DNC Chair Jaime Harrison Slams Bernie Sanders’ Election Loss Critique as ‘Total BS’

Following U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ analysis of Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat in the recent election, where she lost both the popular and Electoral College votes to President-elect Donald Trump, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison dismissed Sanders’ longstanding advice that the Democratic Party should prioritize economic justice. Harrison, who has previously lobbied for major corporations like Bank of America and BP, labeled Sanders’ comments as “utter nonsense.”

Harrison, who leads the Democratic National Committee, emphasized that the Biden-Harris administration had already adopted policies beneficial to workers, suggesting that the Democratic Party has adequately championed economic justice. His remarks overlooked clear signs that working-class voters were shifting their support towards Trump and the Republicans.

“[President Joe] Biden is the most pro-worker president in my lifetime—he secured union pensions, created millions of well-paying jobs, and even joined a picket line,” Harrison stated.

Biden has received commendation from progressives and labor unions for implementing pro-labor regulations concerning overtime pay and non-compete clauses, supporting unionization efforts by Amazon workers in Alabama, overseeing a National Labor Relations Board that has tackled numerous corporate labor violations, and being the first sitting U.S. president to walk a picket line.

Furthermore, he worked alongside Sanders on the Build Back Better Act, aimed at enhancing child tax credits, public education, and providing free community college. However, opposition from conservative Senator Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), then a Democrat, and Republicans, ultimately led to the bill’s failure.

In his statement on Thursday, Sanders remarked, “It’s no surprise that a Democratic Party abandoning the working class would find the working class abandoning them.”

Sanders questioned whether the “highly paid consultants who dominate the Democratic Party” would “absorb any real lessons from this electoral disaster?”

“Probably not,” he concluded.

Harris’s campaign platform included measures to end overpricing in the food sector, broaden the child tax credit, and extend Medicare to cover home healthcare, dental, and vision. However, her proposal for a reduced capital gains tax for the affluent alarmed progressive supporters.

As Common Dreams reported, Biden’s advisors this week suggested Harris compromised her initial message that Trump favored corporate interests by promoting billionaire businessman Mark Cuban as a leading campaign figure.

Whether Harrison and other Democratic leaders will heed these insights from Biden’s circle remains uncertain, given Harrison’s antagonism towards Sanders’ critique.

“There are plenty of post-election opinions, and this is certainly not one of the better ones,” Harrison commented.

Journalist Mitchell Northam observed that since Sanders’ 2016 presidential run as a Democrat, the party has consistently dismissed and shown hostility towards his focus on economic justice and severing ties with Wall Street.

Sanders’ viewpoint recently received unexpected support from conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, who had previously dismissed Sanders in 2020 as “useless” and “marginal.”

“I prefer when Democratic candidates move towards the center,” Brooks wrote. “But it seems Harris did that quite effectively, and it didn’t work. Perhaps Democrats need to adopt a Bernie Sanders-style shake-up—something that unsettles people like me.”

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch praised Brooks for his “remarkable moment of self-realization.”

Progressive Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid expressed hope that Democratic leaders like Harrison might do the same. “Typically, after a major electoral loss,” he said, “party leaders step aside to make room for new perspectives and voices that have not yet had the opportunity to lead.”