After U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders offered his perspective on why Vice President Kamala Harris lost both the popular vote and Electoral College to President-elect Donald Trump in Tuesday's election—repeating his consistent warning that the Democratic Party must center economic justice—top official Jaime Harrison signaled once again that the party is unlikely to hear Sanders' call.
Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee and a former lobbyist for clients including Bank of America and BP, called Sanders' statement "straight up BS" and touted pro-worker policies embraced by the Biden-Harris administration, suggesting that the party has sufficiently worked for economic justice—and appearing to ignore all evidence that working-class voters gravitated toward Trump and the Republican Party.
"[President Joe] Biden was the most-pro worker president of my lifetime—saved union pensions, created millions of good-paying jobs, and even marched in a picket line," said Harrison.
Biden has been praised by progressives and labor unions for establishing pro-worker rules on overtime pay and noncompete agreements, urging Amazon workers in Alabama to unionize, presiding over a National Labor Relations Board that investigated numerous unfair labor practices by large corporations and sided with workers, and becoming the first U.S. president to walk on a picket line with striking workers.
He also worked closely with Sanders on one of his signature pieces of legislation, the Build Back Better Act, which would have invested in expanded child tax credits, public education, and free community college, among other provisions—but the bill was torpedoed by right-wing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), then a Democrat, and the Republican Party.
In his statement on Thursday, Sanders 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."
He asked whether the "well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party" would "learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?"
"Probably not," he added.
While Harris included in her platform plans to end price-gouging in the food industry, expand the child tax credit, and extend Medicare coverage to home healthcare, dental, and vision care, she alarmed progressive advocates by proposing a smaller capital gains tax for wealthy Americans.
As Common Dreamsreported on Thursday, Biden advisers have also posited this week that Harris muddied her early message that Trump was a "stooge of corporate interests" by elevating billionaire businessman Mark Cuban as one of her top surrogates.
Whether Democratic leaders including Harrison will listen to those concerns from Biden's inner circle remains to be seen, but he expressed hostility when the message came from Sanders.
"There are a lot of post-election takes and this one ain't a good one," said Harrison.
Journalist Mitchell Northam noted that the Democratic Party has studiously ignored and expressed hostility toward Sanders' call for centering economic justice and cutting ties with Wall Street since the 2016 election, when the senator ran for president as a Democrat.
Sanders' message this week got an unlikely boost from conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, who in 2020 dismissed the veteran, consistently popular senator as "useless" and "marginal."
"I like it when Democratic candidates run to the center," wrote Brooks. "But I have to confess that Harris did that pretty effectively and it didn't work. Maybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption—something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable."
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch applauded Brooks' "striking moment of self-awareness."
Progressive Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid expressed hope that Democratic leaders such as Harrison will do the same.
"Typically, after a major electoral defeat," he said, "party leaders step aside to create opportunities for fresh perspectives and voices that haven't yet had a chance to lead."
