Senator Bernie Sanders - Its OK to Be Angry About Capitalism

I know a little bit about all of this, having run two of the most progressive grassroots campaigns for president in modern American history. In 2016 my campaign shocked the political establishment by winning twenty-two states and more than thirteen million votes in the Democratic primaries where I took on the partys anointed candidate. Thats not what was supposed to happen. Thats not what the Big Money interests wanted. Thats not what the corporate media wanted. Thats not what super-PACs and wealthy campaign contributors wanted. Thats not what the super-delegates wanted. But thats what happened.

Four years later, in 2020, we won the popular vote against a huge field of candidates in the first three Democratic primary statesIowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. The result: a panicked political establishment came together behind Joe Biden, the one candidate they thought could beat us. The other candidates were asked to drop out.

The most important lesson of those campaigns was not just the list of states that we won as we took on the greed and recklessness of the ruling class, or the total number of votes we received. More important was where the votes were coming from. They were coming, in overwhelming numbers, from young people under fortythe future of our country.

In state after state, and in national polls, we won the support of young Americans by landslide proportions. These votersBlack, white, Latino, Asian American, Native Americanunderstood from their lived experience that Americas uber-capitalist system was not working for them. It was not working for them economically, as they were experiencing a lower standard of living than their parents. It was not working for them from an environmental perspective, as they faced a planet that was growing increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable as a result of climate change. It was not working for them in terms of ending the kinds of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia that they detested. During our campaigns, millions of young people in this country made it clear: They wanted change, real change.

These Americans understand that proposals that tinker around the edges are an insufficient response to the enormous crises we face. For them, there is a rapidly growing recognition that this country has deep systemic problems and that it is not good enough to deal only with the symptoms of the problem. We have got to get to the root causes. We have to confront the destructiveness of modern-day uber-capitalism. We have got to change the system. While polling shows that a majority of Americans still view capitalism favorably, the support level has been sliding steadily in recent yearsdropping to well below 60 percent in an Axios-Momentive survey conducted in June 2021. Among Americans aged 1834, negative views about capitalism surged from 38 percent in 2019 to 49 percent just two years later. Among Gen-Z adultsthose Americans aged 1824 who are getting their education and looking to enter the job market54 percent say they have a negative view.