WASHINGTON — Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders offered a blistering critique of the Democratic campaign on Wednesday.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders, Vermont’s senior senator, said in a statement.
“First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders said.
Sanders won reelection to a fourth term on Tuesday. He singled out wealth inequality, a slipping standard of living in the U.S., a lack of full health care guarantees and support for Israel’s recent military campaigns as problems Democrats need to focus on. Sanders’s 2016 presidential run was a key factor in pushing the dialogue in the Democratic party to the left.
The former Democratic primary candidate had warned Harris before Election Day that she was focusing too much on flipping Republican votes and not enough on pocketbook issues.
After Kamala Harris' decisive loss, Democrats are entering a second Trump presidency with no clear leader, no clear plan and no agreement on what caused them to be so wrong about the 2024 election.
Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, who led Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, is worried that Democrats won’t do the introspection necessary after this devastating loss.
Sanders himself was more blunt in his statement.
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” he said. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”
Sanders has built his political career outside — and often criticizing — the Democratic Party, but he caucuses with Democrats in the Senate.