On Thursday evening, actress and Susan Sarandon joined Sen. Bernie Sanders in Chico and Modesto to make a final push for her longtime friend just five days before the June 7 California primary, where 475 Democratic delegates are at stake.
“California is the final moment. What happens here is so very important,” Sarandon, who flew in from New York to introduce Sanders at both rallies, told the crowd.
“As California goes, so the planet goes. We cannot take incremental change for another four years. It will be too late for social justice. It will be too late for economic justice,” Sarandon said.
“He is the only candidate that is against fracking. He is the only candidate that is not taking a cent from anyone because he belongs to us … you are the machine that is running this campaign,” she said, adding: “We don’t want any more war. We want to find a new way to solve these problems and you can say that you were on the right side of history.”
Although Sarandon did not mention it in her Chico speech, she had previously mentioned in an interview with MSNBC that it is “inevitable” that former Secretary of State Hillary “Clinton will be indicted.”
When he took the stage, Sanders plugged several of his presidential platform talking points again, including decriminalizing marijuana, addressing mental health, reforming the nation’s immigration system, and ending the Democratic Party’s rigged political system. He spoke for just under an hour.
“If we come out with the Democratic nomination, let me assure everyone here, Donald Trump will not become the President of the United States.” He added: “It is extremely difficult to keep up with the Donald, because every day he makes a statement that is more absurd than the statement he made before.”
Several polls have come out this week positioning Sanders both two percentage points ahead of Clinton and also, for the first time, leading her by one percentage point. However, his chances of winning the Democratic Party’s nomination, while possible, appear slim considering Clinton’s superdelegate lead over him. Sanders has pointed out on the campaign trail that Clinton started off with “400 superdelegates supporting her before anyone else was in the race … That is an absurd system and together we are going to change that system.”
“But if we want to move forward … We must confront that reality as it is and then change that reality,” Sanders noted. “And here’s the truth as it is: the current campaign finance system is corrupt. And it is undermining American democracy.” He blasted billionaire funding behind political campaigns, and then went on to call for the demilitarization of local police departments.
Following suit with a “snapshot” of his foreign policy platform, Sanders added “we are going to rebuild America, not Afghanistan.”
Although he has expressly stated his preference for diplomacy over war, Sanders has stated that he is prepared to take America to war in extreme circumstances, if necessary.
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz
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