Former U.S. House representative Barney Frank responded Tuesday to Bernie Sanders’s call to oust him from his role as co-chair of the Democratic party’s rules committee, saying that the Vermont senator is sore about his loss to front-runner Hillary Clinton.
“Senator Sanders is disappointed that he hasn’t won. He is losing. He is losing not because anything was rigged or because of any trickery, he’s losing because Hillary Clinton has gotten more votes,” Frank, a Clinton supporter, said. He also agreed with MSNBC’s Kate Snow that Sanders was “making a big deal out of something that is not that big of a deal.”
The former Massachusetts congressman labeled Sanders’s assertion that he was “being cheated” as “bogus” and a distraction tactic, and underscored that the rules committee does not set or create the party rules, but applies them.
“The rules committee simply says, ‘Here are the rules that have already been set.’ We don’t set the rules,” Frank said. “I think what you have here is a kind of a diversionary tactic to try and take away, to give an alternative explanation to why he’s losing.”
Frank’s remarks come after Sanders’s attorney, Brad Deutsch, sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee Friday, in which he called Frank and his co-chair Connecticut governor Dannel Malloy “harsh, vocal critics of Sen. Sanders and equally active supporters of his challenger, Hillary Clinton.”
“The chairs therefore cannot be relied upon to perform their convention duties fairly and capably while laboring under such deeply held bias,” Deutsch wrote. The DNC denied the Sanders campaign’s request.
Frank also speculated Tuesday that Clinton has more pledged delegates than Sanders because the Vermont senator did not campaign for black votes.
“One of the things that Senator Sanders, I guess, didn’t pay attention to, is that black votes matter,” Frank said. “There’s been a very large African-American vote for Hillary Clinton as well as from others. As a result, she has more votes.”
He also criticized Sanders’s choice of Princeton University professor Cornel West as one of his five allotted appointments to the party’s drafting committee.
“Cornel West is one of the most bitter critics of President Obama. I found that very regrettable. Mr. West is a man who has impugned President Obama’s commitment as an African American to civil rights,” Frank said. “But that was Sanders’s right to do that.”
Ultimately, Frank stated that it would be “hard” for Sanders to support Hillary Clinton, but expressed hope that Sanders, a “man of integrity,” would eventually concede and support her out of a desire to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
