Just Hours Before Wisconsin Victory, Sanders Said Things Were Looking Good

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday night, and while he didn’t quite predict it, he said in a midday Tuesday interview that things were looking encouraging.

The Sanders campaign offered WPR an interview with the candidate just as he was leaving the Badger State on his way to a rally in Wyoming. Sanders said that early reports of higher than typical April voter turnout in Wisconsin were a good sign for his candidacy.

“Because what we have found in past elections is that when voter turnout is high, we do well,” he said. “When voter turnout is low, we don’t do so well.”

The higher turnout followed several Sanders campaign appearances in Wisconsin that drew thousands of people. The candidate said many people came to see him because he was essentially doing something unusual in contemporary politics.

“We’re telling the truth, and the truth is this country has many serious problems,” he said.

Problems, Sanders said, such as a corrupt campaign finance system, a broken criminal justice system and a failure to guarantee health care and paid family leave.

On Monday, former President Bill Clinton told a Milwaukee audience that his wife and Sanders’ Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, was endorsed by several organizations that seek positive change. Sanders said that the former secretary of state and U.S. senator’s financial support should leave voters skeptical.

“If you think that somebody can be agent of change whose Super PAC receives $15 million from Wall Street, who gives speeches to Wall Street for $250,000 a speech, who takes money from the drug companies and other powerful special interests, that’s fine. I kind of don’t think that that is the way we bring about change in America,” Sanders said.

Former President Clinton also said Monday that the Dodd-Frank legislation passed several years ago limits Wall Street’s abuses, but Sanders said that’s not the case anymore.

“Laws always work well until they don’t. And people say maybe we shouldn’t have gone in this direction,” he said.

Sanders said when Bill Clinton was president, Wall Street won several deregulation initiatives that Sanders said he fought as a congressman.

Though Sanders won the vote in Wisconsin Tuesday by a wide margin, the way that Democrats allocate convention delegates in the state means Sanders only won a small majority of those, limiting Sanders efforts to cut into Hillary Clinton’s large lead in delegates. Sanders said it has still been worthwhile to have spent a lot of time in Wisconsin. He said a victory in Wisconsin will help his campaign going forward.

“(It) will take us into New York State, which has a great many delegates, with a lot of momentum. And if we can in New York and win by a decent margin, we’re going to accumulate the kind of delegates and momentum that we need to carry us to victory,” he said.

Prior to the New York primary, Sanders is expected to win a Democratic caucus this Saturday in Wyoming.