By Nov 9, 2024
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said voters ultimately told Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, “screw you” because her presidential campaign didn’t concentrate enough on economically populist messages, following her resounding defeat against President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was marked by the Republican, who secured the Electoral College and popular vote, significantly improving his numbers among a number of key demographics compared to his performance in 2020.
Exit polls showed that Trump’s support rose among male Latinos, people under 30, those living in rural areas and moderate voters.
Sanders, who won reelection Tuesday night, told The Washington Post in an article published Saturday that the Harris campaign should have focused more on issues such as expanding Medicare benefits and raising the minimum wage.
“We tried hard to do this—to have this campaign focus or emphasize an economic agenda that speaks to the need of the working class in this country,” the senator said. “The status quo is working very, very well for the people on top but it’s not working well for working people, and the Democratic Party has become far too much a defender of the status quo…You have to acknowledge the pain and the reality of people’s lives, or people will say, ‘Screw you.'”
While Sanders praised Harris for her messages on abortion rights, democracy and Trump’s perceived unfitness for office, he—and other progressive critics—said the campaign fell short on bold, economic policy plans that they believe would have appealed to more working-class voters.
Newsweek has emailed the Harris campaign Saturday morning for comment.
Following Trump’s victory, Sanders issued a statement on Wednesday criticizing the Democratic Party.
“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,” wrote Sanders, who ran for president in 2016 and 2020. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”
He chastised Democratic leadership for defending “the status quo,” noting that Americans “are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
Jared Abbott, director the Center for Working-Class Politics, previously told Newsweek that working people have long felt disconnected from the Democrats.
“The Democrats have portrayed themselves as the party that’s going to deliver material benefits that make the lives of working-class people better….And that’s just not a reality that Democratic presidents have been delivering despite certain important reforms,” he said.
While Abbott said certain policies, such as former President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act (ACA), have benefited working people, he said that culturally, Democrats have lost part of its base by focusing on wealthier, more educated voters.
“Democrats court more well-to-do, more affluent, more highly educated voters, and they are perceived by many working-class people as not relating meaningfully,” he said. “And that sort of gets bundled together with the lack of material gains that working-class people feel.”
The messaging, Abbott said, is essential to connecting with working people as a demographic.
“Much of Trump’s appeal to working-class people was visceral, was emotional,” he added. “He repeated back to them the anger and the pain that they felt about being left behind…the Democrats need to find candidates that can effectively relate to working-class people in a way that most Democrats are typically not able to do. It’s not rocket science. It’s not a mystery what they need to be saying.”
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