I am not a great fan of shouting down people or being rude to people, I think we have a situation and a Congress that's way out of touch with where t… - Bernie Sanders

As more and more newspapers go out of existence and vast stretches of the country become news deserts, we need to rethink how local media is maintained in order to guarantee that Americans can access the information they need to cultivate a vibrant democracy. In my view, there has to be significant public funding for diverse, competitive media at the national, regional, and local levels. That's not a radical idea. At the founding of the United States, the first Congresses provided massive postal subsidies to printers so that they could distribute newspapers. The subsidies went to all sides in the great debates of the early United States, and they fostered media diversity and discussion so intense that the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville determined, after touring the young country in the 1830s, that newspapers were an essential underpinning for "Democracy in America." Even now, almost two hundred years later, our largest media outlets enjoy massive subsidies. The public owns the airwaves of this country, yet media conglomerates claim exclusive use of those airwaves for their own economic benefit. Once they have obtained a license, they can bank whatever profits come to them from owning television and radio stations, and with the loosening of standards and regulations initiated by the w:Telecommunications Act of 1996 and industry-aligned members of the w:Federal Communications Commission, they have generally done so with little to no accountability.

Poverty is increasing. And if wages are going down, I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guestworkers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are right now. ... You have guestworker programs that have been described by the , one of the important institutions in this country who studies these issues, as guestworkers programs akin to slavery, where people came in. They were cheated. They were abused. They were humiliated. And if they stood up for their rights, they would be thrown out of the country. I supported the 2013 immigration reform bill. And what I believe right now is not only that we need comprehensive . ... In this country, immigration reform is a very hot debate. It’s divided the country. But I would hope very much, that as we have that debate, we do not, as Donald Trump and others have done, resort to racism and xenophobia and bigotry. This idea of suddenly, one day or maybe a night, rounding up 11 million people and taking them outside of this country is a vulgar, absurd idea that I would hope very few people in America support.

Our country faces unprecedented challenges today. They cannot be resolved with half-steps or compromises. There is not a middle ground between the insatiable greed of uber-capitalism and a fair deal for the working class. There is not a middle ground as to whether or not we save the planet. There is not a middle ground about whether or not we preserve our democracy and remain a society based on equal protection for all. Democrats face the most fundamental of all choices. They must choose whether to be on the side of the working class men and women who create the wealth of this country, or to be on the side of the billionaire class, and the wealthy campaign donors who hoard wealth for their own self-interest. By making unequivocal decisoon as to which side they are on in the class war, Democrats can finally enact policies to overcome uber-capitalism and the greed, inequality, and bigorty that have denied this country the promise of "liberty and justice for all."
This is the stuff of a political revolution. A political revolution that every poll tells us the American people want. The danger for the Democratic Party is not being too bold. It's being too cautious. It's time, finally, for the Democrats to recignize that good policy is good politics. It's good for the country. It's good for the world. Let's do it!