Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants to remind voters that Tuesday’s election “is the most important midterm election in the modern history of this country.”
Responding to President Donald Trump’s baseless vilification of immigrants in the closing days of this election cycle, Sanders told me in an interview on SiriusXM Progress on Monday that “we have a president of the United States who is a pathological liar, who really does not understand the difference between truth-telling and lying.”
“He lies every day,” Sanders said of Trump, who in recent days has offered up a number of whoppers at his rallies, from claiming without evidence that Democrats will destroy Medicare to falsely declaring that immigrant caravans are filled with violent criminals.
“In addition,” Sanders said, “he is a sexist, a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot. He is trying to do what we have never seen in the modern history of this country to do what he is doing right now, to gain votes by trying to divide the American people up based on where we came from.”
“We’re supposed to be hating these desperately poor people from Honduras, who are hundreds of miles away from the southern border,” Sanders said. “We’re supposed to be hating Latinos. We’re supposed to be hating transgender people. We’re supposed to be hating anyone who is different than white folks. And this is really outrageous.”
Sanders implored Americans to vote, noting that “four years ago, as you will recall, we had the lowest voter turnout for a midterm election in the modern history of this country, and the result was tremendous right-wing victories all across this country.”
“So,” he said, “if people don’t want to see millions of their fellow Americans thrown off of health care through the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, if people want to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, if you want to lower the cost of prescription drugs, if you want to deal with climate change, if you want to combat racism and sexism and homophobia, you better be coming out tomorrow, because Wednesday is too late.”
Having received enormous support from millennials in his presidential run in 2016, Sanders made a direct appeal to younger voters.
“The truth is that the younger generation today is the most progressive generation in the history of this country,” he said. “But what I say to them is that their views, whether it’s climate change or Medicare-for-all ― it doesn’t matter unless you get involved in the political process and start electing people who represent those views.”
Sanders noted that voter turnout among young people is “much higher than it was four years ago,” but said “we’re starting from a base that is very, very small.”
“Young people should not sit back and allow a handful of billionaires to determine what their lives will be like in coming years,” he said.