re: #31 Ming5000

Rachel Maddow’s interview (transcription ) with Bernie is up on RawStory.

Compare Rachel’s questions and the Bernie’s answers to those of the Rachel/HRC interviews of yesterday.

One area of discussion; supporting down ticket:

It really deserves to be quoted in full:

MADDOW: — no matter what lese happens.

I have to ask, though, if you have thought about whether or not you will, at some point, turn your fundraising ability toward helping the Democratic Party more broadly, to helping their campaign committees for the House and the Senate and for other — for other elections?

SANDERS: Well, right now, Rachel, as you are more than aware, our job is to — what I’m trying to do is to win the Democratic nomination. And I’ll tell you something, I never in a million years, Rachel, would have believed that we could have, uh, received over six million individual campaign contributions averaging 27 bucks apiece, a very different way of raising money than Secretary Clinton has pursued.

So right now, we are enormously appreciative. You’re right, without that type of support, we would not be where we are right now. We would not be able to continue this campaign to the Democratic convention. So I am just blown away and very appreciative of all of the kind of support that we have gotten from grassroots America.

MADDOW: Well, obviously your priority is the nomination, but I mean you raised Secretary Clinton there. She has been fundraising both for the nomination and for the Democratic Party. At some point, do you think — do you foresee a time during this campaign when you’ll start doing that?

SANDERS: Well, we’ll see. And, I mean right now, again, our focus is on winning the nomination. Secretary Clinton has access, uh, to kinds of money, uh, that we don’t, that we’re not even interested in. So let’s take it one step at a time. And the step that we’re in right now is to win the Democratic nomination.

This really is Sanders in a nutshell, first refusing to answer the question by falling back on his “Hey, we’ve raised millions in small amounts, ain’t we just special!” shtick, and then when asked the question again just shrugging his shoulders in a noncommittal fashion. But making sure to imply twice that Hillary is somehow raising her funds in a less than moral fashion, as opposed to his “purer than thou” approach.