The NPR Politics Podcast - On The Trail With Bernie Sanders

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

In an ongoing series, the NPR Politics Podcast is hitting the road and interviewing 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. In this episode, Scott Detrow and New Hampshire Public Radio's Josh Rogers sit down with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to ask about why he's the best pick for president. This series is produced in collaboration with NHPR and Iowa Public Radio.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. Throughout the summer, we're taking you on the road to meet the 2020 presidential candidates. That's why two days after the first presidential debate, I was standing next to a New Hampshire middle school watching Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders take a picture with a pug. Tell the dog to smile. Did you smile? Do it again. I don't think the dog smiled. I thought smile.

These special episodes are a collaboration with Iowa Public Radio and New Hampshire Public Radio. That's where longtime New Hampshire Public Radio political reporter Josh Rogers comes in. Hey, Josh. Hey, Scott. Several inflatable unicorns just went by on our right-hand side. Can you describe where we are standing right now? It is Pride Parade. Balloon bedecked revelers are heading east. Bernie Sanders is over our shoulder, surrounded by supporters. It is hot.

It is definitely hot, I will say that. There was another unicorn stitched onto the front of Bernie Sanders' baby blue baseball cap. He was marching down the middle of the street in Nashua's pride parade. Sanders ran a surprisingly close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016. He's crying again in 2020. So Bernie Sanders in 2016 won the New Hampshire primary handily. It was basically a blowout of Hillary Clinton. This time around the polls are looking a little different. Well everybody knows Bernie Sanders. He did win with ease last time. It's not simply

Bernie against the machine and that's complicating things and there are a lot of candidates whose platforms are a lot like Bernie's was four years ago. After the parade, we met up with Sanders a few towns over in an old banquet hall where he was getting ready to give a speech to a group of Democrats. We sat down, adjusted the microphones. You're moving it up again. Turn away. You're moving it up. Okay.

We're ready to go? And got underway. Thanks for joining us on the NPR Politics Podcast. My pleasure. So we were just at the Pride Parade, so I wanted to start with that. It's been 50 years since the Stonewall riots, and there's been a lot of conversation over the last month, all the advancements in LGBTQ rights, but also the fact that, you know, there's still a long way to go.

Things like job security, physical security for the transgender people especially. What would you say to someone who is at that parade who still has a lot of those worries? Well, you're right. They have worries, and they should have worries, because we still have a very long way to go to kind of create the non-discriminatory society that we want. In my view, people have a right to live where they want to live, to do the work that they want to do, to get the health care that they need, to serve in the military if they choose to do that, regardless of their sexual orientation. End of discussion. And that's true for religion. That's true for race. Our goal is to create a non-discriminatory society. And it is true, I think we have made progress

in recent years, but clearly we have a long way to go. Senator, a big theme of the past few years is the extent to which Democrats have adopted significant elements of your policy platform. I just emailed somebody today, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, not my favorite editorial page, said Sanders won the debate because people are talking about the issues that we talked about four years ago. But one thing in that debate Thursday night was that you didn't have a lot of company on stage when candidates were asked who wants to get rid of private health insurance. And polling does show that a lot of people who support the idea aren't aware that they might be forced off their insurance or that their taxes could go up significantly, as you pointed out in your answer.

But let me ask you this. You're right. But I find it really interesting that the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry, they're going to spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars trying to defeat Medicare for all. And the questions that I keep getting from the media, which are not illegitimate questions, are, are people going to pay more in taxes? And the answer is, of course, some people will pay more in taxes. Are people going to lose the private insurance that they have? Yeah.

