Ben Jealous: ‘Americans are suffering under the weight of half-measures’

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.