Sanders isn’t well liked in his own party. At least he’s honest about how they’ve screwed up.
And now Bernie Sanders admitted the obvious failure Democrats need to grapple with.
When a self-described democratic socialist agrees with a Republican talking point about why the Democratic Party keeps losing working-class Americans, it is worth stopping to listen. That is precisely what happened Saturday, when Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told an MS NOW interviewer that his own party failed the people it claims to champion.
Asked what exactly Democrats had done wrong to lose working-class voters to President Trump, Sanders did not dodge. “What I think what Trump did, again — this gets back to my view — that the Democratic Party failed working-class people on economic issues,” he said. He then drew a line between what his party is good at and what it has neglected.
“I think they have a lot to be proud of in terms of fighting for civil rights, for women’s rights, for gay rights, for environmental stuff, but in terms of working-class issues, no, I don’t think they’ve done a good job,” Sanders added. That is a notable concession from the most prominent progressive in the Senate, and it matches what millions of ordinary Americans have been saying for years.
Sanders went further, pointing to broken promises and trade policy. “What they did is for years, they heard the Democrats say, ‘Oh, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, and we’re going to help you.’ And they didn’t. And it’s true. Democrats pushed through terrible trade deals, which cost us millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs, et cetera, et cetera. They lost faith in the Democratic Party, and not unjustifiably. All right?” he said.
Pay attention to the last phrase, “not unjustifiably.” Sanders is not claiming voters were fooled or manipulated. He is saying they had good reasons. That is a far cry from the standard Washington explanation that working-class voters were duped by clever messaging or cultural grievance.
The numbers back him up. A 2024 Fox News Voter Analysis found that Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris 53% to 45% among voters with household incomes between $50,000 and $99,999, while Harris carried voters earning $100,000 or more by 53% to 46%. Trump also won voters who reported falling behind financially by 29 percentage points, and around 40% of voters named inflation as the most important factor in their vote, a group that backed Trump by nearly two to one.
In other words, the old map in which Democrats are the party of the factory floor and Republicans are the party of the country club has been turned upside down. Sanders is describing a realignment that conservatives did not invent but have benefited from: working Americans left a party that talked about them and moved toward one that, at least in their view, speaks for them.
This is not new for Sanders. After Trump’s 2024 victory, he excoriated the Democratic Party in a statement. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders said. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right,” he continued.
Not everyone on the left appreciated the honesty. Fox News noted separately that Democratic strategist James Carville has blamed Sanders for Trump being president in a fiery rant. The internal fight, in other words, is not over whether Democrats have a working-class problem, but over who is to blame for it and what the cure should be.
Sanders’ cure is not a conservative one, and readers should be clear-eyed about that. He wants a bigger role for government, higher taxes on the wealthy and the kind of programs most Republicans oppose. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who also appeared in the special, defended his agenda. “As the gap between the rich and the working class get bigger and bigger, and as the middle class, or our understanding of the middle class, starts to really disappear in this country, and more and more people that had previously felt okay find themselves more squeezed than ever,” she said. “I think that this has allowed the salience of class to really emerge in our politics.”
She added, “A lot of what Bernie’s been talking about forever, where I come from as well, in really forcefully taking on the corruption of corporate lobbying and fighting for working class issues, these issues have started to gain ground with more and more everyday Americans across party lines as well.”
The Republican National Committee, predictably, pounced. National press secretary Natalie Baldassarre told Fox News Digital: “Democrats can no longer claim to be the working class party when they hammer Americans with higher taxes, ship jobs overseas, and kill off the industries that make our country thrive. Democrats’ only interest is appeasing their far-left base that wants to destroy our country from the inside out, and working families pay the price.”
Here is where honest populists on the right should resist the urge to simply gloat. Sanders is right about the trade deals, right that the old parties promised relief that never came, and right that voters lost faith for good reason. But the same standard applies to Republicans. Voters who moved toward the GOP will judge it by whether factory jobs, wages and prices actually improve, not by who says the right things at the right time.
That is the real lesson of this moment. The working-class vote is up for grabs, and it will go to whichever party delivers on its promises. Sanders has just told his own side that it failed that test. Republicans would be wise to take the warning to heart, because the voters who left one party for failing them will leave the other just as quickly.
