Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said there is “no question” he can beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president.
In an interview with Fusion and Univision airing Sunday, Sanders was confident he had what it took to win the White House.
{mosads}“We’re electable … we can win this thing,” he said. “One-on-one against the Republican candidates, we can win.”
Sanders, who has climbed in the polls but has yet to overtake Clinton in the Democratic primary, argued that the more he delivers his liberal agenda — which hammers on income inequality and calls for a much stronger set of government policies to aid the public — the stronger his campaign gets.
“Every day we are doing better and better. We started off with a disadvantage, not a whole lot of people knew who I was. But every day I think there are more people who know who I am and what our program is,” he said. “As people hear that, they’re saying: Yeah, that’s the kind of program we need.”
He also argued that by staking out his positions, he is forcing Clinton and others to “respond to reality.” Sanders recently announced support for a national $15 minimum wage, and he said he believed Clinton was “moving in that direction.”
He also defended a recent remark that he would oppose simply opening the borders with Mexico, instead calling for a comprehensive immigration reform solution.
“Do I believe, does any member of Congress believe, does any presidential candidate believe, that you simply open the borders, and you have millions of people who are unskilled coming into this country. Does anybody believe that?” he said.
He noted that the unemployment rate among Hispanic and black youth is exceptionally high, so he would oppose the idea of bringing in millions of unskilled immigrant workers. At the same time, he noted that a large part of the nation’s agriculture and other industries currently rely on immigrant labor, legal and not.
“The job right now, what our function is, is to provide legal status for undocumented workers as quickly as we can and move toward a path toward citizenship,” he said. “That is what we have to do.”
In that same interview, Sanders admitted to smoking marijuana as a youth, saying he did it “a couple of times.”
He also argued it didn’t really matter, saying there were “significant numbers of people” who have tried the drug.
“Didn’t do me much good. I ended up coughing a lot,” he said.
He added he would look at legalizing marijuana if elected president, and criticized drug laws that have imprisoned non-violent offenders.