Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is ashamed in the Democratic Party. He has plenty of reasons to be, considering party officials mocked him and his campaign behind closed doors and were rolling out the red carpet for Hillary Clinton since she announced her candidacy. Yet, on CBS on Monday Sanders said his humiliation stems from a different source: The party's inability to reach out to America's working class.
“I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business,” Sanders, who was promoting his new book — “Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In” — told “CBS This Morning.” “It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.”
After this election, Sanders surmised that many working class voters do not feel that the Democrats are standing with them. Certainly, that's the reality in West Virginia. After Clinton pledged to put coal miners out of business, it showed in the election results. She received only 26 percent of the vote last Tuesday.
The Democrats used to represent the working class. Somehow, the messaging got lost as they became much too friendly with Wall Street, according to The Guardian.
The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades the party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters who have focused instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives and getting votes from upper middle-class households in “swing” suburbs.
Additionally, The Guardian notes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's free trade agreements left working class voters with a bad taste in their mouths for the Democratic ticket. Trump's anti-NAFTA and anti-TPP rhetoric may just have won him states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Sanders suggested real change needs to occur in the party. That's why he's endorsed Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison's candidacy for DNC chair. Ellison, one of the most progressive members in Congress, would be a radical shift to the left. He faces a competitor in former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.