Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) today released a statement of frustration about yesterday’s presidential election, and as often happens when Sanders says something, he’s absolutely spot-on.
He said it on Twitter, by posting a picture of the text, so here’s what Sen Sanders said, typed, for easier reading and sharing.
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 the Latino and Black workers as well.
While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.
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.
Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. And many of them worry that Artificial Intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse.
Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave.
Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.
Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disaster campaign? 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.
In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.
Stay tuned.
So you’re saying it’s voters faults the Democrats didn’t get their votes?
Political parties are there to serve and represent voters the Democrats made the same mistakes as 2016 - they didn’t offer voters things to vote for but things to vote against - being “not trump” is not enough .
It worked in 2020 because people were fed up with trump but it was not the way to beat trump. Instead of taking the moral high ground and campaigning on issues that split America such as abortion, they needed to address what voters actually cared about - the economy.
It’s not voters fault that the Democrats failed to get a clear positive vision of how they would change the economy for the better. That would have beaten trump. Instead their message on the number one priority for voters was “we’ve done a good job, what are you complaining about?”.
That’s why they lost the election. The sooner that message sinks in the sooner they can rebuilt for the mid terms. They need to be FOR something, not just the lesser evil.
I feel like this sort of logical acrobatics is exactly the cause that got you guys there. In other countries we’d call spade a spade and get on with it.
Americans will literally do anything else but accept responsibility.
I blame both the DNC and the chronically apathetic 40-50% of this country that don’t pay attention. Enough blame to go around.