Vermont's independent Sen. Bernie Sanders released a statement Wednesday following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election.
"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," Sen. Sanders wrote.
Sen. Sanders sought to connect to that working class, highlighting worsening income inequality and healthcare costs. He expressed concerns that "the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party" were not likely to be sympathetic to those pressures on working Americans, even after losing the election.
"In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions," Sen. Sanders wrote. "Stay tuned."
Sen. Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, on Tuesday won re-election to his seat, where he will serve his fourth straight six-year term. He said he ran again to address not just income inequality but also to defend women's reproductive rights and push to respond to the effects of climate change.
"I just did not feel with my seniority and with my experience that I could walk away from Vermont, representing Vermont, at this difficult moment in American history," Sen. Sanders said in a debate before the election.
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Sen. Sanders' Wednesday comments were similar to concerns by political analysts about Democratic Party strategies as the presidential race ended.
"The Democratic Party spent a lot of this election cycle in an argument with the American voter, telling them they're wrong: That they were wrong about their view about Joe Biden, they were wrong about how they felt about the economy," said Scripps News political contributor Steve Schmidt as the race was called for Trump. "And the American people just delivered a response to the Democratic Party. And if this doesn't get the attention of a political party — there is no comparable political failure institutionally of a party that approaches this within 10,000 nautical miles."
"The questions that I think we're going to have as a result of this election are: To what extent do people's concerns about the economy drive their support towards Donald Trump and away from Kamala Harris? How extensive was mobilization on both sides, so that we can talk about contact and how that actually increased voter turnout? Who had the best strategy to reach out to low-propensity voters? And what was the impact of perhaps racist and sexist views on people's vote choice? Were people reluctant to vote for Kamala Harris because she was a woman or a person of color in this campaign? All of those things are going to factor," said Andra Gillespie, associate professor of political science at Emory University.
