A national policy director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 campaign pushed back against concerns about the feasibility of the Vermont senator’s plan to combat corporate greed.
“You may call it radical but I think it’s actually in direct proportion with the corporate greed that we’re seeing today,” Josh Orton said Monday in an appearance on Hill.TV’s “Rising.”
Orton added that Sanders’s proposal provides a complete “autopsy” of all the ways in which corporations and special interest groups have taken hold in Washington.
“What we see here is a complete autopsy of all the ways that corporations through legislation, through taxes, through buying out the legislative process and the political process have really taken over all of the levers of power and pulled every single one of them to make themselves more powerful,” he told Hill.TV.
Orton’s comments come after Sanders said in a recent interview with ABC’s Jon Karl that the key difference between him and other top Democratic contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is that she supports capitalism, marking his most stark contrast with his fellow progressive rival yet.
“There are differences between Elizabeth and myself,” Sanders said on Saturday, referring to Warren. “Elizabeth, I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I’m not.”
Warren has continued to climb in the Democratic primary polls.
The RealClearPolitics polling index shows Warren leading Sanders by an average of 11 points with 26 percent support compared to Sander’s 15 percent support.
In recent weeks, Warren has also outpaced former Vice President Joe Biden in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Both Warren and Sanders are poised to take the debate stage Tuesday night for the fourth Democratic presidential debate in Ohio. Both candidates have largely avoided direct attacks on one another and even appeared to team up in the last debate to defend their progressive policies.
— Tess Bonn
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