Democrats praised Sen. Bernie Sanders last year as a “team player” for his efforts to help his former primary rival Joe Biden win the presidency. But in recent days, the Vermont socialist has become increasingly caustic in criticism of his centrist Democratic colleagues in the Senate.
Sanders faced criticism in 2016 for what some Democrats saw as a refusal to concede to Hillary Clinton and dragging out a brutal primary — but he won praise from Democrats for actively supporting Biden in 2020.
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Now Sanders is back on the attack against centrist Democrats Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia for their opposition to the cost of Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion social spending bill.
In a tweet Thursday, Sanders hit Manchin for his objections to the price tag of the bill. Manchin has said he would not support a bill over $1.5 trillion because he objects to creating an “entitlement society.”
The time is long overdue for Sen. Manchin to say with specificity – we’re beyond generalities – what he wants, and what he does not want, and to explain that to the people of West Virginia and America. pic.twitter.com/iznJu0a0cc
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 7, 2021
Sanders blasted Manchin for the comment.
“Is protecting working families and cutting childhood poverty an entitlement?” Sanders asked.
But Manchin is not the only object of Sanders’s ire: Axios reported Wednesday that Sanders withheld his support from a planned joint statement from Democratic leadership condemning protest tactics used against Sinema unless it included criticism of her position on the $3.5 trillion social spending bill.
Activists confronted Sinema, who is also a lecturer at Arizona State University’s School of Social Work, over her opposition to the bill and filmed her and her students in a bathroom last weekend.
In emails obtained by Axios, Senate Democratic leadership aides planned to issue a joint statement condemning the ambush, which they called “plainly inappropriate and unacceptable.”
An aide to Sanders requested an edit to the proposed statement urging Sinema to drop her opposition to the size of the spending bill. That request was rejected by an aide to Sen. Cory Booker, who organized the statement. The Booker aide said the New Jersey Democrat would not accept the edit. Sanders’s office then declined to participate.
Manchin, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sens. Dick Durbin, Mark Warner, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Catherine Cortez-Masto joined Booker in approving the statement.
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Centrist and progressive Democrats have thus far failed to reach an agreement on the size of the social spending bill, fueling hostility between some members of the party.
