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Sen. Bernie Sanders says a challenge to corporate ‘oligarchy’ is a not only a ‘damn good platform’ for a presidential candidate, it is exactly what a majority of the American people want to hear. (Image: flickr / cc / DonkeyHotey)

The Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders has a hunch about the American electorate, but he says the only way to be sure is to go out and meet them.

It’s called the ‘Fight For Economic Justice Tour,’ but it’s really what the self-identified Social Democrat described earlier this year as his attempt to travel the country in order to gauge the country’s hunger for a grassroots ‘political revolution‘-couched in a possible presidential bid-to challenge the economic inequality and corporate malfeasance that have severely wounded the nation’s democracy and are strangling its promise of shared prosperity.

Sanders was in Raleigh, North Carolina on Wednesday night to receive an award from the American Legion, but what many understood as a political stop designed as a prelude towards a possible presidential run in 2016. On Thursday the senator is scheduled for a town hall event in Columbia, South Carolina and after that, an event in Jackson, Mississippi on Friday.

Earlier this week, Sanders confirmed that he will also be making upcoming visits to both Iowa and New Hampshire-two political bellwether states-and he has spent the last several months making it clear that he is “strongly considering” a possible primary challenge to the expected Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton.

So what’s the purpose of all this travel?

“This is about seeing whether ordinary people are prepared to stand up and fight and create a political revolution in the sense of what we have not seen in a very long time,” Sanders declared on Wednesday.

In an interview with the
Charlotte Observer on Wednesday, Sanders stated his position that economic inequality and the everyday suffering of ordinary people is at the core of his thinking on the country’s current situation. “The main issue that I have is that in America today the middle-class is disappearing while the gap between rich and poor is growing wider,” he said. “We need more people in politics working for ordinary people and not just the top 1 percent.”