Eppsaddison, president and executive director of the center for popular democracy. Good sunday morning. Thank you for being with us. Guest thank you for having me. Host tell us about your organization. Guest it is a National Network of grassroots political organizations. We are in 34 states. There are a lot of things our Community Works on. Fast food workers going on strike for better wages and the right to form a union, immigrants not just working to transform our broken immigration system but who are building the culture and fabric of their communities, black workers and black folks who have been struggling economically in this country who are seeking the opportunity to thrive and not just survive. Withe a network of people great imagination who believe that america can be a place where all of us have what we need, not just a select few. Guest we will talk call it host we will talk politics in a moment. This is from the Washington Post with regards to the dominant store in our country, the coronavirus issue. It is here. Now what . How do you answer that . My ownfirst, let me say kids, i have two kids in Los Angeles Public schools. Both will be out of School Starting monday. I know what a transition this will be for parents across the country who are trying to figure out childcare while also figuring out what they are going to do about work. Notof us have our minds just frontline workers in health care and first responders, which we are all concerned about, but lowwage workers, retail workers, homeless population, folks who are incarcerated in our Detention Centers. These are incredibly vulnerable population. We are concerned about them. We are seeing a difference in how President Trump and the democratic president ial candidates would handle this crisis moving forward. Host there is a debate between senator sanders and joe biden. Guest i expect finally to be able to get into policy issues. While there was a lot brought up in previous debates, the thing about this debate in particular is people are looking to hear what are those clear distinctions . What are the differences in the Health Care Policy . How would folks respond in moments of National Crisis . Issues toso many core democratic voters that we have not gone into, most particularly are we interested in going back to the status quo politics of the past that have left too many people behind . Or are we interested in believing another world is possible and investing in a candidate who is willing to fight for our community . In vermont,day senator Bernie Sanders meeting with reporters and telegraphing what he wants to ask joe biden tonight. [video clip] i look forward to the debate in arizona with my friend joe biden. Let me be frank as to the questions i will be asking. Do, what are you going to when 500,000 people go bankrupt in our country because of medically related debt . What are you going to do for the working people of this country and Small Business people who are paying on average 20 of their incomes for health care . What are you going to do to end the United States of america being the only major country on earth where health care is not a human right . Veto a really going to medicare for all bill if it is passed in congress . How are you going to respond to the scientists who tell us we have seven or eight years remaining to transform our Energy System before irreparable harm takes place to this planet because of the ravages of Climate Change . Peopleme when most young need a Higher Education to make it into the middle class, what are you going to do to make sure all of our people can go to college or trade school regardless of their income . What are you going to do about the millions of people who are struggling with outrageous levels of student debt . Joe, at a time when we have more people in jail then communist china, a nation four times our size, what are you going to do to end mass incarceration in a racist criminal Justice System . Host that is from senator Bernie Sanders caret Jennifer Eppsaddison, your response to what he is going to tell joe biden tonight or ask him . Guest it is hard not to be moved by that vision. A lot of people talk about Bernie Sanderss platform as being radical or too far left of the reality is his platform is bringing the Democratic Party home. We are seeing that with the support of the issues. 20 out of 20 primaries, voters have been asked about whether they would support a single payer Government Run Health Care plan over private insurance. 20 out of 20 primaries, voters have said yes. We have seen bernie bring this idea to fox news town halls and the audience erupting in cheers at the idea that everybody would have universal health care. I need people not to be confused here. My partner has multiple sclerosis. I depend on my health insurance. I have had the benefit of private insurance my entire life. I will tell you that nobody likes their insurance company. They like their doctors. They like access that they have. It is not their insurance company. We want to hammer home the message that it is not radical to provide health care. Most of the industrialized world does it. It is not radical to say we should not have more of our block citizens in prison and Detention Centers then were enslaved during slavery. It is not radical to say we can no longer put the process of fossil fuel profits of fossil fuel industries over the health and vitality of our planet and people. These are core Democratic Values and it is time we had a candidate who is not beholden to special interests among who is not paid