A smug inability to acknowledge the plight of working class voters led the Democratic Party to political disaster on Election Day, according to a pair of New England senators who say it’s time for America’s left wing to come up with a better plan.
Vermont’s independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday that the party’s inability to recognize that families are struggling to make ends meet and haven’t seen their economic circumstances improve in decades, while the party elite proudly trumpets a booming economy found only in statistics — and at the same time cozies up to big-money interests — is to blame for their outright drubbing in the 2024 election.
“Bottom line, if you’re an average working person out there do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the mat, taking on powerful special interests, and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no, and that is what has got to change,” Sanders said during a Sunday appearance on Meet the Press.
In an op-ed published in the Boston Globe the same morning, Sanders said that the “American working class is angry,” and that they’ve got their reasons. Living paycheck to paycheck and watching the very rich only gain more wealth, voters are also confronted with rising costs for housing and everyday staples like milk and eggs.
President-elect Donald Trump, even if he never offered a viable or realistic answer to those problems, at least acknowledged that they existed, and promised bold policies to his supporters as a solution. Trump, Sanders wrote, offered voters a “grossly racist, cruel, and fallacious” explanation for their financial circumstances, but he at least provided an explanation.
The Democrats, Sanders wrote, went off the deep end when they didn’t have a response to the kitchen table issues, or offer a “full throated explanation” for why families struggle to afford the cost of groceries or housing. They’ve walked away from big policy ideas, like championing healthcare as a universal right.
“In my view, the Democrats lost this election because they ignored the justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economic and political system,” he wrote.
Sanders made similar remarks shortly after Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris became apparent and, as if to prove his point, former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed back, saying that for Republicans the election came down to a vote over “guns, gays and God,” and that Biden’s decision to run again and then drop out too late left the party in a tight spot.
Connecticut’s U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, also on Sunday, described Tuesday’s defeat as “a cataclysm” for his party, and seemed to back up his New England colleague. According to Murphy, five decades of “neoliberal policy” has led to a party too detached from the working class voters it claims to represent.
“Time to rebuild the left. We are out of touch with the crisis of meaning (and) purpose fueling MAGA. We refuse to pick big fights. Our tent is too small,” he wrote on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Murphy noted that Democrats “don’t listen to people” and instead “tell them what’s good for them.”
“And when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base,” he wrote.
At the same time, Murphy said, the party alienates broad swathes of the population while refusing to engage with their grievances. They can’t do that going forward, he said.
“We cannot be afraid of fights – especially with the economic elites who have profited off neoliberalism. The right regularly picks fights with elites – Hollywood, higher ed, etc. Democrats (e.g. the Harris campaign) are tepid in our fights with billionaires and corporations,” Murphy wrote.
Sanders offered a list of what he described as “extremely popular ideas” for the left wing to take up, calling for an end to big money in politics allowed by the Citizens United decision, a $17 per hour minimum wage, and legal protections for unions and workers who want to form them.
Sanders called for the return of employee pensions so that workers are secure in their old age, eventual expansion of universal healthcare, and drug price decreases in the interim. The Vermont senator suggests the party should support paid family and medical leave, equal pay for women, trade policies that benefit workers over CEOs, construction of 3 million homes, free college, a progressive tax system where the rich pay more, and a reduction of military “fraud, waste, and abuse.”
“The Democratic Party would do well to listen to the clear directive of American voters, and deliver. The simple fact is: if you stand with working people, they will stand with you. In my view, if Democrats deliver on an agenda like this, they can win back the working class of our country and the White House,” he wrote.
Matt Rourke/ Associated Press file
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
