Bernie Sanders Is Right to Be Incensed at the Democrats

Yesterday, Bernie Sanders tore into the Democratic Party’s “big money interests and well-paid consultants” who abandoned working-class voters. Bernie was stating an obvious truth — one that Democratic leaders seem hell-bent on ignoring.

Bernie Sanders delivers remarks on stage at NHTI Concord Community College on October 22, 2024, in Concord, New Hampshire. (Scott Eisen / Getty Images)


If you want to see the two competing visions of the Democratic Party’s future coming out of Tuesday’s electoral catastrophe, just compare the responses to the Democrats’ thumping from Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Harris’s concession speech was part and parcel of the strategy that just saw her and her party go down in flames, full of inspirational-sounding generalities and the attempts at soaring rhetoric that no Democrat has quite managed to nail since Barack Obama. An often cheery Harris talked about how her campaign had “been intentional about building community,” vowed to keep fighting for freedom and the like through voting and the courts, but also “in how we live our lives by treating one another with kindness and respect,” and urged her supporters to light up what looked like a dark future with “the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.” She didn’t once mention bread-and-butter issues, and one of the biggest cheers came when she promised to “engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”

A palpably disgusted Sanders, meanwhile, put out a short statement excoriating the party for failing to speak to the economic concerns that were by far voters’ leading motivation heading into Election Day.

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