Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders knows that beating for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a very up hill battle. However, Sanders will not give up and he is going to stay in the race all the way through the final primary the first week in June in California.
If Sanders loses the 2016 Democratic nomination to former Clinton, his support for her in the general election will come at a price. He has been able to generate large crowds and large sums of money through small donations, two things that Clinton needs to win against whoever the Republican candidate is in the general election.
Sanders, did a 30 plus minute interview with The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur that thus far has been his most comprehensive and telling conversation. For those who are unfamiliar with The Young Turks, they are a subscriber based network that is progressive and very entertaining. They have more than 2.5 million subscribers, and are a key new source for both millennials as well as progressive Democrats.
During the interview, Sanders said that he would endorse Clinton if she met his very strict demands — all of which would push his own personal agenda and visions for America forward. The question remains if Clinton would and the mainstream Democratic Party would accept Sanders list of demands.
If Clinton becomes the nominee, Sanders listed five demands that he would require of her before he gave his official endorsement. All of them were proposed policy changes that Clinton would have to adopt in order to receive Sanders’ support, and all of them are things that Clinton has not fully supported on her own yet.
Sanders’ strict requirements include: a single-payer health care system, tougher regulation of the finance industry, a $15 per hour minimum wage, closing corporate tax loopholes, and a legitimate effort to address climate change.
The demands by Sanders would be a problem for both Clinton as well as the Democrats. Sanders, single-payer health care system will never happen. It was brought up many times during the crafting of what now is the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), with very little support in what was then a Democratic controlled Congress and Senate.
Another sticking point is getting Wall Street and other corporate money out of both campaigns and in government in general. There is a chance that Clinton and other Democrats could embrace the concept but the reality of getting big money completely out of politics still remains unlikely.
As for the $15 dollar minimum wage, at the moment Clinton supports a $12 hourly minimum wage rate and so on that point there could be some common ground. Both Clinton and Sanders have proposed increasing taxes on the rich, and Clinton released a climate change plan in July 2015.
