The Daily - Bernie Sanders Says Democrats Have Lost Their Way

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

The Democratic Party is sifting through the rubble of its sweeping election loss and trying to work out what went wrong.In an interview, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont discusses his diagnosis and how to chart a path back to power.Guest: Senator Bernie Sanders of VermontBackground reading: Democrats reeling from the election failure have begun playing the blame game.Who are the next leaders of the Democratic Party?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Today. As the Democratic Party sifts through the rubble of its sweeping electoral loss and tries to chart a path back to power. Few people have as clear-eyed a diagnosis as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, which is why I gave him a call. It's Friday, November 15th. Hello? Senator Sanders.

Yes. Michael Barbaro. Hey, Michael. How are you? Very well. I reached Senator Sanders inside his office on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning. You may not remember this, but the last time you and I spoke was back in 2020. We were in the same room and we were working on a profile of you

focused on your earliest days in public office as mayor of Burlington. It's not as vivid a memory for you, apparently, as it is for me. Was it a good story? I thought it was a good story. We had our moments, you and I, in that interview, and we don't need to reconstruct the whole thing, but there was a pointed moment where you were frustrated with something I asked. You almost got up and left, but then you decided to stay. All right. Let's do better this time. Moving on.

I just want to begin, Senator, by asking for your reaction to the news of the past 24 hours that Republicans have taken control of the House, because what that means is that Republicans now control both chambers and the White House. You are about to be in the minority as President-elect Trump brings a very aggressive agenda to Congress, an agenda frankly that Democrats have called, among other things, a threat to democracy. So how are you processing that? Well, obviously, our job is to rally the American people to make it clear, especially to working people that we need an economy and a government that works for all to expose as best we can what Trump and his administration are doing.

But it's not just an inside the beltway game. It's a question of rallying the American people to fight back effectively. So you're in a fighting mood. Oh, absolutely. I think right now is, this is a pivotal moment in American history and the next year or two will determine what happens in this country for decades in my view.

Fighting mood or not, are there any areas where you are prepared to work with the president-elect? Absolutely. And what might those be? If Trump, for example, follows through on his proposal to limit interest rates on credit cards to 10%, which is what he campaigned on, absolutely, I will be there.

I think that's a very good idea. I think it's time we told the people on Wall Street they cannot charge desperate working class people who can't have a hard time paying their bills 25 30 40 percent interest rates, that's usurious That's immoral and if Trump wants to impose a credit card limit on interest rates, I'll be there So where your vision of championing the working class overlaps with his you may back his agenda If he comes up with reasonable ideas, yes, I would be interested in working with him.

Let's turn to what I think is going to be the heart of this conversation, Senator Sanders, which is the effort underway across the Democratic Party, and you're a big part of it, of reckoning with the meaning of the outcome of this election and understanding not just why Kamala Harris didn't win, but why Donald Trump in victory expanded his electoral reach into communities of color, into America's youth, into blue state America, including your own home state of Vermont, where when you look at the New York Times graphic, you see those red arrows suggesting his support deepened since he last ran. Donald Trump has created the most racially and politically diverse coalition of any Republican in a generation.

And you have participated, as I said, in the post-mortem underway across the Democratic Party. And I just want to read something you have said that a lot of people, when they read it, found very bracing. This is what you said. Quote, it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that working class people have abandoned them. And you went on to say, first, this abandonment was among white working class Americans.

Now it is Latino and black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and they want change and they're right. I want you to just explain what you mean and be very specific, if you can, when you say that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class. When and how did the Democratic Party abandon the working class? Well, it's something that's been going on for decades, including disastrous trade policies pushed by Bill Clinton.

