Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) more progressive candidates will win in the 2018 midterm elections as a result of the Trump presidency.

Sanders said, “I think that they are wrong, and I think they are misreading where the American people are at. Many of the issues that I campaigned on two years ago, issues like Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage and the 15 bucks an hour and taking on the pharmaceutical industry, making public colleges and universities tuition-free, legalizing marijuana. A few years ago those were seen as radical, fringy ideas. You know what in every instance those ideas are now supported by the American people, by the majority of the American people overwhelming the percentage of Democrats.”

He continued, “So what I think that candidates all over the country are now beginning to understand is that it is more important to reach out to the people in your community, working people and the middle class and lower-income people than rather than just worry about what wealthy campaign contributors want you to say. I think candidates run on a progressive agenda which demands that we take on the billionaire class that we end the movement to an oligarchy in the country that we fight for the rights of working people, that’s not only good public policy, and that’s good politics and I think many of those candidates will win.”

He added, “We have seen this now for the last year, last year and a half since Trump has been elected we have seen progressive candidates and seen voter turnout go up because the people in their communities know that it’s time to stand up and fight.”

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