SANDERS TRIES TO BOLSTER DEMS’ CASE
Fiery Vermont senator bashes Trump on economy, COVID-19 handling
With less than a month to go before the presidential election, Bernie Sanders hosted a drive-in rally Monday afternoon in Macomb County to campaign for Joe Biden as he worked flip a key county that put President Donald Trump in The White House four years ago.
The Vermont senator returned to the south campus of Macomb Community College in Warren for an outdoor, socially distanced rally before people outside of 180 cars, SUVs and motorcycles as he tried to ease lingering tensions between the Democratic Party’s progressive and centrist wings.
He spoke from a stage erected in a parking lot on a sunny autumn afternoon.
After wishing President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump a “speedy recovery” from COVID-19, Sanders focused on bread-and-butter issues, including the economy, boosting the federal minimum wage, wage disparities, taxes and healthcare, as well as illustrating the differences between the president and top challenger.
“What the last few days have told us is
that, if therewas ever any doubt, it should now be clear now that no one, no one, is safe from this pandemic,” Sanders said. “And it doesn’t matter if you are the president of the United States, or his campaign manager, or his press secretary, or his close advisor. Each and every one of us is vulnerable. And we will remain vulnerable until there is a vaccine or a perfected cure. That’s the reality.”
Sanders, 79, then spoke about the economy, saying the working class of America “is in more desperation today than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.” Tens ofmillions of people have lost their jobs, their health insurance and life savings.
Even those who do have jobs are “often working part-time for starvation wages,” he said.
Sanders said while the middle class is being devastated, there is a massive increase in income and wealth inequality. At the same time, he said there are “643 billionaires who have seen their wealth go up by $845 billion” over the past six months.”
“That is the state of the economy in America today,” Sanders added. “We have more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the 1920s. The very rich get much, much richer, the middle class struggles and the poor go hungry and homeless.”
Much of the economic damage was done prior to the pandemic, he said.
Sanders was making his third appearance atMCC since 2016 when he was running for president against Hilary Clinton. He narrowly lost to Clinton by a 48.8% to 47.4% margin, or 1,300 votes, in theDemocratic Party primary that year.
Earlier this year, Sanders lost again, this time to Biden and by a much wider margin — 50.9% to 34%. Sanders pulled out of his presidential primary campaign in April and endorsed the former vice president a few days later.
But he praised Biden’s pro-union stance, which he believes will underscore the Democrats’ ability to connect with voters in the union-dominated county. He said if Biden is elected president, workers will see the federal minimumwage double to $15 an hour.
“Joe Biden also knows that if we are going to expand the middle class in this country, wemustmake it easier for workers to join unions, engage in collective bargaining and end the heavy-handed corporate tactics that make it hard for workers to unionize in America,” he said.
This weekend marked Sanders’ return to in-person campaigning, the first since the pandemic beganinMarch. He held an outdoor rally Saturday in Lebanon, New Hampshire. TheWarren stopwas his second forMonday, as he spoke to a group of about 100 outside a barrier at the Kerrytown Market and Shops building in Ann Arbor.