for by billionaires and big corporations, but who has run a campaign that has been funded by grassroots donations to bring the struggling communities of this country together to amplify our voices for change. This is a survey from the university of north florida. The headline, joe biden has a 44 point lead over senator Bernie Sanders. We indicated these are different days. No large rallies. They are doing a town halls. How do senator sanders overcome a lead in the polls . Guest we want to win a primary and we are going to do everything we can to convince voters that Bernie Sanders is the right candidate to lead the democratic ticket. It is important for us to understand that, regardless of who the eventual nominee is, the Democratic Party is made of a Diverse Coalition that the progressive wing of this party 40 to 53 where from of primary voters and general election voters needed to defeat donald trump. I do not think either candidate is going to emerge from this primary with a mandate. What they are going to do these emerge from this with a governing coalition that will have to make concessions to moderate wing of the party and the progressive wing of the party. If joe biden tries to run a dimmer general Election Campaign that ignores the will of so many democratic voters, that ignores the cries of new voters coming into this system because they hope to create change, that is a losing strategy. We want to make clear that, regardless of who our general election candidate is, to defeat trump we need young voters to vote at record numbers. We need black and latino voters. We need women to come back to the party as well. That is the thing people have to understand. This is a governing coalition. Nominee, he is the is going to need to work with progressives to govern together. It will not be a status quo agenda that is going to move that forward. Host from a viewer in chicago, sending a text message, 202 while03 is the number, biden is ahead, he needs a great candidate for Vice President , either Michelle Obama or caroline kennedy, to capture the electoral college. Joe biden orink Bernie Sanders should consider. Wast our organization proud to sign on with many Women Leaders across this country who have stepped up to say we must have a woman, most likely a woman of caller, in that Vice President ial slot. We are in support of that. See hisould like to balance on the ticket. It would be great to have somebody rooted in the moderate wing of the party. If there is a moderate as the standardbearer, what we need to see is a progressive woman of caller who can carry the hopes and dreams and aspirations to transform this country into the general election. Stacey abrams, for example comes to mind. Barbara lee. There are a number of incredible progressive women of caller who would make excellent Vice President ial choices. The one thing i want to be clear of is one risk we face in the general election is President Trump running to the left of joe biden on criminal justice reform. We have pressed the Vice President on this issue many the 1994the author of crime bill and have yet to get a satisfactory response that he fully understands the impact mass incarceration has had, particularly on black communities. If the Vice President wins the nomination and nominates a , asecutor, a Police Officer there Vice President of candidates, that will allow trump to run to the left of him, particularly in black communities that have been devastated by mass incarceration. For all ofig danger us. Host does that rule out senator Kamala Harris . Guest if joe biden is the nominee, i do believe it rules out senator harris, amy klobuchar, and val demings. But we cannot do donald trump has canvassers not anymore because we have pulled canvassers, but he is sending out Text Messages to black voters trying to create wedges between immigrants and black voters. He has folks engaging black communities. He has opened 15 offices in black communities. One of his primary reasons is his passage of criminal justice reform. We cannot have a democratic ticket that is to the right of President Trump on the sick freedom and security of black and brown communities. Go to perry from fort lauderdale, florida. You are calling on the joe biden line. Caller i am a supporter of joe biden. I have a question for this woman. Bernie sanders talked about a lot of stuff. You never answer the main question. Other than the 15 an hour, Bernie Sanders cannot pass anything that he is promising. Nothing. If you were the nominee, black people will not vote for him. Seniors will not vote for him. Everybody turned on super to vote for biden because they know he is the best person for the job. Berniew, i am mad at because he is doing this to become the first jewish president. Jennifer. Name is thank you for your comments. A real say there is ideological debate happening in the party. Are winning the debate around the issue and losing the debate around electability largely because we keep being told by folks that a world in which all the people we care about our taking care of, a world where people are not making impossible choices between paying for insulin and paying their light bill, that a world where folks can go out there and work and not be hampered by hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, that that kind of world is not possible. What i think senator sanders and those of us in the movement are here to say is another world is possible. We have to hold corporations accountable. We have to make a decision to say it is on acceptable to continue to allow