Every year now, the estimate is that about 40 million people lose their private insurance. You get a new job, you quit your job, your boss decides to get a new insurer, you've changed your insurance policy. But very rarely am I asked what it will mean to the American people when you can go to the doctor anytime you want, and there is no copayment, there is no deductible, you don't have to take out your wallet. What does it mean if, God forbid, somebody gets sick and ends up in the hospital with a serious illness and does not have to go bankrupt? So I would congratulate the insurance industry and the drug company for, you know, that's what they're spending millions of dollars trying to do. So of course, healthcare

costs money. Of course it does. No one says it's free. But the bottom line is we spend twice as much per person on healthcare as do the people of any other country. We spend far higher prices for prescription drugs. I want the United States to join every other major country on earth, guarantee health care to all people as a right, and that should be without copayments, without deductibles, without out-of-pocket expense. And most people will save money on their health care costs. So if you are spending $20,000 for your family on health care, okay, privately, you're paying premiums, out-of-pocket expenses. And I ask you, that's gone. That $20,000 is gone, and you're paying $10,000 more in taxes. Is that a good deal? I think it's a pretty good deal. Why doesn't the plans that several other candidates are talking about, former Vice President Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, among them, saying you put that government run health insurance in place, but you still have the private insurance in the system too? If you want to run a cost-effective system, you cannot do it when the driving force of insurance in the country is corporate profits. We have a dysfunctional system, and we spend twice as much per person

as any other country. Are you going to tell me that this system makes any sense at all? Medicare today is the most popular health care program in America. And all that we're trying to do here is expand Medicare from right now at 65 and older to cover everybody over a four-year period. That's it. That's the program. One more moment about the debate that I wanted to ask about. You didn't get a chance to speak in this moment, but you were very animated. You looked like you had something to say when Congressman Swalwell basically said, you and Joe Biden, your generation has had your chance. It's time to change. And their entire campaign's based on this general premise. What did you want to say?

Look, I'm not a great fan of that. Why not? I'll tell you why because i think what the american people want to know from you whether you're old you're young whether you're black or you're white whether you're a woman whether you're a man they want to know what you stand for and what are you going to do to improve their lives so if i am a vital young person and i want to throw 32 million people off of health insurance. We have some of these vitally young Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Wow, great new generation. It is what you stand for. And I think age is certainly something that people should look at. They should look at everything. Look at the totality of the person. Do you trust that person? Is that person honest? Do you agree with that person?

What is the record of that person. Do you trust that person? Is that person honest? Do you agree with that person? What is the record of that person? But just to say, you know, I'm going to vote for somebody because they're 35 or 40, and I'm not going to vote for somebody who was in their 70s, I think that's a pretty superficial answer. But not just on the age aspect of it. Donald Trump, we saw, and the focus groups and everything after the election bared this out, that a powerful, one of his powerful arguments against Hillary Clinton was, you had a lot of time. You've been here for a long time. Why didn't you get the fixes you needed fixed? Really? Well, that is the right question. That is exactly the right question. And we can ask our Republican friends who control the United States Senate, why haven't they brought up one significant piece of legislation dealing with healthcare or education or climate change? All right? To my mind, and it's... One moment that stood out in the debate was when Senator Harris told a personal story about how

she benefited from busing as a child. Do you have a memory from your childhood or early years that influences how you see government? Yeah, it does. I grew up in a family that did not have a lot of money. I lived in a, my parents and I, my brother, lived in a rent control department in Brooklyn, New York. And my father came to this country as an immigrant at 17 without a nickel in his pocket and very little education and couldn't speak a word of English, just the kind of person that Donald Trump does not want to come to America. And I guess for me growing up under those conditions, what I appreciated and what I understood instinctually as a young child is that government was not the enemy.

Thank you, government, for having rent control in Brooklyn so my family could pay a limited amount of rent. Thank you for allowing my brother to go to a good public college. He went to Brooklyn College. So to me as a kid, it was never my belief that government was the enemy. From there, we asked him about Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and how he'd approach foreign policy. But first, we needed to readjust his microphone. Oh, NPL is going to drive me completely crazy. But you're getting what you want.