You're talking about NAFTA. Yeah, that's right. The reality is the American people, well, many of them, are angry and they have every reason to be angry. Today in America, and sometimes some of the elite does not understand this, today in America, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck. I understand the stress involved in that. It means that if your car breaks down,

you don't know how you get to work. If you get sick, you don't know whether or not you can afford to go to a doctor. If your landlord raises rent by 20%, you don't know where you're gonna live, where your kid is gonna go to school. That's the reality, facing 60% of the American people. Meanwhile, the very wealthiest people in this country

have never ever had it so good. That's a reality. So what happened in this campaign is Donald Trump said to the American people, you're angry, you're really pissed off, and I know that, and you're right. And then he gave his explanation and his explanation which was obviously nonsense and false and racist etc was that millions and millions of

Undocumented people were coming across the border. They were invading America or an occupied country They were taking your jobs taking your benefits eating your cats and your dogs. That is why you are hurting. Now that is a crazy explanation, but it is an explanation. Now you tell me what the democratic explanation was. Well, please, please, please explore that map this critique onto the democratic campaign and its shortcomings. Well, the democratic explanation was, Hey, we have passed some good things, very important things in the Biden administration, which happens to be true.

Biden kept his word. He was the most progressive president on domestic issues since FDL. We did a lot of good things. But instead of saying, yeah, we are rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, we're lowering the cost of prescription drugs. We are transforming our energy system.

We forgave student debt for five million people, making some progress. But we have a long, long way to go. Wait, can I just pause you? Because I think I'm not certain I'm understanding something. Where did the campaign of Kamala Harris go wrong if it was working with what you're describing as the building blocks of a successful policy agenda? And I know that you have said many, many times. It's not just Kamala Harris. It's the Democrats. In other words, let me read you something,

if I might. Please. What I think is one of the most interesting speeches ever given. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inaugural speech in 1936, middle of the Depression. So he starts his speech, he says, look, these are the things we did, these are the obstacles that we had to overcome. And then he says, after being president for four years,

he says that I quote, I see millions of families trying to live on income so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meagre that the Paul of family disaster hangs over them day by day. I see millions of night education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and a lot of their children. I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." In other words, what Roosevelt did is said, look, we're making progress.

But I look out all over this country and I see tens of millions of people who are hurting. Instead of doing that, the Democrats said, well, we passed the inflation adjustment act and the economy is pretty good. And Donald Trump's a bad guy. And we all defend the woman's constitutional right to an abortion. There was no appreciation, no appreciation

of the struggling and the suffering of millions and millions of working class people. And unless you recognize that reality and have a vision of how you get out of that, I think you're not going to be going very far as a political party. You're saying that the party in this last election didn't communicate that they understood Americans' pain. As a result, they came off as defending the status quo.

And I mean, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that Kamala Harris was asked repeatedly what she would do differently in this campaign and pretty much said she didn't think anything needed to be done differently. And she didn't campaign on disruption or large scale change. You seem to be suggesting that's at the heart of Trump's victory? The point that I am making is that ordinary people are not stupid. They see what's going on in their own eyes. And if you're not even talking about the reality of what is going on, the reality of their lives, they're going to say, hey, no change is going to come. Why would I want to vote for a group

of people who don't even acknowledge the reality? For example, you tell me, you follow these things. I do. We have today more income and wealth inequality than we've ever had in the history of this country. Did you hear a lot of discussion on that? No. We are the only major country on earth

not to guarantee healthcare to all people is a human right, and the only major country not to provide paid family and medical leave. Do you hear much discussion on that? Not in this campaign. Not in this campaign. You've got 20 million people in America today who are trying to get by on less than $15 an hour. Did you hear any serious discussion of the need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage?

I don't think we did. Oh, missed that one, too. Why do you think that understanders that Democrats? didn't communicate an Understanding of his pain I mean one of the ongoing critiques of the Democratic Party that emerged since this election is that it is a party of elites captive to college educated coastal

America and that it's not understanding and communicating this pain, because it's not living that pain. Well, that's only half of it. It is not beholden to college-educated people. That's the wrong word. It is beholden to the donors who put hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into it. And to the bloody consultants out there

who will end up this campaign making zillions of dollars doing their 30-second TV ads, rather than figuring out how we talk reality to ordinary people and get them involved in the political process. Sender, I want to talk about what Democrats did talk about in this last campaign, because I think it may get to a second element of your critique, aside from big money and aside from the question of whether Democrats failed to communicate an understanding of a working class American pain. And in your second critique of Democrats in this moment was around identity. And I want to read what you said about identity politics.

