Sanders Warns Biden About Freezing Out Far Left - It Would Be 'Very Unfortunate'
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is warning Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that he’d better include radical leftists in his Cabinet if he gets installed in the White House — or else.
The self-proclaimed democratic socialist said it would be deeply “insulting” to the far-left faction of the Democratic Party if Biden decided to freeze out progressives.
“It seems to me pretty clear that progressive views need to be expressed within a Biden administration,” Sanders recently told The Associated Press.
“It would be, for example, enormously insulting if Biden put together a ‘team of rivals’ — and there’s some discussion that that’s what he intends to do — which might include Republicans and conservative Democrats — but which ignored the progressive community,” he said. “I think that would be very, very unfortunate.”
The senator fired the warning shot as the far-left faction of the Democrat Party is pushing Biden to consider Sen. Elizabeth Warren for Treasury secretary, the AP reported. Members of the Massachusetts Democrat’s inner circle said she really wants the job.
Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Warren would play a major role in shaping the policies of a potential Biden administration no matter what post she’s assigned.
“It’s safe to say that Elizabeth Warren has definitely earned the trust and the ear of Joe Biden and will surely have an influential role in agenda setting going forward whether it’s being a very powerful senator or a more formal role in his administration,” Green told the AP. “No matter what, she’ll be powerful when it comes to agenda setting for the Democratic Party.”
For his part, Sanders reiterated his desire to serve as labor secretary in a Biden administration.
On Thursday, Biden told reporters he has made a decision on his choice for Treasury secretary. While he did not name names, the former vice president insisted that the nominee would be “someone who will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic party, moderates and progressives.”
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He declined to say whether Sanders would have a role in his theoretical Cabinet.
Meanwhile, Biden allies such as the anti-Trump Lincoln Project slammed both Sanders and Warren, saying their radical-left policy positions would be disastrous for the country.
“Choosing Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, who represent the far left — and in Bernie’s case, an openly socialist view of the world — is not the leadership that the American people just voted for,” said Jennifer Horn, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, which spent millions supporting Biden’s campaign. “I think Joe Biden understands that.”
Poll: Huge Majority of Voters ‘Uncomfortable’ with Socialist Candidate Like Sanders https://t.co/NM92ezCIqt
— ConservativeLibrarian Parler ConservativeLibrarian (@conlibrarian) February 20, 2020
The radical leftists of the Democrat Party, such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are extremely outspoken and constantly in the headlines, giving the impression that the entire party shares their extremist views.
In reality, many Democrats are uncomfortable with the far-left faction of their own party, especially its open embrace of socialism.
Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida is the first Vietnamese-American woman in Congress. The self-proclaimed “proud capitalist” is disgusted by the left’s clueless fascination with socialism, which she experienced firsthand growing up in Vietnam.
“I am offended by this whole conversation about socialism,” Murphy said during a 2019 speech, according to the Washington Examiner. “The idea that in the greatest democracy — the greatest capitalist system in the world — we’re having casual conversation about socialism, offends me.”
Murphy said anyone who understands the horrors of socialism would never champion its destructive policies.
Just look at Venezuela, where starving people are literally picking through trash to find their next meal.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia blamed her party’s apparent leftward lurch for its loss of House seats in the Nov. 3 election.
“We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again,” Spanberger said during a Democratic House Caucus post-election conference call. “We lost good members because of that.”
She went on to say, “If we are classifying Tuesday as a success … we will get f—ing torn apart in 2022.”
That’s something Biden might want to think about before heeding the call to add radical leftists to his Cabinet.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
