In a surprising twist of this election, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has emerged as a force to be reckoned with. And suddenly, after months of steering Sanders away from the nomination, pundits now speculate if Sanders would have beaten Donald Trump, had he been the Democratic nominee.
Just don't ask Sanders himself. Case in point: CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who was brutally rebuffed by the former Democratic candidate just two days after the election.
"It never crossed your mind that you might have done better against [Trump]; you might have actually won if you had been the Democratic nominee?" Blitzer asked Sanders in a much anticipated interview.
"What good does it do now?" Sanders shot back.
"You know, the election is over and you know I did my best to see that Hillary Clinton get elected. I was out in some 12 states during the last week with eight, I think, rallies so the election is over, we've got to look to the future."
Sanders insists that it's not just about holding Trump accountable for his racism, sexism and bigotry, but the hope he's given to much of the same demographic Sanders spoke to in the primaries.
"What we have got to demand, I think, is that Mr. Trump keep the promises that he's made to working families," Sanders told Wolf Blitzer.
"You'll remember, Wolf, he talked about how he was going to be a champion of working families," Sanders continued. "Well, I hope he will raise the minimum wage, so that people who are working for nine to ten bucks an hour get the kind of raise they're entitled to, I hope people do pay equity for women... I hope he'll rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and I look forward to working with him if he chooses the to do that."
Sanders promised the day after Donald Trump was elected that he would absolutely work with him under the new administration. But that doesn't mean he'll stop railing against billionaires, like Trump.
"I hope you know he told the American people, Wolf, that he didn't have to pay any taxes. He is a multi-billionaire, he doesn't have to pay a nickel in federal taxes, because he knows how corrupt the tax system is. Well, if he knows how well that how corrupt that system is, I hope very much that he will work with progressives to create a tax system which, in fact, asks billionaires and multinational corporations to start paying their fair share," Sanders said.
Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her @alexpreditor.
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