About 10,000 people attended the rally on Wednesday. Gilman Halsted/WPR
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders drew a crowd of about 10,000 boisterous supporters at a rally in Madison on Thursday night to show that his bid to snatch the Democratic nomination from front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t a longshot after all.
Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, told the crowd they made history by being part of the largest audience to see a 2016 presidential candidate to date. The 73-year-old, self-described democratic socialist has been drawing large crowds to hear his stump speeches over the past month.
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The crowd at the Alliant Center Coliseum cheered as Sanders reeled off a list of progressive policies that he said “he’ll work to implement if elected.” They include everything from single-payer health insurance to a $15 minimum wage.
Sanders got some of the loudest cheers when he called for overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that granted corporations the right to make unlimited campaign contributions.
“As president of the United States, I will not nominate any justice to the Supreme Court who has not made it crystal clear that he or she will vote and work to overturn this disastrous Citizens United decision,” he said.
Sanders elicited loud cheers when he spoke of union rights and sustained boos whenever he mentioned Republican Gov. Scott Walker, an all-but-certain presidential candidate.
Many of the people at the Sanders rally leading chants of “We can feel the Bern” were among the thousands who occupied the state Capitol building four years ago to protest Walker’s policies. Those demonstrations came after Walker signed legislation stripping public workers of their bargaining rights.
Sanders made it clear union rights are one his top priorities.
“When we talk about rebuilding the American middle class, we are talking about re-building the American trade union movement,” he told the crowd.
The senator called on the crowd to build a grassroots movement not around him, but around the principle of a more fair distribution of the nation’s wealth. He said the central plank in his bid is to narrow the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
He pledged to provide free tuition at public universities and a fair refinancing plan for students burdened with college debt, which drew loud cheers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison students in the crowd. He said the need for more education funding is linked to the need for prison reform.
“Our job is to have the best educated population in the world not the country with the most people in jail,” he said.
Sanders told the crowd the only way he can win his bid for the White House is to create a grassroots movement to counter the corporate funding that he said will flow to support both his Democratic and Republican opponents.
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