Ben Jealous: ‘Americans are suffering under the weight of half-measures’ - a podcast by POLITICO

Ben Jealous is a venture capitalist. Opponents call him a socialist. He
says that’s the cost of wanting “people to be treated in a way that’s
just.”

Ben Jealous campaigned all over the country for Bernie Sanders, but he
has a platinum American Express card in his wallet. He got his first
campaign experience as a 14-year-old volunteer for Jesse Jackson in
1988, but the presidential candidate from that year he has since
reconsidered is Steve Forbes, whose ideas about transforming schools
into vocational training Jealous cites as a model for his own approach
to education reform. He may be the lone liberal Democrat running this
year who says he doesn’t want anything to do with socialism, but is for
“Medicare for all” and free college tuition. Jealous is the first major
player to come directly off Sanders’ 2016 campaign and have done this
well. He’s the first leader of a civil rights organization—from
2008-2013, he was president of the NAACP—to ever be even this close to
winning a statewide office. He’s a test case to see if someone with his
kind of politics can win something more than a primary, even in a
heavily Democratic state. But first, he’ll have to get past Republicans
who insist that he’s a socialist—and he’ll have to overcome the clear
anger that attack stirs up in him, despite his public statements that he
takes their label as a badge of honor. “It’s unfortunate if we get to a
place where we believe that you have to be a socialist to simply want
people to be treated in a way that’s just. I would not like to live in
that country,” Jealous says.

POLITICO's Off Message podcast is hosted by Isaac Dovere and is part of
the Panoply network. Produced by Zack Stanton. Executive Producer is
Dave Shaw. Theme music by Podington Bear.

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