Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is performing well against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary only because his supporters don’t understand how things get done in America, former congressman Barney Frank charged this week.
Frank explained his theory Monday during an interview on MSNBC interview that brought up a recent Slate interview in which Frank said Sanders’ list of accomplishments is embarrassingly thin.
“I think it is a lack of information, to be honest,” Frank said. “The fact is that if you are seriously committed to a set of public policy goals, then you are voting all the time and you also … you have people who don’t understand frankly the nature of the American political system. It’s the separation of powers. It takes, because of the Constitution, not because of anybody individual, maybe because of James Madison, but nobody more recently, it takes you two elections to get a governing majority in America.”
“And what happened is look, the people who decided ‘I’m not going to vote, they haven’t done everything I want,’ so they vote for Obama in ’08, the Republicans in ’10, the Democrats re-elect Obama in ’12, the Republicans in ’14. Not individual switching, but the electorate, and that’s why we have gridlock,” the former Massachusetts congressman said. “I think what you have is people who frankly don’t understand that, and it is a case of people blaming a ‘system’ when the system is simply the accumulation of their own behavior.”
When asked to clarify further, Frank said, “the ones who don’t vote are the ones who lack information.”
“She’s way ahead of him in votes cast, but you have people who, because of I think a lack of information and a misunderstanding of the process, not having voted, people are reluctant to blame themselves. People like to find somebody else to blame, so they’ll [say], ‘Sanders pointed out it’s that system’s fault,’ and I think that’s unfortunate,” he added.
Frank concluded by claiming Sanders supporters don’t seem to realize how “you really get change done in America.”