All right. The mic's further away. All right. More Bernie Sanders after this break. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ExxonMobil, the company that believes that carbon capture technologies are critical for lowering global CO2 emissions. And more and more scientists agree. As a leader in capturing emissions in its own operations,

ExxonMobil is working on ways to make this technology more efficient and affordable for other industries as well. That's the unexpected energy of ExxonMobil. Find out more at Energyfactor.com. No matter what you've got planned, you need a song of the summer. This week on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we are rounding up experts from NPR Music. We will play a ton of songs to lift your spirits, and you might even find your next favorite artist. That's NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen and subscribe now. And we're back with our interview with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In this part of the conversation, we talked with him about his vote to support the 1994 crime bill and his views on guns.

We're in New Hampshire, a place where there are few gun laws. Lawmakers here want to require universal background checks, and they also want a waiting period on gun purchases, which are policies you support. You also favor banning the sale of assault weapons, but you've said you don't think that passing such laws will necessarily have much of an effect on mass shootings. Why do you think that? Well, no, I didn't quite say that. I said pretty much what Barack Obama said. And Barack Obama, as you will recall, I mean, after one particular terrible mass shooting, he said, look, nobody has, I'm paraphrasing him, you know, he said something, look, there are hundreds of millions of guns in this country. There are a lot of mentally unstable people in this country. And you can't guarantee, I can't guarantee, Obama can't guarantee,

nobody can guarantee that any particular piece of legislation is going to end the horror of mass shootings in this country. But what Obama said, which is what I believe, is you have to do the best that you can do. Way back in 1988, before it was fashionable, I ran for the United States Congress in Vermont, and I probably lost that election because I believed then that assault weapons should be banned. They're military weapons. They should not be in civilian hands. So all that I mean by that is if you have a magical solution to how we can end the horror of mass shootings, please let me hear it. I don't have it. Nobody does. So we need to do our best to make sure that people who should not own guns do not own guns. We certainly have to do

better in terms of mental health counseling. I remember a story, and I'm sure other senators have the same story. Somebody calls up my office more than once, and this particular woman called up and said, I'm very worried about my brother. I'm worried what he might do to himself or to somebody else, but I can't find the counseling that he needs. We need to address that issue as well. So you had the front row seat in all of America to that exchange between Senator Harris and Vice President Biden about a stance that he held a long time ago that he didn't really apologize for, and that played out on either side of you the other night. Assault weapons, you have said in the past that that was part of the calculus when you made the decision in 1994 for the crime bill to vote for it. You've talked a lot about that since then. You've seen how it played out. Is there anything you do

differently? Well, sure. Look, sometimes, and I think the assault weapons ban is probably not the only example of it. When you're in Congress, you're given a very large bill. And if you vote one way, people say, why did you vote for that? Because there are bad things in it. If you vote the other way, people will say, you know. As I just mentioned, I ran for Congress in 88 and lost. I ran in 90 and won. And one of the things that I said is we have to ban assault weapons.

That was in the bill. And it would have seemed to me to be somewhat hypocritical, having made that promise to the people of Vermont not to have voted for it. The other thing that was in that bill, of course, was the Violence Against Women Act, which is another promise I made to the women of the state. But here's the point. If you check the record, go back to what I said, literally, I don't remember, the day of the debate or the day before the debate or the day after,

and what I said about the bill and what I said. This is a bill of mass incarceration. I voted against a crime bill in 91, by the way, which had many of the same provisions, did not have the ban on assault weapons. So, you know, sometimes you're caught between a rock and a hard place. You make a promise that you're going to vote to ban assault weapons. There's a lot of bad stuff in it. But I didn't go around saying, you know, this is the greatest bill and all that stuff.

What I said is this is a, you know, this bill has very serious problems. And I think I kind of predicted in terms of mass incarceration. But where we are right now is we have a very broken criminal justice system, and I'm proud that many of the ideas that I have been advancing for years, including ending the so-called war on drugs, legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana, are ideas that states are now adopting. You have said in a lot of interviews lately that Democrats need to excite voters. They need to give them a reason to go to the polls.

