Just because I am reminded every day what a tragedy it is that Bernie Sanders will not be president of the United States, I like to read back on stuff…including the time he told me, in April 2013 when I interviewed him for Playboy magazine, that he didn’t think he could raise enough money to make a serious run!!! LOL… Here was the excerpt and a big part of this wasn’t even published in the final version of the interview (for space reasons), I bolded a few spots:

PLAYBOY:                  That’s ironic.  You may have been asked this question.  This seems like the perfect time for you to run for President, why won’t you do that?  I know you’ve been asked this a million times, you’ve mentioned but the country is at a point where it’s ready to blow up.

SANDERS:                Well, the answer is that to run a serious campaign, you need to raise hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s number one and I don’t think…

PLAYBOY:                  Which you could do, you could raise, assuming–let me just back it up and say what you’ve been saying, it’s almost as if you’ve been the Paul Revere or whatever analogy you want to use, everything you’ve said and everything you talk about is coming to pass and there are people out there that are hungry for that.  I can understand if you don’t want to go through the arduous process of that, that’s a different issue but you could raise…I mean, Barack Obama proved it, you can raise money.

SANDERS:                Barack Obama went to his friends the first time around on Wall Street.

PLAYBOY:                  That’s true, but he still raised a fair amount of money in small donations.

SANDERS:                Yeah, but I’m not Barack Obama, okay?  That’s the point.  I do not take corporate money.

PLAYBOY:                  Small donations from regular people.

SANDERS:                Yeah, but you need just a phenomenal number of small donations and a kind of an organization, so I appreciate the compliment.

PLAYBOY:                  Let’s say you could raise the money, in terms of the influence and where the country is going, you just said that nobody is speaking—

SANDERS:                Excuse me.
[INTERRUPTION WHILE SUBJECT GOES OFF INTERVIEW]

PLAYBOY:                  You just said nobody is speaking about it, so—

SANDERS:                Again, it’s hard to say what kind of media coverage one would get, right wing…Rand Paul, you know, trust me, these things are harder than they look on the surface and I’m not even talking about just money, money is huge, organization.

PLAYBOY:                  You would have thousands of people willing to work for you, all over the country, campuses, cities.

SANDERS:                Tempting, I think people are hungering for a voice out there, that’s what I do think and what would be tempting would be to try to raise issues and demand discussion on issues that are not being talked about.  Issues that you and I have talked about, inequality in wealth and trade policy, protecting the social safety net, moving aggressively on global warming, those are issues that are not being talked about and it would be tempting, but…

PLAYBOY:                  So why do you resist it so much?  Let’s say you could raise the money, the people would be there—

SANDERS:                Whoa, whoa, whoa, it’s too easy.

PLAYBOY:                  There would be—

SANDERS:                Jonathan!  We’re talking about the United States of America, you’re talking about having to put together an organization of tens and tens of thousands of people.  Ross Perot can run as an independent because he’s a billionaire.

PLAYBOY:                  You could raise the money, given the way people can raise money now, particularly small donations over the internet and social media, there would be other people—I’m telling you, you could raise the money.  I’m not saying that you could raise Barack Obama type, but enough to run a national campaign.  You said there needs to be a voice out there, particularly—Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee probably for the Democrats, let’s face it.  That’s not going to offer an alternative to the country.

SANDERS:                No, it’s not.

PLAYBOY:                  She won’t even explain…nobody has even held her accountable for her vote for the Iraq War and that’s the kind of voice we’re going to have out there.

SANDERS:                Well, I thank you very much, if I run I’ll make you my campaign manager.

PLAYBOY:                  Well, I won’t put it—look, I don’t know if you want me for the campaign manager but there are a lot of people out there who would put time into it and I think you should—I’m just asking, do you ever consider that given that there isn’t the voice that you just described, let’s put it that way.

SANDERS:                I wish that there was that voice, whether I’m the right person or not, I have my doubts, but thank you very much.  And by the way, I should tell you, people like me do not often make it into the United States Senate.  Do you see that plaque in front of you?

PLAYBOY:                 This one here?

SANDERS:                Yeah, you know who that is?

PLAYBOY:                  No, who is that?

SANDERS:                That’s Eugene V. Debs.

PLAYBOY:                  Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so Debs ran for President.

SANDERS:                Debs ran for President on more than one occasion and he got six percent of the vote, point being that people with my politics don’t often make it to the United States Senate and I’m proud of the work that I’m doing here, I’m proud of representing the State of Vermont, I’m comfortable doing that.

PLAYBOY:                  In 2016, though, you would get a pass in terms, you wouldn’t be giving up your seat to do it.

SANDERS:                All right, we’ll talk about that next time.

PLAYBOY:                  He obviously doesn’t want to go there.  But I’m going to come back to that someday.  I understand that you’re hesitant.

SANDERS:                I do, I honestly appreciate your support on that, but…

PLAYBOY:                  I won’t push you again on that right now.  Do you think of yourself as an iconoclast in that way, in what you talk about?

SANDERS:                Well, I mean, I’m very proud to be the longest-serving independent in American Congressional history, that’s no small thing.

PLAYBOY:                  Is your iconoclasm, have you always been that way?

SANDERS:                I don’t see myself…you know, it’s not like I wake up in the morning and say, I’ve got to be different than everybody else.  Everything that I have told you, Jonathan, I believe has the support of most of the people in the country.  I am amazed that I have colleagues here who have the great courage to tell their constituents that we should give tax breaks to billionaires and cut social security.  That’s very courageous and brave, I am not that courageous.  I tell people that we’ve got to stand together to fight for the middle class.

PLAYBOY:                  I hate to tell you, you just made the argument again, I’m not going to go back to it, he just made the argument again to run for President, right, didn’t he?

And then we talked for hours more…