Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Sunday that Democrats must stress that they stand with the working class as some voters claim the party has instead embraced a “woke agenda.”
President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 Presidential Election, winning all seven swing states. The defeat has raised many questions about the Democrats’ approach this election season. Vermont senator Sanders, who was easily reelected, has accused the party of abandoning the working class.
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“We need an agenda that says to the working class, we’re going to take on these powerful special interests and create an economy and a government that works for you,” Sanders said on CNN’s State of the Union.
However, CNN reporter Dana Bash noted that there are some social and cultural divides where people have claimed the Democrat party has embraced a “woke agenda.”
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Sanders said, “Trump has done a good job in claiming that Democrats do nothing more than the woke agenda.”
“The Democrats should be proud of standing up for women’s rights and abortion rights and gay rights and civil rights. But the emphasis got to be … to make it clear that we are prepared to stand with the vast majority of the people, many of whom are falling further and further behind, while the people on top [are] phenomenally wealthy,” he added.
Earlier this week, Sanders released a statement stating that the Democrats have “abandoned working class people.” Union leaders supported the Biden administration, and President Joe Biden called himself the most pro-labor President in American history.
Harris struggled with voters who make under $100,000 compared to President Joe Biden. In 2020, he secured 56% of the vote among that group. Harris lost the group to Trump, 50% to 46%. This is one in a long list of subgroups of working-class voters who swung toward the Republican ticket this time around.
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Democrat lawmakers like Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have pushed back against Sanders’s beliefs that the Democrats have lost the working class.
Pelosi told the New York Times earlier this week, “I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working-class families. That’s where we are.”