Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) struck a pessimistic tone after Donald Trump became the projected winner of the presidential election, saying Democrats should not be shocked by their losses among key demographic groups, but that it is unlikely is that they will change course.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party that has failed the working class is finding that the working class has failed them,” Sanders said in a lengthy statement Wednesday. “First it was the white working class, and now it’s also Latino and black workers. While Democratic leaders defend the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they are right.”
Election results so far show that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for president has lost ground in the demographics that were key to her success in such a tight race, particularly Latinos, young people and rural residents, in addition to other groups that Democrats could once consider reliable supporters.
Sanders, who ran for Democratic presidential nomination as a progressive against Hillary Clinton in 2016, offered little hope that Democrats — with whom he meets in Congress — will see the error in their ways.
“Will the big money interests and highly paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” Sanders asked. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any idea how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy that has so much economic and political power?”
To all these questions, Sanders responded: “Probably not.”
Americans’ disillusionment with the Democratic Party makes sense, he explained, noting that 60% of them are still living paycheck to paycheck while the wealth gap soars, and that despite spending enormous amounts of money, Americans are spending obscene amounts paying for health care that other developed countries do not pay. treat it as a human right.
Sanders, an outspoken opponent of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, added that Democrats’ position on the issue should not be overlooked either.
Despite opposition, he said, “we continue to spend billions to finance the extremist Netanyahu government’s all-out war against the Palestinian people, which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.”
US involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proved to be tricky waters for Harris to navigate, and her pro-Israel stance clearly alienated some Arab-American voters, even as Trump took an even more aggressive stance on the issue. In Dearborn, Michigan, the country’s largest Arab-American city, Trump trounced Harris despite Biden winning nearly three-quarters of the vote there in 2020.
In the final days of the election, Sanders urged Americans who disagreed with Harris’ stance on Israel to still support her.
“Some of you are saying, ‘How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she supports this terrible war?’ and that is a very fair question,” he said in a video on social media. “And let me give you my best answer, which is that even at this point, Donald Trump and his right-wing friends are worse.”
“We will, in my opinion, have a much better chance of changing American policy with Kamala than with Trump, who is extremely close to Netanyahu and sees him as a like-minded, right-wing extremist ally,” he continued, pointing to Republicans. ‘Opposition to sending humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.
