by Chris White
Sen. Bernie Sanders’s biggest supporters are criticizing Joe Biden after the democratic socialist endorsed the former vice president.
Sanders’s campaign press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, and several other surrogates are expressing their displeasure after Sanders endorsed Biden on the presumptive Democratic nominee’s live stream Monday. Gray explained on Twitter shortly after the announcement why she’s not on board.
“With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don’t endorse Joe Biden,” she told her followers Monday.
She went on to note that Biden does not support any of the big-ticket items underlying Sanders’ unsuccessful campaign.
“I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like role #MedicareForAll, cancelling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax,” Gray noted. “Biden supports none of those.”
Other left-wing supporters expressed similar sentiments.
“I can hardly believe what I am watching,” Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King wrote in a tweet Monday before suggesting that Biden was reading off of a teleprompter during his livestream conversation with Sanders.
He added: “Never in my life have I seen a leader require a Teleprompter and script TO HAVE A CONVERSATION with someone. It’s insulting. It’s bizarre.”
CNN commentator and former public health official Abdul El-Sayed also weighed in on Sanders endorsement.
“There’s no way around the disappointment that Bernie Sanders won’t be President,” El-Sayed tweeted Monday before explaining why he thinks the coronavirus pandemic changed everything about the Democratic primary.
“Biden’s message was about the past. But going back to ‘normal’ where 1/10 Americans were uninsured, gigs displaced jobs, & action on #climatechange was halting is a NONSTARTER after #COVID showed just how broken ‘normal’ really was for too many,” El-Sayed added.
The comments come as Democrats try to avoid an internal fight between the progressive and moderate wings of the party.
Sanders, for his part, told his followers Monday before the live stream that he was joining Biden on the livestream and would make an announcement.
“We must come together to defeat the most dangerous president in modern history,” the Vermont senator said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted in a New York Times interview published Monday that she would continue pushing Biden to adopt positions aligned closer to Sanders’s.
“The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved — that’s how you know it’s working,” she said.
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Chris White is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photos by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Thanks William for unmasking your ignorance by admitting you’re a Bernie Sanders disciple. I knew you were liberal, but admitting you’re socialist/communist, really speaks volumes. Good luck with that….
I say what I think; I try to be honest. Biden needs to be honest about his closet-Republicanism.
Why do you support socialism? It has been unsuccessful as an economic and political system in Venezuela, the USSR, Cuba, North Korea, and various failed states in Africa.
Seriously, I would like to know why you think the collective should dominate over the individual’s rights, how the “state” knows best what each individual needs and how a bureaucracy can govern efficiently?
It was successful in Great Britain and the rest of Western Europe right after the Second World War. It also succeeded in Japan when General MacArthur launched a left-of-center democratic reform program to promote land reform, disarm the militarists, provide organized labor with rights that Tojo had stolen from them, women’s suffrage, and a powerful legislative body known as the Diet that successfully, until recently, put a check on any militarist tendencies by the Prime Minister or by Cold War U.S. officials. Sadly, MacArthur did not extend these leftist reforms to the former colonies of Japan like the Korean Peninsula or to Formosa/Taiwan. Instead, MacArthur allowed the Tojo militarists to continue their holds, with tacit U.S. approval, there.
No, socialism was not a failure in Western Europe during the period from 1945 to 1990. It provided much higher living standards per capita than Western Europe enjoyed before. The only reason why socialism had bad luck in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union was due to suppression by Stalinists who undid many of the original socialist programs. Even opponents of Soviet occupation like Dubcek of Czechoslovakia were socialist who wanted “socialism with a human face”. No, the Soviets did not help socialism by suppressing Czechoslovakia in 1968; they betrayed it to tyrants instead. The U.S. may have PRIVATELY approved of the Soviets’ suppression of Czechoslovakia due to Dubcek’s opposition to the Vietnam War and to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. a few months earlier.
Any socialism that existed in the New Deal actually RESCUED conservatives from their own self-destructive dog-eat-dog habits during the 1920’s.
No, socialism is not a failure.
That does not surprise me that many of Sanders’ supporters would not automatically endorse Biden merely because their hero has decided to support him. He belatedly supported Hillary Clinton four years ago; and still, many of Sanders’s supporters either decided to stay home or vote for Trump. The same could happen again. I myself am a Sanders supporter, but I am not sure whether my conscience will allow me to support Biden. Although I will not vote for Trump, my loyalty to the Democratic Party is not automatic. I may write in a third-party candidate. Biden will definitely have to EARN my support before I cast any vote for him.