U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., campaigns for Vice President Kamala Harris in Saginaw, Mich., on Oct. 5, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Saginaw on Saturday that there is a “war” being waged on working families in the United States.
“There are terrible wars going on right now. Heartbreaking wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But there is another war that we don’t talk about. And that is a war that has gone on for the last half century against the working families of our country,” Sanders said. “It’s been a brutal war, and we know who the winners have been. The winners have been the billionaire class, never had it so good, and the losers have been the working families of this country.”
The Saginaw event was the second of four appearances by Sanders throughout Michigan over the weekend.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain joined Sanders at an earlier stop in Warren but did not attend the Saginaw visit. Sanders and Fain also are scheduled to hold events in Grand Rapids and East Lansing and on Sunday.
Sanders praised the UAW for its contract negotiations in 2023, thanking them for helping to elevate the idea of a 32-hour work week in the national conversation.
Sanders said the idea will become more important as worker productivity increases as a result of automation.
“You’re not going to have that tomorrow,” Sanders said. “The point is we need to have a discussion about who benefits from the technology. We can be looking at a golden age where machinery replaces a lot of human toil, a lot of dangerous work, a lot of repetitious work. That is a good thing if ordinary people benefit from that transition.”
Sanders said that he and Harris are on the same page in their support of legislation that would prohibit employers from replacing striking workers, ban the use of lockouts and remove prohibitions on secondary activity.
“Kamala also knows that if we’re going to create a strong middle class in this country, we need to grow the trade union movement,” Sanders said.
Sanders noted that the United States has a lower life expectancy than many other wealthy nations, which he said is in part a result of the stress of living paycheck to paycheck.
“I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck, and one of the impacts of living paycheck to paycheck, not knowing how you’re going to get through the week, how you’re going to pay your bills, is the kind of incredible stress that working class people today are experiencing now,” Sanders said.
“Stress kills. Stress destroys our bodies and our minds, and that’s what millions of working class people are going through right now,” he added.
Sanders praised Harris’ plans to increase affordable housing stock, provide families with tax credits and limit the cost of childcare.
Another issue introducing stress for many working-class families, Sanders said, is that of reproductive health care.
“Women have struggled against second class citizenship since the very inception of the United States,” Sanders said. “Women and their male allies fought and fought and said, ‘You know what? We ain’t going to be second class citizens. We have a right to full rights.’”
While Sanders said he will continue fighting for Medicare for All – the signature issue from his own 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns – he said that “there’s an immediate thing that we can and should be thinking about” in the meantime.
“Millions of seniors in this country cannot afford to go to a dentist, can’t afford glasses, can’t afford hearing aids,” Sanders said. “We need to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing.”
Sanders acknowledged that Social Security likely needs changes in its funding, but said that while Republicans want to cut costs by raising the retirement age, he and President Joe Biden have proposed increasing revenue by lifting the cap on how much an individual pays into Social Security once their income exceeds a certain threshold.
“What we say to our Republican friends in the House is that we’re not going to cut Social Security, we’re going to expand Social Security,” Sanders said.
Sanders did not take questions from the audience during the event, which was billed as a town hall, instead encouraging audience members on occasion to shout out answers to his questions.
Former President Donald Trump held a rally on the campus of Saginaw Valley State University on Thursday, two days before Sanders visited.
“My understanding is that Trump was here a couple days ago, and I’m sure he gave you a speech which will probably be even longer than mine,” Sanders said. “But I suspect he forgot to tell you a few things. No. 1, I doubt very much that he told you that he is a pathological liar.”
A sign in the audience read “Trump couldn’t fill our gym,” a reference to the amount of space at the back of the Ryder Center that was left empty for Trump’s rally.
Sanders said the question of whether Trump should be president again is one of the few areas where he and former Vice President Mike Pence, who served under Trump during his first term, can find common ground.
“For the first time in American history, as I understand it, a person who was a candidate’s vice president for four years, Mike Pence, is not supporting Donald Trump. When you are a vice president, you get to know the guy you work with every day,” Sanders said. “Mike Pence is a conservative guy, his views are nothing like mine. I disagree with him on every issue, but he worked with Trump every single day, and he said Trump is not fit to be president.”
Pence has said that he and Trump will likely never “see eye to eye” on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election, many of whom chanted “hang Mike Pence.” The former vice president, as president of the Senate, ultimately certified the election results confirming Biden’s victory over Trump.
“I’ve run many times, I’ve lost. Many public officials lose elections, and you man up and you say, ‘You know what? Congratulations. I lost.’ You don’t go around whining, you don’t go around undermining American democracy. You play by the rules,” Sanders said. “There are great athletes out there who break their hearts, trying to win a game and they lose. Sometimes you lose. That’s what life’s about – politics, football, whatever it may be. And you don’t find these great athletes who lose the game, ‘Oh, we only lost it because of the referees, they cheated.’ They accept defeat and they try to do better the next time.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.