The hardest thing to explain to a person that has lived in comfort and abundance their entire life is the utter agony and worry that takes over your existence when poverty is all you’ve ever known. 

Trying to explain the importance of healthcare as a right would seem to be an understandable endeavor, yet the amount of people I’ve run into myself seeking to undermine this is abhorrent. You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unless you get sick and die. 

The reason? You lived in a country that didn’t offer Medicare for all you couldn’t afford price gouging for-profit insurance.   

You have the right to the American dream, unless your poor. If you’re poor, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, which you don’t have, because again, you’re poor. Just find a way to keep yourself healthy and hope to God you hit the lottery. 

There’s not one person coming to help you if you’re living in poverty, look inward at your moral failing, they say. Did you work hard enough? Or were you that lazy poor person, who just takes advantage of the system? 

This is what you’ll hear, all across America when describing those in poverty. Those lazy workers, in many cases working two jobs, hungering for a candidate who hears their cry, “The system is broken”! 

That candidate was Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont. Earlier this week, he conceded the nomination to Joe Biden, the former Vice president to Barack Obama for two terms. Yes, Joe reminisces about the days of drone striking the hell out of the Middle East. In fact, the Obama administration tallied 10 times the drone strikes of George W. Bush.  

Yes, Joe reminisces about that same administration, breaking the record for deportations during those 8 years. It’s as if Joe forgot about the two of them, pushing the TPP agreement that outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs while stagnating wages. And if you don’t take a look back a few years, you might forget, Obama expanding NSA spying and bailing out Wall Street after the fiasco they put the country through that crashed our economy.   

I’m not going to sit back and get in line to support a candidate who is refusing to take ownership of his prior failings. I will not vote for a candidate who will continue the status quo of offensive and illegal regime change wars, and a man who has stated he would veto Medicare for all if it passed his desk.  

No, we won’t sit there and vote for an establishment neoliberal corrupt shill as our nominee. Sanders had a movement of grassroots support, breaking donation records left and right. People from all different backgrounds coming together to get behind a candidate who promised necessary change, while addressing the very issues the working class faced.  

Joe Biden, on the other hand, was backed by multiple Super Pac’s, and throughout the entire campaign struggled to get support from anyone under the age of 40. 

You may say, policy aside, Biden has what it takes to beat Trump. You’d be wrong and honestly, would be foolish. Trump won because voters thought he spoke to them. Let’s not forget, Trump railed against TPP, pounded the desk about keeping jobs here in America and ran as an outsider to politicians who play the game of corruption and foul play.  

Yes, Trump was a massive hypocrite. Trump was the swamp he claimed he wanted to drain. Still, Trump supporters believe in him.

How many Democrats believe in Joe? What has he given us to believe in? 

The system is broken. A majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. We have over 30 million Americans uninsured, wages have stagnated for 50 years while at the same time CEO salaries have increased 1000 percent since the 70’s. 

Income and wealth inequality is out of hand and Biden’s answer to all these struggles of everyday Americans is, “nothing will fundamentally change.” 

The truth is Joe doesn’t care. He’s a player in the game of politics and always has been. When he’s not trying to cut social security over the last 30 years, he’s been taking money from the healthcare industry as he bids for the presidency.  

The truth is, boomers cost us a true progressive. Boomers feared change no matter how necessary and needed it may be. Boomers will keep booming, as the younger generations struggle with soaring tuition costs, stagnate wages, higher healthcare costs and an economy with fewer opportunities then times past.  

The truth is, fighting for the working class wasn’t a saying Bernie put on a t-shirt, it wasn’t even a slogan used to win elections. He just looked at our broken system and decided to do something about it. Something we all can do.