Independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is seeking the Democratic nomination for the upcoming 2016 Presidential election. As a self-described socialist, Senator Sanders is fooling himself if he honestly believes he has a chance of winning the nomination in competition with the juggernaut of Hillary Clinton’s campaign machine, but he is extremely perceptive about the flaws he sees in Clinton’s populist claims.

As I have mentioned in this blog before, Hillary Clinton and her husband are some of the wealthiest people in America. So far in 2015 alone, Clinton has added tens of millions of dollars to her personal wealth – more money than most Americans will ever see in their lifetimes. Referring to her practice of charging six figures to give a single speech, Sanders says that while he doesn’t think there is anything immoral about Clinton making the most of her opportunities to make money, “that type of wealth has the potential to isolate you from the reality of the world.”

“When you hustle money like that, you don’t sit in restaurants like this,” he said. “You sit in restaurants where you’re spending – I don’t know what they spend – hundreds of dollars for dinner and so forth. That’s the world that you’re accustomed to, and that’s the world view that you adopt. You’re not worrying about a kid three blocks away from here whose mom can’t afford to feed him.” He goes on to say, “I think it’s hard not to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton is part of the establishment.”

Of course Hillary Clinton is part of the establishment. She and her husband are part of the 1%, and they have enough money to buy and sell thousands of regular Americans. However, they are not the only ones. Nearly every successful politician in recent memory has been incredibly wealthy. Perhaps not all of them have been as wealthy as Hillary Clinton, but most politicians who have run for national office in the last several decades have been, at least, millionaires.

Part of the explanation for this is simply that the absurdity of our election system requires that candidates raise a truly staggering amount of money in order to run an election campaign. Raising this money is, of course, easier if you already have a personal fortune that you can use to fund your campaign.

Even more significant, however, is the fact that the American political system is fundamentally elitist. The reason that most successful politicians are wealthy is that so much of our society is based more on who you know than what you know. These people are successful politicians for the same reason that they are wealthy – they are part of America’s elite, those who believe it is their birthright to rule over the rest of us.

These people grew up with mind-boggling amounts of privilege. They went to Ivy League schools where they rubbed shoulders with other young elites, then went on into business or law where they could continue to expand their networks. The elites pat each other on the back, offer each other jobs, and conspire to keep other, regular Americans from earning more money or from making a difference in politics.

I, for one, am sick and tired of these elites like Hillary Clinton and the other mainstream presidential candidates who believe they have the right to run our country. We need to take our country back from the elites, and we can start by electing politicians who aren’t a part of their little club. I am trying to do my part by running for president in the 2016 election. If you want to make a change, I urge you to cast your write-in vote for me, Art Drew, for President of the United States.