Socialists refuse to back Biden

Democratic Socialists of America represents roughly 56,000 members from the ultra-left side of the political spectrum, many of whom in 2019 were reticent to support Sanders because he didn’t go far enough, claiming he was leading them into the “mainstream.”

However, the organization’s coolness toward Biden feeds into concerns he can’t turn out Sanders’s base, enthuse younger voters, and unify the party ahead of November as the group is courted by Green Party candidates like Howie Hawkins.

Sanders on Monday urged his supporters to back Biden, endorsing the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator in a digital event while jeopardizing his place in the movement he created by pitching himself against “Never Biden” members of his contingent. His former national press secretary, for example, refused to follow suit and fall in line.

“With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don’t endorse Joe Biden,” ex-Sanders spokeswoman Briahna Joy Gray tweeted. “I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like #MedicareForAll, cancelling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those.”

In an interview published Monday, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, another liberal firebrand and Sanders fan, didn’t rule out campaigning for Biden during the fall fight. But she said she had a laundry list of concessions she wanted to extract from the standard-bearer, describing his early offers to expand healthcare insurance coverage through Medicare as “almost insulting.”

“The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved — that’s how you know it’s working. And if Biden is only doing things he’s comfortable with, then it’s not enough,” Ocasio-Cortes told The New York Times.

In addition to rolling out joint policy task forces tackling healthcare, the economy, education, climate change, and criminal justice issues, Sanders on Monday touted Biden’s desire to “bring people in,” even if he disagreed with them.

“In this terrible moment in our history and given the enormous challenges that we face in the future, we don’t have a choice, we’re going to have to come together,” he said. “Let’s respect each other. Let’s address the challenges we face right now and in the future. And in that regard, Joe, I very much look forward to working with you.”

Yet Sanders has acknowledged the problem his backers pose, despite his bid this cycle arguably being stopped by black voters in South Carolina rather than influential Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, which he complained about in 2016 when he was in a race against Hillary Clinton.

“The more progressive the vice presidential candidate that he nominated, the better it would be in terms of the kind of response that our supporters would provide him,” he told PBS Newshour last week.

Biden has made repeated overtures to liberal Democrats since Super Tuesday last month when Sanders’s path to earning the party’s nod narrowed after the former vice president thumped him and the rest of the competition in South Carolina. He’s dropped complaints that the country is seeking results over a revolution, referring instead to himself as a “bridge” to a future generation of leaders and suggesting, “We can’t just go back to business as usual.”

Biden last month also adopted parts of Sanders’s education policy, which made public colleges and universities free for students from low-income and middle-class families, and the bankruptcy reform plan proposed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another progressive and former opponent.

He then broadened his education platform by vowing to forgive tuition debt for students from families whose combined income was below $125,000 and who attended public colleges and universities or private historically black and underfunded minority-serving institutions, as well as lowering Medicare’s eligibility age from 65 to 60.

Colby College’s Sandy Maisel defended Biden’s strategy, saying he was taking the necessary steps to heal the Democratic Party after the once record-breaking large and diverse field of White House hopefuls whittled down to a septuagenarian white, male establishment figure.

“Will he get support from everyone? I doubt it. In 2016, according to YouGov polling, about 18% of Sanders supporters did not vote for Hillary Clinton; most of those did not vote at all. I expect those numbers to be much lower in this year’s election, but there will be some holdouts,” he told the Washington Examiner, reflecting Biden’s higher favorability ratings compared to Clinton’s.

For Maisel, liberal Sanders backers had to weigh whether they were “willing to risk an outcome which is much worse than a Biden victory for the agenda they favor.”

“A Trump reelection,” he said. “But, I suppose, some who favor dismantling our system to improve it would view that as an acceptable outcome. Clearly, I don’t.”