people to make massive profits off of the painandsuffering of our communities. Care are areas like health where as long as you allow people to profit off of peoples most trying times, we will never get the care we need. I hear folks saying there are vested interests that oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, there are a lot of vested interests in preventing senator sanders from winning the nomination. Those folks coalesced around each other before super tuesday to launch a series of attacks. What our movement wants to do is make sure every person in this country has the freedom to thrive. That is what we have to come back to as our message. That is a message that will resonate and help us hold the house and take back the senate. My firstars, since election voting, when al gore was our nominee, we have been told we have to nominate a moderate, a neoliberal, in order to win the nomination. In 20 years, we have only won two of those elections. It was with president barack obama, who was running on things like singlepayer health care. I believe voters will respond and democratic voters will vote for whoever the nominee is. What im asking is to consider not just electing someone who we think will defeat trump. I think both candidates can do that. Lets elect somebody willing to build the country of our dreams with us. Lets go to brenda. Caller good morning. Because he is a who waseddy roosevelt, a republican but saw the need to change. Change the way the american structure was for big business. We have the problem that trickles down to everybody. One thing i want to comment is the reporters on tv and Everything Else and trump, everybody is so close together they might as well reach across and kiss each other. A six foott doing rule to protect themselves when they go home to their families. Host thank you. Guest i was in detroit knocking doors and i posted about it on my social media. I took pictures. I did the last two walks of my route and every other house was boarded up, was raised, was falling apart. Entire neighborhoods that have been hauled out. People have to understand that donald trump did not create all of the pain and misery happening in our communities. Our communities were struggling long before trump and trumpism emerged. We have to take on the White Supremacy of this administration. We need to make sure we stop these massive corporate giveaways and tax cuts. We need to do more than that for the 500,000 people sleeping on our streets every night. We have to do more than defeat trump for the 89 Million People who are underinsured or uninsured. We have to do more than just defeat donald trump if we expect black people to expect more and have more in this country than simply not being told by the police. That is not freedom for our communities. That is the message of senator sanders. It is not just a return to the status quo that lets 40 million americans struggling in poverty. It is about transforming our economy so we do not just see the economy as how well wall street is doing but we see it as how many people can keep food on their table, how many people can keep a roof over their heads. We have to transform the way we think about energy so we do not have to make impossible choices between folks getting black lung disease in their 30s and having energy for our families. Senator sanders is the only candidate left in the race that is offering this vision of transformation. Folks can call it a revolution, but if it is that it is a revolution of care, of democracy. It is a revolution taking power away from corporate interests that extract and exploit our communities and put it back into the hands of everyday people who make this country so strong. Jennifer eppsaddison is joining us from los angeles. Glenn is next in louisiana. Caller good morning. How are you . Thank you for taking my call. Trump refusedent the World Health Organizations tests that were offered . Was it because they were not made in america . Thank you. Host thank you. Guest i think what you are highlighting is what is the Crisis Response . What we have heard from Vice President biden and senator sanders is we need to make testing widely available to people. We need to ramp up reduction of test kits. Production of test kits. What senator sanders is talking about is not just how we deal with this immediate crisis but how do we have to build scaffolding around our infant institutions. How do we transform institutions so that when the next crisis comes along we are better prepared to care for communities . That includes things like calling for a moratorium on addiction and utility shut off. In includes not just calling for extending a believe to folks now paid leave to folks right now but listening to grassroots organizations and workers who have been in campaigns to demand paid sick leave for decades. Senator sanders wants to make sure every american has paid sick leave and he wants that to be permanent. If we look forward to the treatment of this virus and crisis, senator sanders wants to make sure that not just the test is free but the vaccine, if one becomes available, is free, that any treatment and Health Care People need is free. He wants to make sure nobody will die because they are not sure if they can afford emergency room copay. That is the difference in this election and primary. You have two folks who have competent people around them but only one candidate saying we need to transform our institutions, to join the rest of the developed world in guaranteeing a universal Health Care System. We need to