealer." Then he quoted Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who said that anyone who opposed the New Deal shouldn't be participating in U.S. politics.
The interviewer very decidedly wanted to get Sanders out of the conversation, and Clinton in, and kept pushing for Chomsky to say that he would vote for Clinton in the GE and even tried to put words in his mouth. ("So Clinton is your choice...".) Strike two for this interviewer. Chomsky cut him off. He said if he was in a swing state he would vote to keep the Republican from winning. (He mentioned Ted Cruz wanting to "carpet bomb" Syria.) Then he explicitly said, "But it would be a vote against the Republican." He was not going to be fooled by this interviewer. Chomsky then said that, if you are in a Democratic state, you can vote for the candidate you really want. He clearly meant Sanders.
At the end, the interviewer asked Chomsky if it bothered him, at age 87, that his leftist views have never caught on in the United States ("not in the mainstream"
. Strike three for this interviewer--trying to insult and goad a gentlemanly elder philosopher and foreign policy expert who had generously agreed to be interviewed by this rather crude young upstart journalist.
Chomsky merely said that if he ever found himself in the "mainstream," he would seriously question what he was doing.
Chomsky won. So did Sanders. A decent, honest New Dealer. That is exactly what Sanders is, and what we so desperately need.
