Democrats Got Clobbered. Bernie Sanders and AOC Think They Know Why

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Among Democrats, there’s a pretty universal understanding that the next two years are shaping up to be a joyless slog, one in which Donald Trump again sets the national agenda, the Senate serves as a willing—but not universally compliant—partner, and the still-for-grabs House falling into a too-close-for-anything-big stasis. To put it mildly, it’s a dark moment for Democrats who had as recently as 10 days ago thought they might control the trifecta of power in Washington and one in which answers are hard to be had.

But, as he is prone to do at the most unwelcome of moments, Sen. Bernie Sanders lobbed his own two cents over the wall at the Democrats and it did not detonate in any welcome way. Sanders, who twice sought the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, caucuses with Democrats but insists on staying a nominal progressive independent. From that vantage, he is a reliable stand-in for the United States’ left flank, one who is all too happy to criticize the party with which he regularly works with but refuses to officially join.

“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,” Sanders said in a statement released on Wednesday just before Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her concession speech. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Sanders’ analysis is not novel or inaccurate. Harris fared pretty poorly with the Democratic Party’s base, losing ground in just about every objective category that mattered. What had been seen as a nail-biter of a race turned into a blowout in the final tally, and Democrats are turning inward with plenty of recriminations about the whos and hows at fault. 

But the Sanders jab seemed particularly unhelpful coming from someone who has used his own brand to force Democratic nominees up and down the ballot to the left, often helping progressive candidates win primaries out of step with the districts they are trying to win in. It’s a leftward shift of the party, for sure, but it’s likely not one that has served the Democrats’ mission of adding to its numbers in office.

Sanders, never one to mistake his own push for his brand of progressive ideas for Democratic party-building, seems to give zero hoots. 

“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? … Probably not,” Sanders said.

Then, perhaps menacingly, the 83-year-old democratic socialist suggested he would have his own thoughts on what happens next: “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.”

On his own, Sanders would be easy to write-off. But he seldom stands solo. He has inspired a legion of supporters loyal to him, and he made progressive ideas less fringe and cringe than when he offered himself up as socialist alternative to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race. So threatened were Democrats in 2020 of a Sanders nomination, the primaries all but ended inside 48 hours when the party coalesced with shocking speed behind Joe Biden.

And it’s why the grimace of gnashing over Sanders threatened to become a gush of self-introspection when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—a progressive paragon—picked up some of the rubble and amplified it in her own framing. Although Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez hit the trail in the end for Harris, it was clear they had their own lens on this puzzle.

“Our main project is to unite the working class in this country against a fascist agenda. Period. We have had an enormous setback in this election because the fascist won a lot of working-class support, which has happened before in history,” AOC said on a live-stream later Wednesday evening. “I think what is important is that we have to be able to hold that analysis and have these discussions without turning on each other.”

An honest discussion about the Democrats’ future? Without turning on each other? That seems absolutely fanciful given the Establishment’s fresh wounds, deep animus toward the likes of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, and a shaky alliance with members of The Squad. (In a particularly unhelpful move, Squad member Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American who represents the Muslim- and Arab-rich city of Dearborn, declined to endorse Harris—in part over the ongoing war in Gaza.)

Ocasio-Cortez, who again called for a national $15 minimum wage and proposals for universal health care during her hour-long, direct-to-smartphone chat with supporters on Wednesday, kept the pressure on her party for not doing more to connect with the base, even as others in the party argue that their actual problem was too much deference to that side of the tent. “At the end of the day, the ultimate problem is our ability to clearly and forthrightly advocate for an agenda that clearly champions the working class,” she said. 

For their part, Establishment Democrats were having none of it and immediately pushed back on Sanders—but not explicitly against AOC, who remains a potent force and potentially national nominee.

“This is straight up BS. … There are a lot of post-election takes and this one ain’t a good one,” wrote Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison on Sanders’ punditry, pointing out that Biden saved union pensions and became the first sitting President to join a picket line.

Adding a strong defense of Harris, Harrison also noted the nominee ran on expanding Medicare to cover home care for seniors, creating a $25,000 down-payment assistance program to increase home ownership, and reviving a child tax credit that would ease lower- and middle-class families. 

The public acrimony reveals a party that’s still shaky so close to an Election Day that left many Democrats having deja vu to 2016, when they also thought a female nominee could handily defeat Trump. Once again, they were left sulking and sincerely confused as to what went wrong. There are plenty of answers—TIME’s Charlotte Alter, Brian Bennett, and I try to unpack them here—but no single one emerges as an actual antidote. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, writing for TIME 100 Voices, has her thoughts here.

Sanders may be onto something, even if his remedy is one unlikely to win much of a boost from the centrists in the Democratic Party. AOC might have an easier framework to build upon. But there are probable multiple factors that led to a Harris wipeout against Trump, and party leaders are more inclined to listen to folks who seem like team players, not gloats, and certainly not those who goad the party to a place where it cannot win. It’s why there are plenty of critics of what just happened in the Democratic Party, but those who want futures are putting the ideas on the page for policy memos to pull from the drawer when leaders are ready for them and ask. Tossing them into the ether while Harris staffers still haven’t packed up a single office is definitely not how to get those notions to the players who still have a chokehold over the party. 

These ideas, from those seen as myopic adherents to the progressive left at the cost of wooing the middle-ground majority, are only annoying party insiders who are trying to figure out why so many persuadable voters sat out this race, tuned it out, or defected to Trump because they were frustrated with the chase of a left-racing agenda. Like so much in politics, timing is everything.

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