FWIW Bernie Sanders's private warning to Biden about the 2024 campaign (WP)

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/06/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-2024/

https://archive.ph/gSsQ2

Bernie Sanders’s private warning to Biden about the 2024 campaign
The Vermont senator and onetime presidential hopeful has urged the White House to articulate a clearer contrast with the GOP
By Jeff Stein
March 6, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. EST

...

How the administration handles the economy will emerge in the president’s State of the Union address to Congress on Thursday, as Biden’s 2024 election message against likely GOP nominee Donald Trump comes into fuller view.

Sanders confirmed his pitch to Biden and White House officials in an interview with The Washington Post. Biden tried approving an ambitious set of new social programs early in his term — including an expansion of Medicare benefits, a top Sanders priority — but was ultimately defeated by opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and congressional Republicans, and how much he’ll talk about those proposals in the campaign this year is unclear.

“The bubble is extraordinary: Democrats seem to think — many of them — that, only if we can explain all that we have accomplished, people will come on board. But that ignores the pain ordinary people are now experiencing,” Sanders said. “He has got to lay out a progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of working people, and promise if he has a Democratic majority in the House and Senate that he will implement that in the first few months of his term.”

Sanders made clear he is offering his advice as an ally who wants to see the president succeed. Unlike Sanders’s relationship with some other Democrats, the two octogenarians enjoy a mutual respect formed during their time together in the Senate, and Sanders has backed the White House — supporting all of the president’s legislative compromises, for instance — even amid pressure from others on the left.

The White House has telegraphed that Biden will embrace aggressive policy proposals — taxing the wealthy, for instance, and reining in prescription drug prices for seniors — in his State of the Union on Thursday.

...

[Mike Nelson]

1. The warning...

... is not Private anymore.

[underpants]

2. Didn't read it all but I agree.

The problem is that Bernie is waaaay smarter than a lot of political operatives.

Adding that mentioning COVID helps. As much as Trump is in court he’s so far dodging people remember how horrible he was.

[All Mixed Up]

6. It's always easier when you're not the man in the hotseat.

Bernie is smart but he also stumbled badly in 2020. He entered that race as one of the favorites but refused to expand his base. His whole goal in that election was to win a plurality of support and eventually be declared the winner at the convention. But there was no outreach at any point between 2016 and 2020 to, as an example, the Black community - at least no substantive outreach. So, he got absolutely destroyed in South Carolina (like he did four years earlier) in a race that, up until that point, was his to lose.

He's right that Biden needs to better articulate things but that's the same with every presidential candidate.

Even in 2012, the narrative about Obama was that he was failing to articulate his message:

Democrats Jittery Over Obama’s Sputtering 2012 Campaign

Still, Democrats say he should just articulate his vision. Leadership isn’t only about what you accomplish, but how much people understand what you’re trying to get done. “Think back to 1936 and FDR,” says Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution. “The fact they had thwarted him at every turn didn’t matter because people understood where he was coming from.”

[Cha]

7. Yeah he did.. and Thank Goodness for James Clyburn &

South Carolina, Sec of Transportation Buttigieg, , and Sen Amy Klobuchar!

[Nixie]

3. Irony? Bernie could also help with this.

Is he just thinking of this now? I'm glad he's had a change of direction in any regard.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

4. If you don't think he's been saying this,

then you aren't paying attention to him. He's trying to say it needs to be Biden's focus, too. It can't just be "Orange Man Bad."

[betsuni]

9. The Democratic message has never just been "Orange Man Bad," obviously.

[Nixie]

11. Thank you. And now we're rewriting the vast history

of him not acknowledging that Democratic policies have always been better than republicans. The parties are not the same. About time Bernie helps with that messaging.

[betsuni]

12. The message has always been that Democrats ignore the working and middle classes, have the same

economic policies as Republicans (neoliberal) because corrupt: "The point I make over and over again ... is the ideas that I talk about are ideas that the American people want. They don't get it because you got a Congress indebted to wealthy campaign contributors."

