WASHINGTON (AP) – Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called on supporters to spark a “political revolution” for his candidacy on Wednesday night, offering a rallying cry of “enough is enough” on a video simulcast to events across the country.
“The American people are saying loudly and clearly: Enough is enough,” he said, standing before a bank of video cameras set up in a crowded Washington apartment. “Our government belongs to all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.”
The Sanders campaign said more than 105,000 backers attended 3,500 meetings in homes, coffee shops, union halls and town squares, an effort to spread the message of his insurgent bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
As supporters sipped “Bernie Palomas,” a Vermont maple syrup cocktail mixed by the event’s host, Sanders made an impassioned argument for building a single-payer health system, tackling income inequality, eliminating student debt, addressing institutional racism, expanding family leave and raising a “starvation minimum wage.”
“Bernie Sanders alone as president of the United States is not going to solve all these problems,” he said, reading off a yellow legal pad with handwritten notes. “But when we stand together there is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish.”