And just to define this phrase, identity politics, I think what you mean is a focus on racial identity, sexual identity, among others. This is what you said. You said, it's not just Kamala Harris. It's a democratic party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class. This trend of workers leaving the democratic party, and you return to this theme, started with whites and it has accelerated to Latinos and blacks.

When I hear you say that, I hear you saying, and I want to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly, that the Democratic Party, including over the past year or so in this campaign, has turned off many working class Americans who feel that the way the Democratic Party, especially its leaders, talk about things like race and gender and trans people, leaves them feeling alienated from that conversation, being policed and even scolded by it for not using the right words,

for not accepting something like trans youth on sports teams. Is that what you mean? Or what do you mean? But I think the more important point is being ignored. Their needs are being ignored. And let me be very clear. Where the Democratic Party deserves a lot of credit over the last many decades is in fact leading the effort for women's rights. And we have come a long way until Roe v. Wade, as a matter of fact. And the Democratic Party deserves a lot of credit

for fighting for civil rights, for fighting for gay rights, for fighting to end bigotry, all forms of bigotry in this country. Democrats were right on that struggle. But you can go forward in both directions. You can say, we are gonna fight for a bigotry free America. That's an ongoing struggle.

We made progress, we got a long way to go. But at the same time, we can stand up for the working class in this country, which by the way, happens to be significantly African American and Latino and women who are the bulk of the working class in this country. So it's not either or, it's going forward in both directions. That is a winner. Some of the Democrat pundits say, well, you know, the problem is all of these Trump people are racists and they're sexist and they're homophobes. Well,

no doubt that some of them are, and that's true. Most of them are not, and I suspect many of them actually voted for the first black president in American history, Barack Obama. All right. But they are in large numbers, working class people, and we've got to speak to them in an economic perspective that is clear and straightforward. I guess I'm a touch confused by the answer you just gave because your quote about identity politics seemed to suggest that the Democratic Party's focus on identity is in some opposition to its ability to appeal to working class voters who may feel turned off about that.

But then in your answer, I felt a little bit of a retreat from that understanding. I just want to be sure. No, it's not a retreat. It's not a retreat from that understanding. I just want to be sure. No, it's not a retreat. It's not a retreat. You can say, look, isn't it great that we have, in fact, a very smart and effective black woman who's on the Supreme Court? Great. But you don't hang your head on that.

You say, hey, well, what you also want to do is talk about the reality of what's going on in the African-American community all over this country. So it's a matter of communicating that perhaps the democratic core values are things like diversity, but not to the exclusion of these central questions of economics. It's not either or, it is both. And you have to decide what does, what is the vision of the democratic body? Who's the democratic Party taking on you tell me Michael in this campaign?

Donald Trump was taking on I mean every day there was another enemy out there But by and large the basic problem was millions of illegal Immigrants coming in who are eating our cats and dogs and they were the enemy you're gonna solve that problem. Everything would be great Who's the Democratic Party taking on in that campaign? I mean, what was their explanation? What were they going to do to address the fact that so many people in America are struggling? That it had anything to do with the greed of corporate America? The fact that you have a billionaire class today that wants it all, they want to own the political system? Does anyone really talk about the degree

to which the people on top own this country and want more and more and could give a damn about ordinary Americans? Now that is what I believe, unlike Trump, that's what I believe the cause of our problems are. I believe that we can create a nation in which all people have healthcare, all kids have good quality childcare,

we have a strong public education system. I believe we can do that, but we're not going to do it unless we are able to take on the big money interests who want to use this economy to make themselves even richer than they are right now. That is the defining issue. To go back just a second, you seem very clear on the idea that the Democratic Party can be a party that embraces diversity as a core value and even elements of what you described as identity politics.

