President Trump has already started reaching out to Bernie Sanders’s supporters as his general election battle against Joe Biden begins in earnest.
Trump blamed Sanders’s main primary rival for liberal Democrats, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for undermining the Vermont senator’s White House campaign shortly after he announced he was suspending his second bid for the presidency.
“Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday! This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!” Trump tweeted.
Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday! This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2020
Warren and Sanders competed for more liberal Democrats over the course of their respective campaigns, with the Massachusetts senator, for example, saying she was “with Bernie” on his signature issue: “Medicare for all.” But Trump and Sanders, 78, also share an overlap in their bases, particularly among potential voters disenchanted with the so-called “establishment” who don’t usually take part in the political process.
Sanders’s decision Wednesday to bow out of the race means Biden, 77, is the Democratic Party’s 2020 presumptive nominee. His choice to exit comes after a protracted primary fight in 2016 against Hillary Clinton that was plagued by complaints of favoritism from the Democratic National Committee. Yet the senator indicated on Wednesday he hadn’t given up his hope of exerting influence on the party’s platform, a fact Trump quickly seized on.
“Wow, Bernie is unwilling to give up his delegates, and wants more of them! What’s that all about?” he wrote, adding he couldn’t “see” Sanders fan Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, backing Biden.
Wow, Bernie is unwilling to give up his delegates, and wants more of them! What’s that all about?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2020
Trump’s reelection team also jumped on Democratic Party fissures over Sanders.
“With Bernie Sanders suspending his campaign, it’s all but official that the Democrat establishment got the candidate they wanted in Joe Biden, as well as the candidate President Trump will destroy in November,” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote in a statement.
Parscale continued, “Democrat elites shoved Bernie Sanders to the side for a second time, leaving many of his supporters looking for a new home.”
Warren, 70, who ended her own White House bid after a string of disappointing showings in the first four contests and on Super Tuesday, has been a longtime political foil for Trump. The incumbent, 73, gifted her with the moniker “Pocahontas,” mocking her claims to Native American ancestry six to 10 generations ago.