look at the folks in taiwan who just moved to a singlepayer system. We need to look at south korea and the way they are making testing universally available. We need to look at these systems and learn from them and quickly transform our Health Care System into one that puts people over profit. To michigan,aveled tennessee, and elsewhere talking to supporters of President Trump. The headline, in a crisis, supporters look to trump more than ever. One of the individuals they talked to is 49 years old, a Real Estate Agent calling all of this a media hoax with regards to the coronavirus. Your response. Guest it does not surprise me because President Trump himself two weeks ago at a Campaign Rally was calling the coronavirus a democratic hoax. This is very dangerous. It is one of the reasons why the best protection we have, social distancing, people are having a difficult time. We saw bars were still filled. It is because of the leadership of this administration, who has a press conference with ceos of companies, who tells people not to touch each other and then shakes all of their hands and touches the podium. It is clear we need different leadership. I believe the people Vice President biden and senator sanders will be better than President Trump at handling this crisis. What we need is to not have to act in a piecemeal way crisis by crisis. Is many families, cancer there coronavirus. For many families, diabetes is there coronavirus. For many families, having a chronic illness like multiple sclerosis, which my partner has, is there coronavirus. We need a social safety net all the time, not just when there is a Global Pandemic but for care and Community Members to be able to care for their families when they are sick and not go bankrupt similar because they are human and get sick. That is the type of system we need. I think we can make that case as more and more people will be touched by this virus. Moreve seen folks are much open to a singlepayer system, having just spent a week under the effects of this Global Pandemic, then they were previous. That is good for all of us who believe health care is a human right. Host market rights, american progressives have to learn the lesson that u. K. Progressives just learned, that being popular with activists does not necessarily transfer into votes. I know u. S. Voters are a disappointment for bernie fans right now, but most folks are moderate. Club for growth, taking aim at senator Bernie Sanders. [video clip] in 2016 the dnc rigged it. 2020, deja vu. He will do anything to stop bernie. The media machine hyping losers. They say bernie cannot win. 600 million could not get it done. Now the billionaires are propping up joe biden because they own him. Do not let them steal it and if they do, remember in november. Growth,at from club for a supporter of President Trump. Club for growth is a supporter of President Trump. Lets get back to your calls. Von in missouri, good morning. Caller good morning. Host good morning. Caller i support bernie because ofee him finishing the job fdr and Martin Luther kings job. He is interested in trying to fix things for the people. Also, we need 15 an hour and we need our manufacturing back. Health care costs, they keep talking about how much is that . 6 trillion a year times 10 years. 60 trillion. Can you imagine . I think that the republicans are going to say what are we going to do . What are we trying to do . We want to trade one crook for another. They believe that biden is a crook. Pointid we get to the where we accept mediocrity . I am black and all of my black people out there, when did we accept mediocrity . We cant do it so lets not even try. Thank you, sir. Host thank you, von. Guest while. Wow. That was so powerful. I want to connect with you may be offline as well. I appreciate what you brought in about our black social movement tradition. It is true that during the 1964 march for jobs and freedom, Martin Luther king jr. Called for, at the time, a two dollar per hour living wage. Wage, that would be over 17 per hour. We are stepping into black freedom fighters. Martin luther king called for universal health care. If you look at the black panthers 10 point plan, it was routed around the idea of building communities, of ensuring access to food, of ensuring access to housing and of selfdetermination. These are absolutely the principles that are carried for fourth in our vision of this country. Our families and communities deserve more. We have the top 1 of 1 , who are hoarding so much wealth in this country and getting tax cut after tax cut by this administration. 1. 5 trillion in economic stimulus, just introduced. Nation, whenas a big businesses and corporations are losing profits are when the or when the stock market is take action. Where is that Decisive Action for the homeless . Where is that for the students were burdened by millions of dollars of student debt that we are carrying across the country . Peoples that action for who cannot afford their insulin and are rationing their medication, often Times Leading to death. We can have that type of Decisive Action. We just need politicians, as the previous caller said, who are not bought and paid for and are independent of them and are rooted in providing justice to our communities. Virginia, sterling, michael, supporter of joe biden. You are on the air. Caller thank you. I just wanted to share with the cspan community that i believe that joe biden has the right competent combination of compassion and Institutional Knowledge to help our country begin the healing process, after