But I just wonder if you can grapple with the reality that Donald Trump's message in opposition to things like diversity, equity, and inclusion, holding it up as a boogeyman and suggesting that it is unfair and that Democrats want to bring that unfairness and make it more and more central to the country's identity seem to resonate in this election. Well, it resonates within the context of Democrats not recognizing the pain that ordinary people are feeling

and taking on the people who caused that pain and routing people around an agenda that works for them. You know, you can't fight something with nothing. You gotta have an alternative vision. Trump had his vision. It was incorrect, it was dishonest, it was in many cases racist and sexist. He had a vision. He had a vision.

He had an explanation. To my view, Democrats really did not. We'll be right back. I want to press a little bit further into this question of democratic leadership being out of touch with the working class and not meeting voters where they are. You've started to clearly articulate this when you criticized the Democrats for not appreciating and communicating the pain of America's working class. But another element of this emerging Democratic critique since Election Day is that Democrats have drawn what some are saying is unnecessary lines in the sand about where they go to have

this conversation in the first place. When you were a candidate for president, you had no problem going on shows like Joe Rogan's. He ended up backing you for president in 2016. And in this campaign, Joe Rogan invited all the candidates on his show. Donald Trump said yes, JD Vance said yes, tens of millions of people saw it. Vice President Harris declined that invitation to go on the show. We suspect in part because they worried about blowback from Democrats who don't like Rogan. They think he's insensitive.

He's not one of them. And since then, we found that some voters viewed that Rogan interview with Trump as kind of decisive in their decision to vote for Trump. Are Democrats writing off too many places and too many mediums in this moment and making a mistake in their ability to reach working class voters where they are? Well, funny you ask that, Michael. I am thinking back to when I ran for president in 2020 and I did an interview with the New York Times.

You work for the New York Times, right? I do. And we did an interview with the editorial board of the New York Times, of which I think they gave each member, 20 members or so, I don't remember, two votes apiece. Right? I was either ahead or in second place in the polls at that time. And of the 40 votes that were cast, I got one of the votes.

That was what the New York Times thought of my campaign. And yet here I am on your show, as an employee of the New York Times. Am I afraid of being on your show? I am not. Am I afraid of being on Joe Rogan's show? No. Bottom line is, what every communications director knows

is that there is a new world of media out there. And it's not just NBC, CBS or the New York Times. It is podcasts, it is Joe Rogan, it is Fox News, it is young people who nobody in the democratic leadership has ever heard of who have YouTube programmers that attract millions of people. That is the reality. Can you ignore that?

That is insane. Anyone who thinks you could ignore that reality is crazy. In my experience, not that I've been on millions of these shows, the people that I talk to treat me with respect. And I think you cannot be, you know, Oh, Joe Rogan said this or he says that. Yeah, so what? You know, my wife disagrees with me on this or that issue. So what?

You can't run away from somebody because they may have said something stupid or something that you disagree with. That's life. But most importantly, when you go on the show, what do you say? So Joe Rogan asks you, what do you think about the fact that we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before? Oh, well, I can't answer that question. What do you think about the fact that we're the only major country not to guarantee health care? Well, gee, I'd like to not talk about that, but I don't want to offend the insurance companies. Why are we paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?

Well, I can't talk about that because I get money from the pharma. That's the problem. So, yeah, you've got to go on different outlets. Of course you do. But most importantly, you've got to know what you believe and what you're prepared to fight for and what your vision for the future of this country is. Do you think that the Democratic Party is really prepared to go where it needs to go in taking the lessons that you're laying out here and really moving ahead with them? I don't know if you know that former speaker Nancy Pelosi came on a podcast by our colleague Lulu Garcia Navarro and was

presented with your critique word- word of the Democratic Party. And if I can put it politely, she dismissed it and said, well, I completely disagree with what he's saying. By the way, Kamala Harris did better than, you know, Senator Sanders in Vermont on election day. She pointed out you've lost your races for president and Democratic primaries. Well, I'll tell you, I got 63% of the vote and I didn't spend one nickel on advertising in Vermont.

