Sanders can beat Trump in 2020, Cornel West says
Harvard University Professor and multiple best-selling author Cornel West, while discussing the crowded field of 2020 Democratic candidates, told FOX Business’ Neil Cavuto that Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders can beat President Trump in 2020.
It started when Cavuto asked about the “rep you always get on him... that he’s is unelectable,” West responded, “that’s not true.”
“I think he brings together young people, he brings together working people, he brings together people of colors because he's got decency, he's committed to the dignity of each and every American,” said the self-described Democratic professor.
“He sets the progressive standard. And I think we've got a lot of weak imitators, we've got a lot of people who are saying now what he was saying years before, why? because he's morally consistent because he's politically committed to empowering working people,” he added.
West also believes that Joe Biden is a “neo-liberal in the classical mode.”
“Neoliberalism is dying -- the center is dying -- and we either have a right-wing populism or a left-wing populism,” he stressed adding that any kind of Democratic socialism is “about social justice being an ideal so that market price does not dictate injustice.”
“Look at the military -- fifty-six cents for every dollar goes to the military,” he added. “Are we as a nation willing to allow the military to proceed based on the ideals of capitalism? No that's very socialistic in terms of the role of the public --public value – public lives.”
But when Cavuto pushed back, saying “socialistic types of society has been there tried that failed at that. They're just not, you know, they just don't work,” West said, “there's a number of capitalist experiments in the United States that has failed.”
“Healthcare is a sick market -- we've got some healthy markets we keep them -- that's a sick market. You need public intervention,” he said. “The history of slavery, the history of Jim Crow, the history of patriarchy, the history of not allowing the personal dignity of gays and lesbians and trans -- those are failures for us as a capitalist society. But we can intervene and we intervene democratically we intervene constitutionally but we intervene with strong organizing.”
Under Democrat and Republican presidents, the United States debt has grown to $22 trillion. Sanders is a proponent of raising taxes on the wealthy dramatically, in order to address it.
“You are for that right?” questioned Cavuto.
“You got to keep in mind my brother from Reagan to Trump we have been increasing in military budgets continuously,” said West.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP
When Cavuto asked whether he gives Trump credit for giving African American’s the lowest unemployment rate in many years, he replied: “Absolutely but the issue has never been just a statistic.”
“The issue has to do with other jobs with a living wage or that people working two jobs still living in poverty. Are we able to deal with the grotesque wealth inequality of the 1 percent only 41 percent of the wealth and three individuals have a wealth equivalent to the 50 percent of the population. You could have wealth inequality you still have good numbers we are talking about the quality of life of our fellow citizens just not the statistic.”
West also believes that Sanders could have beat Trump back in 2016, “if the Democratic Party had treated him fairly and allowed the Clinton machine to get out of the way.”