On Friday, Bernie Sanders may have been the first sitting United States Senator to call for “political revolution” at a rubber chicken dinner.
In front of a crowd of 1,300 Democrats at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame dinner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sanders gave an unapologetically left-wing speech to a crowd of Democratic activists.
Sanders went out of his way to establish his progressive bona fides on issue after issue as a cheering contingent of supporters yelled, hollered and clinked silverware on glasses to indicate their support for his campaign.
The Vermont senator, who is a self-identified socialist, railed against “the powers that be in Washington, DC” and warned that “the billionaire class” is so powerful “that nothing will get done unless millions of people stand up and loudly proclaim that enough is enough”.
Sanders warned “America now has more wealth and income inequality than any country today” and said this was the great moral issue of our time.
He went on to hit the full panoply of liberal issues. Sanders pledged to make overturning Citizens United a litmus test for any Supreme Court justice he might appoint and warned the decision was pushing the United States towards “an oligarchic form of society”.
Sanders also pledged to fight to make every public college and university free and told attendees his table consisted of a group of college students who collectively owned a million dollars in debt.
The question for Sanders is whether his push for a political revolution can go on to appeal to more than just the diehards in the room. But, no matter what he lacked in support, he more than made up for in enthusiasm on Friday night.
