Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has consistently been one of the most vocal opponents of the abhorrent Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. Sanders reiterated his stance yesterday on CBS’s Face the Nation, saying that if elected in 2016, he would require any Supreme Court appointees to pledge to overturn the decision.
Sanders said:
“As a result of this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, clearly the billionaires, Koch brothers and others, are owning the political process. They will determine who the candidates are.
If elected president, I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice, and that nominee will say that they are going to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court Decision on Citizens United, because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be able to buy politicians.”
The interview naturally included a discussion about fellow Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton recently announced that she would have a super Political Action Committee, a move that — while he said he understands it — Sanders won’t be making himself.
“I understand where she’s coming from,” Sanders said. “I will not have a super PAC … We announced [the campaign] a week a half and ago and since that time, we have had 200,000 people go to BernieSanders.com to sign up for the campaign. We’ve had close to 90,000 contributions. You know what the average contribution was? It’s about $43. Forty-three bucks from middle class, working families.
“I don’t think we’re going to outspend Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush or anybody else,” he said, ”but I think we are going to raise the kind of money we need to run a strong, winning campaign.”
And so far, Sanders has been raising that money. In just his first day in the race, he pulled in $1.5 million in campaign contributions — more than any Republican on any single day. If Sanders can continue to pull in this level of grassroots support, he might actually have a shot at shaking up the billionaire-bought political system.
Watch Sen. Sanders interview from Face the Nation.