From his book published last year:

"Are some of them racists and sexists who vote for bigotry? Absolutely. But many are not. I think the more accurate answer as to why Trump has won working-class support lies in the pain, desperation, political alienation that millions of working-class Americans now experience and the degree to which the Democratic Party has abandoned them for wealthy campaign contributions and the 'beautiful people.'

"Many of these so-called racist Americans voted for Barack Obama, our first Black president, and for 'hope' and 'change' and 'Yes, we can.' And they voted to reelect him. But their lives did not get better. ... They see not only a government that is ignoring their needs but politicians busy attending fundraising events with the rich, who have no clue as to what the lives of the great majority of Americans are about."

It's really great that he is supporting Biden so vigorously and that the parties are not the same! Thank you, Bernie.

[Nixie]

14. There it is! That's exactly what I was referencing and remembering.

His focus was on saying both parties are the same because they have wealthy donors. Everything was completely focused on campaign contributions and implying corruption of anyone who took money from a corporation.

Now he's clarifying that indeed Democrats are different. Thanks Bernie. So glad he's on board.

Thanks betsuni! You nailed it. Edit: I'm going to reference your post if that's ok.

[betsuni]

16. The message has been consistent, many many many examples over the years.

Of course reference away!

The belief is that after the 1972 election the Democratic Party abandoned the white working class and unions in favor of Wall Street and corporations and shifted Right, have no progressive policies:

"Over the last 30 or 40 years the Democratic Party has transformed itself from the party of the working class ... to a party significantly controlled by a liberal elite which has moved very far away from the needs of the working families in this country."

"There are people in this country who are hurting, and they are hurting terribly. And for years they looked to the Democratic Party, which at one time was the party of working people, and they looked and they looked and they looked and they got nothing in return. And out of desperation, they turned to Donald Trump."

I find this very interesting!

[Cuthbert Allgood]

19. Not a single one of those quotations say the parties are the same.

But you go on, I guess.

His messaging has been consistent that the working class and the poor need more from government than they are getting. Do you disagree with that or do you think we're rocking it in that regard?

We, as a party, have problems. We can't just pretend we don't.

[Nixie]

10. His messaging is very well known. Now he's saying that there

really is a difference between the parties. It's great he is focusing his own messaging into promoting our party instead of his own political ethos. Glad to see he's changing his messaging.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

13. If you seriously think he is saying there is no difference,

I don't know how to have a conversation with that. Sanders has been a staunch supporter of the the Democratic Party for years.

[Nixie]

15. Unfortunately, yes, very serious about Bernie's messaging.

I will say that with the recent election losses and struggles with messaging that left some candidates underperforming, I would assume his followers would be realizing his messaging isn't really progressive. It's just Bernie's views. I see that's not always the case.

I'll refer you to post 12 in this thread that has some quotes from Bernie showing his old messaging. I'm so glad he's going to be cleaning this up. That's what I meant by Bernie helping.

[diva77]

5. Preservation of Social Security! Even the Magats want their Social Security

[ificandream]

8. I hope Bernie and AOC get out there and campaign.

Their voices will be very helpful in getting Biden re-elected.

[pansypoo53219]

17. + less pointing to how bad trump is. hillary tried that. be positrive. you ended afghanistan. inflation is down, etcetc.

immigration is a problem because we are too good.

[betsuni]

18. Hillary was positive, it's a myth that Democrats didn't/don't have a message except "We're not Trump."

Heard a lot of that disinformation in 2016, that Hillary only ran attack ads.

And media never reported the many economic messages and plans Hillary had. Number one word in Hillary's speeches was "jobs": "But you probably don't remember hearing anything about this bus tour. In fact, you may well have heard that I didn't campaign like this at all; that I ignored the Rust Belt, didn't have an economic message, and couldn't connect with working-class voters."

"Throughout the campaign we always tried to have a positive track of advertising on the air, laying out what I was for and where we needed to go economically. We did that even when we were also running spots highlighting Trump's unfitness for office."