Sanders says he learned not to try to compromise with Republicans

Sanders told the board that he would not tack to the center if he wins the Democratic nomination because “good policy is good politics.” Sanders told the board that he would not tack to the center if he wins the Democratic nomination because “good policy is good politics.” Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Sanders says he learned not to try to compromise with Republicans 1 / 12 Back to Gallery

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says he learned from the mistakes President Obama made in his first term — they taught him that if he wins the White House, he won’t be able to compromise with Republicans in Congress.

“I think a keen mistake that the president made is that he refused to recognize that reality — that these guys (Republicans) were never serious about compromise,” the presidential candidate said in a meeting with The Chronicle’s editorial board Tuesday.

“He kept extending an olive branch, and he kept getting his hand slapped,” Sanders said. “I do not believe that right-wing Republicans are prepared to work with a progressive president.”

The way to break that logjam, he said, is for people who support Sanders’ “political revolution” to contact their members of Congress directly.

Senator Sanders Posted by San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Sanders was in San Francisco as part of a swing through Northern California. He held rallies Monday night in Sacramento and Tuesday morning in Stockton. He stopped by his campaign office in Oakland on Tuesday afternoon before visiting The Chronicle. He then attended a rally in Salem, Ore., where he celebrated his win over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the West Virginia primary.

Unapologetically progressive, Sanders said Tuesday that he wouldn’t tack to the center if he makes it to the general election because “good policy is good politics.”

He dismissed as “distorted” an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that said his plan to offer tuition-free public college, government-backed single-payer health care and an expansion of Social Security benefits would add $19 trillion to the national debt by 2026. He said that analysis didn’t take into account other cost savings.

“Yes, we do raise taxes — rather substantially — on the wealthy. No apologies from me. That is exactly what I intend to do if elected president,” Sanders said. “When you have a nation today when the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns as much wealth as as the bottom 90 percent, yeah, we need new tax reform.”

Politically, he said he wouldn’t mimic what the presumptive GOP nominee, Donald Trump, has done in recent days: attack former President Bill Clinton for his past marital infidelities.

“I understand that Donald Trump is worried about Bill Clinton’s sex life. That’s fine. That’s his business. I’m not going there,” Sanders said. “Where I’m going is to ask why the middle class of this country is in decline.”

Sanders maintained that he could still win the nomination, even if it is mathematically impossible for him to win the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the nomination outright. Instead, Sanders is focusing on attracting the 719 superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials who are not bound to vote for the candidate that won their home state. However, even after winning Tuesday’s West Virginia primary and Nebraska caucus, Clinton still led 1,715 to 1,428 in pledged delegates and 523 to 39 superdelegates.

But Sanders is forging on to the Democratic National Convention in July in Philadelphia, saying he would be the better candidate to take on Trump. He pointed to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll on Tuesday showing Clinton and Trump in a dead heat in the key swing states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, while Sanders beats Trump in all three. Since 1960, nobody has won the presidency without taking two of those three states.

Here are a few other highlights from Sanders’ wide-ranging interview Tuesday:

On his free college tuition plan: Sanders dismissed a nonpartisan Brookings Institution analysis of his college plan that concluded wealthy families would benefit disproportionately. The Clinton campaign has distilled the analysis into an attack narrative that federal money shouldn’t subsidize college for billionaires like the Trump family.

He reiterated that free tuition meant free tuition for everybody.

“Trust me, Donald Trump and his family will be paying a hell of a lot more in taxes if I’m elected president than they are now, and some of that money would go into education,” he said.

He’s ready to debate Clinton in California: Sanders recalled the Clinton campaign promise back in March to debate him in California. On Tuesday, her staff would not comment on a possible debate.

Backing California ballot measures: Sanders waded into California politics Tuesday, endorsing the California Drug Price Relief Act, a November ballot measure that would prohibit state agencies from paying more for a medicine than what the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs pays for the same drug.

“It’s a great idea,” Sanders said, “that if you do it here will spread around the country.”

Still riding the fence on Apple vs FBI : Sanders acknowledged that he hasn’t definitively staked out a position on whether federal authorities were correct in trying to force Apple to unlock the encryption code of the phone belonging to the person responsible for the San Bernardino terrorist attacks.

“I think the answer is to be on both sides,” he said. “It is to do everything we can to protect civil liberties. On the other hand, I believe we have to be vigorous in protecting the American people from a terrorist attack.

He’s ready for Republican red-baiting: Sanders brushed off the speculation that his campaign may be polling well because, in part, it has fielded very few negative TV ads during the largely policy-focused battle he has waged with Clinton. But he fully expects Republicans to spend “hundreds of millions” of dollars attacking him should he be the nominee.

He said he would defend himself against attacks that he is a “democratic socialist” — “because that’s what I am.”

He said he will point to other democratic socialist countries that offer benefits like he is proposing — free college, single-payer health care — that many Americans support. And he is also ready to defend himself from conservatives who try to attack him for spending his honeymoon in the Soviet Union.

“They can demagogue my honeymoon in the Soviet Union. Do you remember that, Jane?” Sanders said, asking his wife, who was sitting nearby. “We went with 10 other people. That was our romantic honeymoon — to establish a sister city to calm down the tensions and create a more peaceful relationship with the United States. Yeah, I plead guilty to trying to do that.”

Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli

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Video: To watch Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ interview with The Chronicle’s editorial board, go to: www.facebook.com/sanfranciscochronicle.