the amazing damage that has been done over the last four years. Also, this is weird. I wanted to do a shout out to von. I am from warrensburg. I have been living in virginia for the last 20 years. Good job. Host michael, thank you. Ats hear from scott, a senator sanders supported. Caller jennifer is phenomenal. I could not vote for joe biden if bernie unless Bernie Sanders were the vp candidate or a position were created in the government specifically for bernie and joe biden committed to that where he would clap all tackle Climate Change and medicare for all on behalf of the biden and ministration. Otherwise, it is perpetuation the same systemic problems. We cannot have moderates. We cannot have incrementalism when we are dealing with Climate Change. We have already wasted five decades. We cannot keep continuing to procrastinate, as i am sure Vice President biden would do. Covid19s we have with is probably the most compelling argument for medicare for all and paid family leave. We have 50 percent of our families living paychecktopaycheck and we still do not have paid sick leave in this country. Therefore, people who are sick continue to go to work, potentially passing on this virus to others. And people who cant afford medical care for just going to the doctor when they are sick, again, are going to be potential carriers of covid19. They are not going to be tested. They will not be treated or potentially quarantined and so on. Again, jennifer, i will defer to you. Joe biden will not get my vote. I will vote for the Green Party Candidate again. We need progressives. We cannot have incrementalism. We need progressive approaches such as the Green New Deal and medicare for all to correct these systemic problems. Host thank you for the call. Jennifer, your response. Guest i think he is bringing up what a lot of folks are feeling. With the core democratic base, joe biden feels like the safe choice. I think people are making that choice because we feel so insecure under the trump administration. In a general election, you have much more than just the core democratic base. The reality is that there are tons tens of millions of people who will vote on the democratic lines who are not cardcarrying members of the democrat party. That includes independence, progressives, green party members. That includes people who are voting for the very first time. We need to actually construct a general election ticket that can speak to all of those communities. Bernie sanders has the most diverse and multiracial correlation in this coalition in this race. Black voters have a voice in his campaign and i think we are thinking a lot about that. At the end of the day, when we are looking forward to the general election, i believe that senator sanders is the strongest candidate to take on trump. I hear this demand. What the demand is about is about government. It is about the idea that as a multiracial and multiclassed, we need to be able to negotiate with each other about what our policies are going to be. I can tell you that Bernie Sanders will likely deliver the majority of his face as he did in 2016. More Bernie Sanders primary secretaryed for clintonthan secretary voters did for barack obama. Whether we will door knock and send Text Messages or during our hard earned money for a biden ticket, that remains to be seen. Bidenupon Vice President to bring the progressive wing of the party into governance with him. But, also to select a Vice President ial candidate who can really speak to progressives. That have progressive bona fides. I am extremely concerned that the only men he has brought up as of yet are people who are prosecutors. People who are former sheriffs. I think that is a losing ticket todonald trump gets to run the lesser of Bernie Sanders on criminal justice reform. Host our guest is Jennifer Epps addison. Joining us from los our first prize goes to this 10th grader. His winning documentary is titled overreach from the oval office. Nobody wants a dictatorship. Power,ing and executive we can make sure that washington remains free among the powers of government. The first prize high school ners are these 11 gutters 11th graders. Titledocumentary is 200,000, about the opioid crisis. They over prescribe opioids. As a result, oklahomans became addicted. The first prize High School West coast to these 10th graders. From long beach polytechnic high school. There documentary is titled vision 2020. The more you get money from certain kinds of sources, the more you are beholden to those sources. You want to be free to make decisions based on what you think is the best interests. Ourt is time to announce 5,000 grant prizewinner. Graders frome 11th san jose, california. They won the top prize for their top documentary. It was about technology and data processing. A collectede Analytic Data to influence the election. We are not faced with music piracy. We are faced with personal information parsing. Congratulations to our grand prizewinner. None of us has taken formal Video Production classes. Coldis one of the top stem schools in the country and everyone was thinking of working for tech companies. We thought bringing a voice to the concerns of many was not just about data breaches. We definitely helped reach silicon valley. Documentary competition has awarded more than 1 million in total prizes since 2004. The top winning documentaries will air on cspan. Former british Prime Minister rootblair assesses the arise of populism in the u. K. And the u. S. In the future of progressive politics at George Washington university