What Do Tuesday's Elections Mean?

A message from Bernie Sanders following progressive wins in Democratic primaries.

Last night, progressives won a major victory in the state of Minnesota. Peggy Flanagan won the Democratic nomination for Senate with a blowout. She won by some 20 points.

A week earlier, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination from Michigan for the US Senate.

And what is very interesting to me: If you combine those two campaigns — Michigan and Minnesota — billionaire-funded super PACs spent over $80 million trying to defeat El-Sayed and Peggy.

Over $80 million. And they lost.

We were able to win despite all of that massive spending. So, what does it tell you?

It tells you that not just in Michigan and in Minnesota, but all over this country, we have been winning elections — primary elections, general elections — for the last year.

We won in New York City with Mandani. We won congressional seats in New York state. We won in New Jersey, Colorado, Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, and in the last week, in Michigan and in Minnesota.

So, what is going on?

I think the answer is not complicated. Working people all over this country are looking around them and they understand increasingly that the economy is totally rigged. Sixty percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. In America, people are struggling to put food on the table, pay for rent or mortgage, uh pay for health care, uh put aside a few bucks for a dignified, secure retirement, worried about their ability to send their kids to college. Worried, in fact, that their kids may very well have a lower standard of living than they do, while the billionaire class has never ever had it so good.

I remember when we were all in school, we studied the Gilded Age. Remember the Gilded Age? The time of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan and Jay Gould and all those guys at the end of the 19th century. And everyone said, “Wow, how unequal society was.”

Right now, inequality is much worse than it was in the Gilded Age.

You got one guy, Mr. Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom half of American households — the top 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 93%. And the American people see that.

And what they also understand is the reason the government is not acting to protect their interests is that many of the people in Congress are owned by the billionaire class and corporate interests, as a result of a corrupt campaign finance system.

And again, one of the extraordinary things about Michigan and Minnesota is that people saw the tens and tens of millions of dollars of TV ads and all that stuff. They said, “Wait a second. If billionaires are trying to defeat people like El-Sayed and Flanagan, maybe I’m going to stand with then.”

So, where are we right now?

We’re at a moment in history where we have the most dangerous president in the history of the United States of America.

A guy who happens not to believe in democracy — he happens to be an authoritarian and doesn’t believe in the Constitution or the rule of law.

A president who is a kleptocrat — he’s made some $2 billion in personal wealth since he’s been president, in this term.

Somebody who is a narcissist — who, if he had his way, I think would name half the buildings in the country after himself.

Somebody who lies all of the time.

Somebody who campaigned on keeping us out of endless wars and then got us into this terrible war in Iran, which has killed thousands of innocent people and disrupted the economies in America and all over the world.

We've got to keep our eye on doing everything that we can to stop Trump’s authoritarianism and his disastrous policies.

But on the other hand, we have got to fight for an agenda that works for working families.

It’s not good enough to say, “Oh, Trump is terrible.”

Yeah, most people know that. Poll numbers are plummeting. Many of his own supporters are catching on.

We need an agenda that says that in the richest country in the history of the world, you know what? We can create an economy that works for all of our people — not just the people on top.

It is not radical, it is not far-left, it is not extreme to say that healthcare is a human right. It exists in every other major country on Earth. And we’ve got to take on the insurance companies. We’ve got to take on the drug companies. And we’ve got to move to a Medicare for All single-payer system.

It is not a radical idea to say that a $7.25 an hour minimum wage is insane — that we’ve got to raise the federal minimum wage to a living minimum wage of at least $20 an hour.

It is not insane to say that instead of putting $1.1 trillion into a bloated military, we should be investing billions of dollars to build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we need.

It is not a radical idea to say that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the billionaire class has got to start paying their fair share of taxes.

It is not a radical idea to understand that Donald Trump is crazy when he thinks that climate change is a “hoax” given what’s happening all over the world right now. That we can create millions of good-paying jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

And it is certainly not a radical idea to say that if we’re going to preserve democracy, we cannot maintain a corrupt campaign finance system under Citizens United, which allows billionaires to try to buy elections.

Bottom line here: As progressives, we’ve got a twofold task in front of us.

Number one, we’ve got to lead the effort against the Trump administration and all of their horrific policies.

Number two, as progressives, we’ve got to take on the Democratic establishment and fight for a Democratic Party, which is a party of working people, young people, people of color, and not just a top- down party dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.

That’s what we’ve got to do.

And the good news is we are making significant progress. But we’ve got to keep fighting.

The general election is going to be in early November, and our job is to make sure that our people win all across the country — that Democrats gain control of the House, gain control of the Senate, and that we elect as many progressives as we possibly can.

A lot of work to be done. I look forward to going forward with you. Thank you all very much for what you’re doing. Take care.