Despite supporting Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Senator Bernie Sanders has come out with a damning statement against the Democratic Party, saying it has abandoned working-class people.
“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,” the Independent senator from Vermont released in a statement. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”
Senator Bernie Sanders’s statement comes one day after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. The former president swept through crucial swing states that were critical battlegrounds and focus areas for Harris’s campaign.
CNN exit polls paint a grim picture for Democrats, showing that Vice President Harris lost the popular vote by nearly 5 million votes. While a majority of Black voters, both men and women, voted for Harris, she lost ground with Latino voters. Trump gained 14 points among Latinos, while Harris won the bloc by only 6 points. President Joe Biden won the Latino vote by 33 points. The election was brutal for Democrats, who lost Senate seats in West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio.
In his statement, Sanders said, “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.”
According to Sanders, while the rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and there’s more income and wealth inequality than ever before.
“Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents, and many worry that artificial intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse,” Sanders continues.
He also cites the high cost of health care and U.S. support for the war in Gaza as reasons for Democrats losing ground with Americans.
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?” he asks rhetorically. “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 says it’s time for people who care about grassroots democracy and economic justice to have some “earnest political discussions.”
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