How's that? Look, I respect Nancy and we've known each other for years and we've worked together on some issues like the American Rescue Plan, which I thought was a very consequential piece of legislation. But, you know, Nancy and I have different visions as to the future. I think

Nancy's views may reverberate here inside the Beltway. I'm sure a lot of the pundits and the consultants and politicians agree with Nancy. I suspect if you go out into the hinterlands, you'll find that most people agree with me. Senator, looking forward to not just the idea that the party will take what you're saying and perhaps run with it, but that it needs to be embodied in a candidate who can win. When you close your eyes and think of who can lead the party out of this very decisive and for many Democrats devastating loss, what do you see?

Not necessarily who do you see. Maybe there is a who in your mind, but what is that future candidate? Look, it's a candidate, preferably, but not necessarily somebody from the working class who can speak to working class people, who will fight to end all forms of bigotry in this country, but is mostly prepared to take on the big money interests who today have an unprecedented level of economic and political power. With the advent of all the new technologies out there, Michael, in terms of artificial intelligence, in terms of robotics, etc. We truthfully have the capability now of creating a society where all of our people have a decent standard of living. Yeah, we can

actually wipe out poverty. We don't need to have people sleeping out on the streets. The question is who will control the utilization of that technology and who will benefit from it. So we need to have somebody who primarily is prepared to stand up to the ruling class of America and say, you know what? We'd like your entrepreneurial capabilities, but you've got to control your greed. You can no longer have it all. You're going to be an important part of the future, but you're not going to own and important part of the future, but you're not going to own and control the future. We need somebody like that.

Do you think that if Democrats do meet voters where they are and connect with the pain and they pitch the kind of progressive policies that you're advocating for here, especially on economics, that is the winning combination or has trust in the Democratic Party, for a lot of the reasons we've been talking about here, been strained if not broken in a way that means that even getting it right here is not really possible. Well, that's a very good question. Because there's been a huge loss of faith in government. That's right.

That's right. You're right on that. And I will tell you that even within the confines of the Democratic caucus, and I don't talk about things that happen behind closed doors, but you'll have Democrats, US senators standing up and saying, you know what? They hate us out there. Us, the government or the party? Well, they hate the party and they understand and you're onto another issue, which we don't

have time to get into right now. Even when government does the right thing, You got a bureaucracy, which is so slow in implementation of policy that people don't see it when they should be seeing it, but that's a whole other issue. It's another issue and perhaps another conversation, but if people don't have faith in government, how do your solutions, which do require a tremendous role for our government, how do you sell them?

Well, that's, that's, Well that's again a good question. And I think here's where we're at. The Elon Musk of the world will say, look, government can't do anything. It's going to be the private sector. Cut it, cut it, cut it is his message, right? Right. And look, Elon Musk is a very, very aggressive and capable business person, very impressive of what he's accomplished.

And he says, I could do more in a week than the government can do in you know five years. In some ways he is right. The problem is at the end of his efforts he ends up making zillions of dollars and working-class people are not any better off. All right. The alternative is to say oh let the government do it right now but you've got a government that is inefficient and bureaucratic. Right. So people are looking and say, all right, we've got the greed of the ruling class. They do things pretty well, but they end up with all the money, and the working class ends up with the lowest standard of living than the youth staff.

Or you've got a government which is very slow in doing anything. So that is, it seems to me, where we are as a nation. We've got to do better than that. What's the answer? The answer is to bring young people into government who believe in a mission to improve the lives of people, whether you work in the post office, whether you work in the Veterans Administration,

whether you work in Social Security, pay these people well, give them good management, let them be proud of the important work that they are doing. No more important work in this country than being a public school teacher, all right? Yet we underpay those teachers, we put them under terrible working conditions. Choice has got to be to modernize government, make government work for ordinary people, healthcare for all of the human right.

