Bernie Sanders Is Making His Pitch to Swing Voters
Bernie Sanders, who’s fighting to pass his ambitious $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill in the Senate, spent the past weekend on the road, doing something his Democratic colleagues seldom do: selling his ideas in swing states.
Senator Bernie Sanders is pitching his $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill to voters in swing states across the country. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images for Care In Action)
In some ways, Bernie Sanders spent this past weekend in his element. Sanders has long out-performed Democrats in conservative-voting parts of his home state, far out-fundraised the rest of the Democratic field in Obama-to-Trump-voting counties, and his town halls on Fox News in Trump-voting parts of the country during the Democratic primary were a political phenomenon.
The Vermont senator drew on this history to tour through the Midwest this past weekend, trying to sell Republican-voting Americans on what he framed as the successor to the New Deal and what he repeatedly called “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people in the modern history of this country.”
With his $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill facing extremely tight voting margins in Congress, and the currently ascendant Democratic Party staring down the barrel of a midterm slaughter next year, Sanders talked directly to audiences in West Lafayette, Indiana, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, explaining the stakes of the coming legislative battle over the bill for their lives, and hearing from locals about their own stories and concerns.
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