Columnist slams Bernie Sanders: Dems did what you asked — and got 'no electoral benefit'

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) let fly recriminations against the Democratic Party following the 2024 election loss, accusing Vice President Kamala Harris and the party at large of abandoning working-class voters — an accusation that didn't sit well with an MSNBC columnist.

"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?" he wrote in a statement. "Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not."

But this is all complete nonsense, wrote Michael A. Cohen — and it completely ignores what happened in the election.

"During his nearly four years in office, President Joe Biden was arguably the most pro-union president since FDR. He literally walked a picket line, supported union organizing efforts, increased funding for the National Labor Relations Board. He infused $36 billion into the Teamsters Union pension plan (an act that Sanders praised)," wrote Cohen. Then there was his infrastructure and technology investments, which stand to create thousands of new jobs, on top of student loan relief for community college graduates, overtime pay reforms, and numerous other pro-worker policies.

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Sanders and other critics may counter that Biden and Harris failed to communicate these policies, wrote Cohen — but "That’s not true either. As the New Republic’s Greg Sargent pointed out earlier this week, the Harris campaign poured $200 million into ads that focused on her economic message. In fact, she outspent the Trump campaign by around $70 million on ads about the economy" — complete with pledges to fight corporate greed and price-gouging, make housing affordable, and give working people tax relief.

Moreover, it's not like Trump had any credible economic message, wrote Cohen: "his main economic agenda item was a pledge to increase tariffs, which by increasing costs on imported items, would have disproportionately harmed low-wage workers. Did he have a plan for lowering housing or dealing with health care? What about lowering inflation?"

Voters ultimately trusted him on the economy, per exit polls — but not for any effort on his part to convince them, or lack thereof from Democrats, said Cohen.

"In short, under Biden, Democrats adopted one of the most pro-working class policy agendas in recent political memory, enacted much of it — and accrued no electoral benefit," wrote Cohen. Their real path back to the majority, he concluded, is to continue their gains with college-educated suburban voters — and "wait for an inevitable anti-Trump backlash."