Bernie Sanders for President

Bernie Sanders for President
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen / Unsplash

[This endorsement was originally published in Home Yesterday in January 2016, and in my capacity as a Democratic Superdelegate in 2016.]

Our country faces a middle-class crisis. Well-funded corporations and politicians have used billions of dollars to corrupt our politics and drive down the wages working families need to survive. The candidate for President who fights the influence of corporate money, and champions the interests of working families, is Bernie Sanders.

West Virginia is seeing first hand how elite corporations can take over the government and attack the interests of working people with impunity. Republicans have taken prevailing wages and benefits from construction workers, threatened health care and retirement promises to schoolteachers, and pushed a union-busting agenda with euphemisms like “workplace freedom.” West Virginia needs a national campaign devoted to the paychecks of middle-class families. Bernie Sanders will lead that fight.

As the most recent debate showed, the Republicans have nothing to offer America except reckless, ill-considered wars and giveaways to billionaires. Bernie Sanders opposed the war in Iraq and will not act dangerously in foreign policy, as Republicans promise to do. Senator Sanders has fought to honor our nation’s promises to our veterans who have returned from war, while his GOP opponents use our military personnel as political props.

Every Republican has proposed a huge tax cut for the rich. Bernie Sanders will make sure the rich pay their fair share and give working families a break. Senator Sanders walks the walk — gathering unprecedented numbers of individual donations from ordinary Americans to fund his campaign so he is not beholden to Wall Street, corporate America, or some dark-money PAC. He will restore integrity to our political process.

The middle class is America’s heart and soul. The concerns of middle-class families, including health care, tuition, and a rising wage for honest work must be our focus in 2016, not just here in West Virginia, but across the country. We cannot afford leadership corrupted by corporate money any longer. I endorse Bernie Sanders’ message, his values, and his unparalleled commitment to taking our country back from the billionaire class.

I endorse Bernie Sanders for President of the United States of America.