Sanders: Middle class must stand together to beat Kochs, ‘billionaire class’

kcrg.com ^ | October 6, 2014 | James Q. Lynch

[Tailgunner Joe]

IOWA CITY — Heading into the final month ahead of the 2014 midterm election, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders exhorted fellow progressives to plug away at the unglamorous nuts-and-bolts of the campaign against a “billionaire class whose greed knows no bounds.”

“Everyone in this room understands participating in the political process is the most patriotic thing we can do,” Sanders, the U.S. Senate's longest-serving independent, told about 400 people Sunday at the Johnson County Democratic barbecue.

The polls and prognosticators may paint a bleak picture for the party in the Nov. 4 election, he said, “but if we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish for our great country.”

“While the Koch brothers and the billionaire class have the money, we have the people,” he said.

Sanders, 73, a self-described democratic socialist who is considering a bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, brought the Johnson County Democrats to their feet several times in his half-hour speech that laid out a progressive agenda for increasing Social Security benefits and the minimum wage, offering a single-payer Medicare-for-all health care plan, creating 13 million jobs by investing $1 billion in a federal jobs program to rebuild transportation infrastructure and overturning the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

In the face of that struggle, Sanders reminded his audience of the progress that has been made. ....

“That struggle we have not won,” Sanders said. The Koch brothers and their allies “want more and more and more and are prepared to destroy the American middle class to get it.”

[Organic Panic]

[neocon1984]

A former girlfriend who lives there told me Johnson County is 93% registered Democrat. How’s that for diversity?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

You nailed it.
Bernie should feel right at home in Iowa City.