Those are some pretty strong words from America’s favorite millionaire socialist against President Biden and his stalled legislative agenda. Bernie’s right, though, Democrats have jettisoned any semblance of caring about kitchen table issues in favor of progressive pet projects that stand no chance of passing.
It’s not that Bernie Sanders doesn’t support these items, like a giant Build Back Better boondoggle of the Green New Deal of economic death, he most certainly does. The problem is that the agenda is dead, and nothing’s getting done which means Democrats are headed for a clobbering in the fall, and Bernie knows it.
In an interview this week with the UK Guardian, Bernie held back little in his criticism of Biden’s failing legislative agenda and how Democrats have totally abandoned the working class:
In an interview with the Guardian, Sanders called on Joe Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to push to hold votes on individual bills that would be a boon to working families, citing extending the child tax credit, cutting prescription drug prices and raising the federal hourly minimum wage to $15.
Such votes would be good policy and good politics, the Vermont senator insisted, saying they would show the Democrats battling for the working class while highlighting Republican opposition to hugely popular policies.
“It is no great secret that the Republican party is winning more and more support from working people,” Sanders said. “It’s not because the Republican party has anything to say to them. It’s because in too many ways the Democratic party has turned its back on the working class.”
Naturally, Bernie blames corporate interests, but there’s nothing corporate about the garbage legislative agenda Democrats have been trying to ram through Congress:
But his comments appear to reflect a growing discontent and concern with the Biden administration’s direction. “I think it’s absolutely important that we do a major course correction,” Sanders continued. “It’s important that we have the guts to take on the very powerful corporate interests that have an unbelievably powerful hold on the economy of this country.”
The problem, Bernie, is that your party is broken right now and your presidential leadership is sub-par. If Biden had any ability to lead or negotiate, he would’ve passed something by now, or demanded that Democrats take a step back and try to come back with bi-partisan legislation that stands a chance of passing.
At the moment, Democrats are flying a kamikaze mission on “voting rights” built on a mountain of lies over Georgia’s recently passed election reform law. There is nothing in Georgia’s law that comes close to the things Biden said about it on Tuesday, but Democrats are willing to die on this hill anyway.
Sanders’ point is that nothing, meanwhile, is getting done for working-class households that used to be the backbone of the Democratic Party. Remember the “blue wall” in the Midwest that Trump tore down in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin? Those working-class voters who switched over to Trump are not getting what they were promised from Democrats in 2020.
Unfortunately, for Bernie, it doesn’t look like Biden or Schumer have yet resigned themselves to the reality that his position is probably the only chance they stand of passing any major parts of Biden’s domestic agenda:
He called for reviving a robust version of Build Back Better and also called for holding votes on individual parts of that legislation that would help working-class Americans. “We have to bring these things to the floor,” Sanders said. “The vast majority of people in the [Democratic] caucus are willing to fight for good policy.”
That might end up happening in the coming months once Democrats realize that their idea of some grand massive Biden New Deal is dead. The only course will be to break up the bill into smaller pieces, then dare Manchin and Sinema to vote against it.
For now, though, Bernie Sanders is the sane voice among Democrats, which speaks volumes about the state of Biden’s presidency.
