When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) formally launches his presidential campaign Tuesday evening at Burlington's Waterfront Park, he'll likely deliver a stump speech unlike anything you've ever heard before.
OK, that's not true.
He'll almost certainly deliver the same speech he's given since he first ran for Senate in 1972. (It didn't work so well that year. He won just 2.2 percent of the vote.)
If you've heard it all before, consider spicing it up a bit. Bring a road soda to the shore of Lake Champlain and play the Bernie Sanders Drinking Game — brought to you by none other than
Seven Days. If you miss the speech and find yourself bored at home, play the game to
Sanders' 8.5-hour faux-libuster or our
Bernie Beat archive of historical Sanders coverage.
What are the rules? It's simple. Drink every time Sanders:
- Says "outrageous," "enormous," "disastrous," "unconscionable," "obscene," "massive," "fundamentally wrong," "extremely distressing" or, of course, "yuuuge"
- Promises free stuff, such as health insurance and college education
- Name-checks the Koch brothers (Drink twice if he mentions that David Koch was the Libertarian Party's 1980 vice presidential nominee and reads from the party's platform that year.)
- Smiles (Don't worry. It won't happen.)
- Disparages Wall Street or "the big banks" (Drink twice if he refers to them as "too big to fail." Drink again if he discusses their "greed, recklessness and illegal behavior."
- Mentions the percentage of American wealth controlled by the Walton family
- Uses an "illion" word (e.g., "millionaires and billionaires" and "invest trillions in crumbling roads and bridges")
- Describes his foreign policy as believing that the "millionaires and billionaires" of the Saudi royal family should invest more in defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
- Says America needs a "political revolution" — whatever that is
- Distinguishes between the unemployment rate and the "real" unemployment rate
- Lectures the media for focusing on "gaffes, gossip and gotcha politics" — oh, and drinking games
- Says the word, "corporation"
- Mentions the U.S. Supreme Court's "disastrous Citizens United" decision (Drink twice if he names the average size of campaign donations he's received.)
- Asks a rhetorical question
- Begrudgingly discusses aspects of his personal life — such as his grandchildren — at the behest of campaign advisers, in a vain effort to appear human
- Name-checks Pope Francis, Robert Reich or Warren Buffet
- Begins a sentence with, "At a time when"
- Brags about winning less than 10 percent of the vote in four statewide elections (Drink twice if he mentions his 10-vote win over Gordon Paquette in the 1981 Burlington mayoral election.)
- Mentions Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or the Department of Veterans Affairs
- Says the word "oligarchy"
- Lectures the media for focusing on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and then contrasts his positions with hers on the Iraq War, the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Drink twice if he mentions that he opposed former president Bill Clinton's position on NAFTA.)
- Argues against "balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, the elderly, the sick and the children"
- Mentions the Federal Reserve
- Name-checks a Scandinavian country
- Says the word "underdog" (Drink twice if he warns you not to "underestimate" him.)
- Scowls or looks like he's got something better to do than run for president (If you're not drunk yet, this should do it.)