Does Joe Biden do that? I'll let Joe Biden. I'll let you ask Joe Biden that question. All that I would say this is Trump clearly is the most dangerous president in the history of this country. It is absolutely imperative that we defeat Trump. I will do everything I can. I am, I think we got a good chance to win this thing. You're here in New Hampshire. We have enormous amount of volunteer support here in New Hampshire. I think we can win it. But if, perchance, it is not me, I will do everything I can to support the winner and make sure we defeat Donald Trump. But this is my view. Last poll I saw has me 10 points ahead of Trump, but I don't take polls all that seriously.

Trump will be a formidable opponent for me, for anybody else. And the only way you beat Trump, in my view, is to have the kind of voter turnout, large voter turnout that we need. And that voter turnout has got to be more and more young people, more and more working class people, more lower income people who traditionally do not get involved. If we can have a 70% voter turnout in the next election, not only will we defeat Trump, we'll defeat him very badly. But you're not going to have that turnout unless the candidate has issues that excite people, that energize people. That means you have to be talking about Medicare for all. You have to be talking about raising the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour. You have to be talking about making public colleges and universities tuition-free and canceling student debt. You've got to be talking about climate change and a bold response to the planetary crisis.

So then just one more contrasting question, because we have talked to a ton of voters who really like you and really like Elizabeth Warren, who you've said, you know, you've known for a long time, you're friends with her. You have a lot of the same policies that you want to implement. You are a Democratic socialist. She has said a lot recently she is a capitalist to her bones. What is the difference in your approach with her? Well, look, Elizabeth is a longtime friend of mine. She's a very, very good senator.

And I'll let the voters decide that. I think media tries to kind of create those kinds of tensions. The message of our campaign, and we have it on our bumper stickers and everything else, is us, not me. And why do I say that? What does that mean? And it's not just that we are all in this together, which I do believe, that we have to stand together and protect each other. But it's something more profound than that. And I think I am the only campaign that is saying this, the only candidate that is saying this. And that is, I was on the stage the other night with nine other candidates, and I know almost all of them, and I like all of them.

But I fear very much the American people are going to hear what everybody says, and they say, these are good ideas, these are nice people. But why don't things change? How come after all of the great speeches and legislation, how come half of America is still living paycheck to paycheck? How come the richest three people are more wealth than the bottom half of America? How come in the last 30 years, the top 1% has seen a $21 trillion increase in their wealth, while the bottom half has seen a $900 billion decrease in their wealth. How come 70, 80 million people have no health insurance or underinsured? Why is that? Do we discuss it? Do you discuss it on NPR? Do we discuss it on CBS and ABC? What is the answer to that question? Is it because every candidate is a liar or a

hypocrite? No, that is not the answer. The answer is that we? Is it because every candidate is a liar or a hypocrite? No, that is not the answer. The answer is that we have got to deal with in the media, we've got to deal with in Congress, the fact that we have a very, very powerful oligarchic rule in this country. Real change is not going to take place unless we take on Wall Street, unless we break up the major banks. That's my view. Do you think the insurance company is going to say, well, Bernie, you know, you're right. We shouldn't be making billions of dollars off of people's illness. You've convinced us. I heard your speech. We support Medicare for all. You think that's going to happen? You think the drug company is going to say, you know what, maybe we shouldn't be making 69 billion in profits when one out of five Americans can't afford the medicine they need? You're right, Bernie. We're going to substantially lower

prescription drug prices. And the fossil fuel industry, well, you're right. Morally, we've got to end carbon emissions. It ain't going to happen that way. The only way it happens and why the message of our campaign is us, not me, is the only way real change takes place. It's not some great idea. It's not a great speech. It is when millions of people stand up and fight. I know media often dismisses that. Sounds like rhetoric. But if you look at the history of this country, look at the civil rights movement, look at the women's movement, look at the gay movement, look at the labor movement. It's only when millions of people are involved in the political process. And that is what this campaign is perhaps uniquely involved about.

