Bernie Sanders celebrated New Year’s Eve with supporters chanting “Feel the Bern” while “Disco Inferno” blared on loudspeakers at the historic Renaissance Des Moines Savery Hotel in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
“Together, we have an opportunity to make 2016 a year to remember,” Sanders told twin crowds of 1,000 packed into two ballrooms a few hours before midnight. “You here in Iowa have a chance to make 2016 a year that people in the future will look back on and say. ‘Thank you, Iowa, for leading the political revolution.'”
In one month, Sanders supporters in Iowa will begin the process of nominating the Democratic Party presidential nominee. He told them they have a chance to make our government “represent all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.”
He envisioned a country where all people have health care, where we end “the grotesque level of wealth and income inequality that exists today,” where our energy system is transformed, where “we will end the disgrace of the United States having more people in jail than any other country and where we reform the criminal justice system and end institutional racism in America.
All of this can happen and Iowa is where it can begin, Sanders said. But it won’t happen, he added, “unless millions of people from Iowa and across the country stand up and say loudly and clearly enough is enough.”