If other countries around the world can have national healthcare programs, so can the United States of America. We're not dumb under the people. I have a final question for you. When Trump won last time, many Democrats organized themselves into what was loosely described, sometimes by them, as the resistance. That resistance, many Democrats now think, ended up pushing the party further and further to the left, leading to things like a primary in 2020 in which people like Kamala Harris made commitments to left-wing causes

that came back to haunt her and made it possible for Republicans to... Well, now you're on to another. Michael, this is where you... No, I'm just... You're dead wrong. This is my final question. Do you worry that the party could be heading down that path again of resistance... Michael, you haven't heard a word that I've said. And that's impressive. You know, it's the things that Kamala was talking about, the things that I was talking

about. Every one of those issues is enormously popular. Is that what you're talking about? No, no, no. I mean on social issues. Oh, I don't know. You know, social issues, you know, she, I don't know. Yeah, setting Kamala aside, I think what you're about to tell me is, Michael, many of the

economic issues on the left are very popular with many Americans as economic policy. Yeah, we have polled them all. In Missouri, you may have followed in this election, Missouri, a conservative state, 58% of the people voted to raise the minimum wage. Oh, by the way, we haven't been able to do that here in a democratically controlled US Senate. When those policies were in isolation on the ballot, separate from a Democratic party and candidate carrying all the baggage that we're talking about here.

Well, the point is, if Democrats were focusing on those issues and saying, gee, how come that one Republican wants to raise the minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour? How come one Republican doesn't believe that healthcare is a human right? How come one Republican doesn't want to expand social security so that the elderly people can live their lives with dignity? You put them on the defensive, but when you don't offer anything, you are on the defensive. Right. I mean, it's worth saying that many of those Missouri voters

voted for those progressive economic policies as ballot measures, and then turned around and voted for Trump, which means it's deeper than policy. Well, maybe next time we'll go into that. No, it's not deeper than policy. Senator, I know you have to go. I don't know if you've been thinking about this, but you're 83.

And thanks, Michael. I did know that. See, this is a precept of New York Times investigative reporter. There we go, there we go. But running for president, depending on the moment and the candidate, can be a very age-defiant question, and you still sound like a candidate for president to me. I mean, is it totally out of the question?

Yeah, yes, I don't think the American people want a president who's 104 years of age. So you know. You'd be 87. All right. Well, the answer is I would say it's, you know, I'm very proud that the people of Vermont in very large numbers reelected me for a fourth term. I'm very proud of that. And that's where we are.

All right. Senator, thank you for your time. Thank you. Bye bye. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. President-elect Trump said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department, giving a vocal skeptic of vaccines, responsibility for the nation's vast system of public health.

If Kennedy is confirmed, his resistance to public health measures and his embrace of alternative medicine could lead to fierce clashes with the agencies that he would oversee. And on Thursday, the governor of New York dramatically revived a first in the nation plan to fund mass transit by tolling cars in Manhattan's busiest neighborhoods. And I'm proud to announce we have found a path to find the MTA, reduce congestion, and keep millions of dollars in the pockets of our commuters. Governor Kathy Hochul said that the program, known as congestion pricing, would begin in January with a toll of $9 per car, down from the original price tag of $15 per car.

Hokel had canceled the plan over the summer because she argued that original toll was too high. Remember, you can catch a new episode of The Interview right here tomorrow. This week, David Marchese talks with Dr. Ellen Weed, a long-time advocate for and practitioner of medical assistance in dying. Sometimes I struggle when I see a young, beautiful person choosing to leave earlier than they needed to. But I believe so strongly in basic human rights. If that person says that they can't live

in with this condition, I will honor their wishes. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Michael Simon Johnson, and Nina Feldman. It was edited by Paige Coward, Lisa Chow, and Patricia Willens, with help from Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Runberg and Ben Landsferk of Wonderlay. Special thanks to Lexi Diel, Lisa Lair, Reid Epstein, and Shane Goldmacher.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bobaro. See you on Monday.