The recriminations for Kamala Harris’ catastrophic loss to the resurgent Donald Trump just keep coming, don’t they? The latest to join the pile is the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders, who is slamming the Democratic Party’s abandonment of working-class voters and the working class likewise abandoning Democrats. On that last part, he’s right – but for the wrong reason:
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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a scathing statement on what he called the Democratic Party’s “disastrous” campaign after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to former President Donald Trump.
The independent, who caucuses with Democrats, said 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.”
“First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders continued in his statement. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
The Democratic party did indeed abandon working-class voters, but it’s not because the working class is shying away from Bernie’s socialist policies. It’s because the Democrats have become the party of coastal elites, academics, and the dependency class, and are by and large ignoring regular Joe Lunchbox Americans.
He says the American people want change. He’s right. But the reason they want change isn’t because of a lack of socialism. In that, Senator Sanders is dead wrong. That’s not why Americans want change. It’s because of the socialism that has already been foisted on us – it’s wrecked the economy and people are sick of it. Yeah, Bernie, that’s right; they aren’t bailing because the Democrats failed to socialism hard enough. How could that be the case? Every time socialist ideas have failed, the left’s response is “We just have to socialism harder and we’ll win,” and that always costs them; just look at Tuesday’s results. It was Kamala Harris’ ineptitude that lost her the election, but what few muttered, semi-coherent policy positions she managed to somehow describe were out there to the left of Fidel Castro.
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In the fundraising (begging) email sent to supporters on Wednesday night, the Bern continues:
Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.
Income and wealth equality don’t matter. They are, indeed, inevitable, and are mostly due to generational differences; older people have more work experience, more skills, and command a bigger paycheck – they have also had more time to accumulate wealth.
The left will be months figuring out Kamala’s loss, and predictably – I mean, just look at Bernie – they’ll probably get it wrong.
My friend and colleague Jeff Charles saw all this coming:
See Related: Panicked Democrats Already Assigning Blame for Possible Kamala Harris Loss
Jeff wrote:
The inner turmoil among Democrats is already brewing with Election Day on the horizon and the inevitability that this will be a very close race. Democrats are already looking to assign blame in the event that Vice President Kamala Harris fails to defeat her opponent, former President Donald Trump.
Even though it is not yet clear who will win the White House on Tuesday, Democrats appear to be panicking about the prospect of losing to Trump.
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And boy, howdy, is the blame game well underway.
Look, Bernie is sort of right about one thing: The Democrats have largely abandoned the working people of the United States. That much is certain. They don’t even seem to be aware of the problems the Harris/Biden inflation is causing regular Americans, much less have any idea how to address them. For years the left has been deriding ordinary Americans as rubes, as dummies, as racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic, and so on – when, in fact, most Americans are none of those things. We are socialist-phobic, and that was proven on Tuesday.
See Related: BREAKING: Donald Trump Projected to Win Presidency
First Look: Trump Wins the White House and Republicans Control the Senate and Likely the House
But, as usual, Bernie has no clue as to how to get this demographic back.
We should listen to the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont regardless; indeed, he should be encouraged to speak at every opportunity. The late, great Rush Limbaugh regularly opined that we should keep some socialists and “progressives” around and encourage them to speak, as a reminder of what these people are all about. Bernie Sanders would be great in that role. He has the zeal of a true believer, and he is passionate if not particularly articulate. He represents a great example of what we should not do; a sensible political candidate could do a lot worse than, when considering any policy issue, look up what Bernie thinks and take the opposite position. You’ll rarely go wrong that way.
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The Democrats will be months, maybe years, arguing over what went wrong in 2024. Let’s hope they never figure it out.