- Opinion
- 01 Dec 16
Bernie Sanders has confessed that he's left wondering "what if" if it was him instead of Hillary Clinton who ran against Donald Trump.
Sanders had overwhelmingly won the youth support and received a very impressive 13 million votes during primary season, before being defeated by Hillary Clinton.
But in a new interview, Sanders has pointed out that the he had a strong lead ahead of Donald Trump in the polls before he lost out to Hilary Clinton as the preferred Democratic Party's candidate.
Asked if he could’ve have won the presidential race, Sanders says that he had "very, very hot" support amongst young voters and working-class voters, which he feels could've helped get him elected to the White House.
"The argument is that polls before had me ahead of him. More recent polls have me ahead of him, too," he says.
"But people who disagree with that analysis would say, ‘Oh, yeah, that's before three months with hundreds of millions of dollars in [negative] advertising. That might have had some impact on the race.’
“So, the answer is, nobody knows. I think it is fair to say that in many of the states where I competed we did very, very well among working-class people, and we did well among young people. That was the level of enthusiasm that was very, very hot.”
Sanders - who says he doesn't "want to look back" - has also described Donald Trump as “totally unpredictable” and added that the “people surrounding him are trying to get him to be more predictable”.
Asked about Donald Trump’s shock victory, Bernie Sander had this to say: “One of the reasons for Trump's success is that he campaigned on his understanding that millions of working people are in pain, are hurting, and that he, Donald Trump, is prepared to take on the Establishment.
"Now, to what degree those were just totally, absolutely hollow lies remains to be seen, but if you look at the things he said, this guy talked about ending our disastrous trade policies, something I've been fighting for 30 years.
"He talked about taking on the drug companies, taking on Wall Street, taking on the overall political establishment – ‘draining the swamp.’ We will see to what degree there was any honesty in what he was saying, whether there was any sincerity in what he was saying.”
In the interview with Rolling Stones magazine to promote his new book, Bernie Sanders confessed that he didn’t originally view Donald Trump as a real contender in the race for the White House, but concedes that the President-elect “was clearly striking a nerve and a chord that other candidates (from the Republican Party) weren’t.”
Bernie Sander’s now book, 'Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In', is out now.