So what do you see as his biggest failure?

He ran in 2008 a brilliant campaign. One of the great campaigns in American history. He rallied the American people, he gave the American people hope. He put together, to some degree, the kind of Rainbow Coalition that Jesse Jackson had talked about. But what he did after becoming president was essentially to say, “Let me thank all the people who helped get me here, but I will take it from here. Mitch McConnell and I will sit down and work out the future.” He misunderstood that Republicans had no intention to negotiate anything. He severed his ties with the grassroots that got him elected, and you can’t take on the powers that be in this country—the power of the media, the power of Wall Street, the power of corporate America, the power of the drug companies—unless there is a mobilization of millions of people to demand fundamental change. Intellectually he understands that, but for whatever reason he did not implement that.

At the same moment that Obama shut down his grassroots machine, Republicans were creating one of their own. But as we’ve seen with the Tea Party, it’s easy for that kind of operation to become a Frankenstein monster. Part of the challenge of organizing the dispossessed is that the pent-up frustrations you tap into inevitably take on a life of their own. Do you think you can tap into that energy on the left and make it productive?

That’s a good question. Let me repeat: I think it is a very, very difficult task. I don’t say, “Hey, let’s snap our fingers and create a broad-based grassroots Democratic movement involving millions and millions of people.” It is a little bit easier to say than to do.

Somebody reminded me just the other day of something that happened during the Progressive era, during the early part of the century. The Progressives signed up 60,000 actual teachers to go out into communities and educate people about the issues of the day. Certainly social media and bright young people can play an enormous role in that effort today, in a way that we have never seen before. But the goal remains to educate and to organize. You are right in saying it is not easy, and no one can predict what the end result will look like. But it is absolutely imperative that we do that. Absolutely imperative.

I can’t think of any presidential candidate, certainly in our lifetime, who has shared less about himself personally than you have. So let me ask you a personal question in the guise of politics. I know that Eugene Debs, the socialist organizer and presidential candidate, is a hero of yours. [Sanders smiles and points to a bronze plaque of Debs on the wall of his office.] When did you first come across him, and what effect did that have on you?

When I was in college, I began to read a lot about socialism, and obviously Debs was right in the middle of that. Extraordinary man—people of his period described him as a Christlike figure who would literally give you the shirt off his back. He had money in his pocket, he gave it away. He was a man who had the common touch, who was very close to the people, who had incredible courage, who stood up and opposed the hysteria of World War I, when the government wiped out the Socialist Party. He ran for president when he was in jail—did you know that?

It was in the 1920 election. He got a million votes while he was in jail.

If they counted all of his votes, which we have reason to believe they didn’t. So this is a man of great integrity and great courage, and if you read what he wrote—wow, it still reads brilliantly today. In the mid-1970s, I did a video on Debs. I did that because I spoke at the University of Vermont during that time and I asked, “Has anybody here heard of Eugene Debs?” Very few hands went up. It just struck me how sad it was that our young people have very little understanding about American history. I would have continued making films like that if I hadn’t been elected mayor of Burlington.

You’d be the Ken Burns of the left?

That’s right. Or what’s his name, who died recently. The one who wrote that book.

Howard Zinn?

Yeah. I mean, it was just invaluable stuff, to take a look at American history in a way that most history books and PBS do not.

Other than Debs, is there someone in politics past or present who you particularly admire?

Yeah, I’ll tell you. The more I read, the more I was impressed with Martin Luther King Jr. Now everybody says, “Well, of course he was a great hero and he led the civil rights movement.” But what was extraordinary about this man was his incredible courage. The establishment said to him, “Congratulations, you got a Voting Rights Act and we’ve done away with segregation in the South—my God, what an unbelievable achievement. Now you can rest on your laurels.” But his conscience said, “You know what? I talk about nonviolence every day, and yet an incredibly violent and horrible war is taking place in Vietnam. And yes, that war is being supported by the guy who signed the Voting Rights Act, but I have to come out against it.” And then he said, “I get money for my organization from wealthy white liberals, but you know what? In this country we have an awful level of income and wealth distribution, and what does it matter if I integrate a restaurant when people can’t afford to eat at that restaurant? I am going to put together a Poor People’s March on Washington, even if the media does not pay any attention to me anymore, to demand a change in national priorities so we don’t give tax breaks to the rich, we don’t fight a war in Vietnam, but we pay attention to the needs of ordinary people.” Whoa! What incredible courage. That’s not what you are going to see on television, but that is the truth about the man’s life. He knew what he was doing.

It goes back to the question I asked you earlier. King went from looking at racism as an issue unto itself, to seeing it as part of a system of economic injustice. People forget that when he was assassinated, he was in Memphis to support a strike.

Exactly. He was there to deal with the garbage workers fighting for decent wages and working conditions. Which is of no interest to the media at all. So going back briefly to your question: Do you remember what the 1963 March on Washington was called? The full name of it? It was called the March for Jobs and Freedom. And “jobs” came first.

What King understood is, what good is it if you give people the right to go to Harvard University if you can’t come up with the $40,000 a year that it takes to attend? If you are sitting in a low-income community and youth employment is 50 percent, and your dad has no job and you have no money—that’s what matters. That it is not just a black issue, it’s also a white issue. One of the horrors in America today—and this is sad, but interesting—is that the life expectancy for working-class whites, especially women, is going down precipitously. That has a lot to do with despair: bad jobs, no jobs, turning to drugs, turning to alcohol, turning to suicide. So the ability of Trump to gain support among people by running a campaign based on bigotry has to do also with people hurting economically and needing someone to blame. The two things go together.

Any final message you want to share with your supporters, who themselves feel some despair that their choice is between Trump and Clinton?

I would ask people to take a look at history and to understand that change never, ever, ever comes about in a short period of time. To take a look at the struggles of the civil rights movement, of the women’s movement, of the union movement, of the gay movement, of the environmental movement, and to understand that all of those movements took years and years and are still in play today.

“It’s not gonna happen overnight. You gotta put your shoulder to the wheel and keep going.”

In the campaign, what we did is show the American people that the ideas the establishment had thought were fringe were really not fringe—that millions of people want to transform this country. It’s not gonna happen overnight. The fight has got to continue. And if you are serious about politics, then you gotta put your shoulder to the wheel and keep going. Sometimes the choices that are in front of you are not great choices, but you do the best you can. And the day after the election, you continue the effort.

Anyone who thinks that Hillary Clinton will not be more sympathetic, more open to the ideas we have advocated than Donald Trump obviously knows very little. So the day after the election, we begin the effort of making Clinton the most progressive president that she can become. And the way we do that is by rallying millions of people.

You ask me about my personal life. I’ve got seven beautiful grandchildren, and I want them to be able to grow up in a decent country. We all have the responsibility to work as hard as we can to make that happen—understanding, as has always been the case, that there are gonna be obstacles in the way. Look up what happened to Eugene Debs. He spent his life working to build a socialist movement, only to see it destroyed. Then ten years later, FDR picked up half of what Debs was talking about.

That’s how the world works. We don’t have the luxury to give up, OK?

Thank you for taking the time to talk.

Thank you very much. [Turns to his aide.]

Well, Josh—any crises that we face? No? Well, you know where to reach me.