On the us versus me, you went to FN as an independent in 2016. The only reason you got on the ballot here in New Hampshire was because you promised you'd run as a Democrat in the future. You didn't in your reelection in Vermont. Can you explain your ambivalence with the Democratic Party? I won the Democratic nomination in Vermont. I have the strong support of the Democratic—

So then why do you identify as an independent? Because 40 years ago or 30 years ago, I said that I would run as an independent in the state of Vermont. I am a Democrat in terms of national politics, and I'm proud of that. Why don't you ask Chuck Schumer, who is the minority leader? I'm a member of the leadership team. I've raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates. I've been all over this country helping to elect Democrats to Congress and the Senate and every place else. I'm a Democrat running for the domination of the Democratic Party. Went out to Missouri a couple years ago for your big speech on foreign policy.

A couple questions about that and your follow-up speeches on that. You've said the goal is not to dominate the world, but also not to withdraw from it. How does that mindset approach to taking on what you have called this access of authoritarianism in Russia and China and elsewhere? Look, like so many other issues, there are no simple solutions. But this is what I believe. I believe that at a time when so many countries have nuclear weapons, when there is so much warfare and hatred in this world, that what we have got to do, among other things, is strengthen the United Nations and do everything that we can to end international conflict through diplomacy and not through military means. I also believe, unlike the current president, that people like Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi

Arabia are not my friends. He is a vicious, murdering dictator. And while of course you have to work with North Korea, and the goal there is to get North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons, you don't go around praising somebody who's also a pretty bad dictator. So to answer your question, this stuff is not easy. But the principles behind American foreign policy must be democracy, and they must be human rights. So instead of following the lead of Saudi Arabia in the terrible horrific war in Yemen and I led the effort to get the United States out of that war for the first time we successfully used the

War Powers Act, what we have got to do is put pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia to move them toward a democratic society and to respect human rights. It's not easy. I'm not here to tell you it's easy, but that's the goal. One thing we've been asking candidates is to describe what we're calling a moment of failure, not as a politician and nothing too personal, but just something that informs your experiences and something that you learned from that didn't go well. Well, um, you know, um, I'm not, you know, one to dwell on my personal life too much,

but you know, we, you, you, you look over your personal life and the friendships that you've had and the relationships that you had, and you always feel that you could have done better. I wish very much right now. I'm sitting here in New Hampshire. I wish I got the seven grandchildren, and I managed to see three of them in Florida the other day. I wish I had more time to be with my grandchildren. So maybe it's a failure of my occupation that keeps me on the road. So I managed to see three of them in Florida the other day. I wish I had more time to be with my grandchildren. So maybe it's a failure of my occupation that keeps me on the road. So I don't know. I think of all the candidates running, you sometimes seem to be maybe the most intense. What do you do to relax when you're done fighting all these fights?

I watch a lot of old movies. I go to iTunes and watch old movies. That's my form of kind of escaping from the reality that I live in. How do you define old? You know, just movies,

whatever. More than just contemporary movies. So I think the thing that we want to, the thing that we end all these podcasts with and we do it when we do it each week and we've been doing it with the candidates as well is what's one thing outside the realm of politics and running for president that you can't let go of this week?

Well, I've been watching a little bit to see something of the women's soccer team. Yeah. The USA team seems to be doing well. And the other thing that's always on my mind is I got a granddaughter who went to basketball camp to see how she's doing. And I've got kids. My grandchildren are into lacrosse. And I have a grandson who is good at everything. And I can't let go of that.

I wish I was there. I will be there tomorrow, maybe playing some ball with him. We've seen the videos of you playing basketball and then baseball with them. Yeah. And they're good. They're good. And that's one of the joys of my life. All right, Senator Sanders, thank you so much for joining us on the NPR Politics Podcast.

Thank you for having me. That was the sixth episode in our series of interviews with the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. You can find the previous interviews in your podcast feed, including our chat with California Senator Kamala Harris and conversation with Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The series is a partnership between the NPR Politics Podcast, New Hampshire Public Radio, and Iowa Public Radio. Thanks to Josh Rogers for helping with today's episode. We'll be back as soon as there's political news you need to know about. I'm Scott Detrow, and thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.