Bernie Sanders on Sunday tried to turn Democrats’ gunfire on two of them, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, on Republican senators he said were “advancing an anti-democratic agenda.”
“Republicans are laughing all the way to Election Day,” the Vermont senator told CNN’s State of the Union. “They haven’t had to cast a damn vote to show us where they are.”
But the Vermont progressive also confirmed that he will campaign against Manchin and Sinema, both Democrats, should they face viable primary candidates.
Manchin of West Virginia and Sinema of Arizona have blocked Democratic priorities, including the Build Back Better spending plan and, this week, voting rights reform.
His refusal to contemplate filibuster reform, the rule that requires 60-vote majorities for most laws, meant that two voting rights bills in response to Republican attacks on state voting were always doomed. .
On Saturday, Sinema was formally censured by her state party. Sanders said he supported that move. He also confirmed his threat to campaign against Sinema and Manchin in 2024.
“If there were strong candidates prepared to defend working families who understood that the Democratic Party has to be the party of working people, taking on big money interests, if both candidates were in Arizona and West Virginia, yes, I would. be happy to support them.”
But, Sanders insisted, “it’s not just those two. It’s 50 Republicans who have been adamant not only in pushing an anti-democratic agenda but also in opposing our efforts to try to lower the cost of prescription drugs, trying to expand Medicare… to improve the health care disaster home care, in childcare, to deal with the existential threat of climate change.
“You have 50 Republicans who want to do nothing but criticize the President and then you have, sadly, two Democrats who choose to work with the Republicans instead of the President, and they will sabotage the President’s effort to address the needs of working families in this country. ”.
Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders insisted that the Biden administration is off to “a great start,” in part with a Covid relief bill passed with just 50 votes and Vice President Kamala Harris’ casting vote. , but now I was bogged down thank you very much. part to Manchin and Sinema.
“The president and the Democratic Congress,” Sanders said, “…looked at the economic crisis caused by covid. We passed the American Bailout… and also passed along the way the strongest infrastructure bill passed since Dwight D Eisenhower… We’re off to a great start.
“And then I’ll tell you exactly what happened. Fifty members of the Republican Party decided that they were going to filibuster…and then they were joined by two United States Senators, Mr. Manchin and Senator Sinema.
“For five months there have been closed-door negotiations trying to get these two Democratic senators on board. That strategy, in my opinion, has failed. It has failed miserably. We saw it last week in terms of the Voting Rights Act. Now we need a new direction.”
When asked if he was frustrated, Sanders told CNN that he was.
But, he insisted, “we have to start voting. We need to bring important pieces of legislation that impact the lives of working families directly to the Senate floor. And Republicans want to vote against reducing the cost of climate change, home health care, whatever. And if the Democrats want to join them, let the American people see what’s going on.
“Then we can pick up the pieces and pass the legislation.”
Some Democrats advocate breaking up Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan into separate bills, to pass what they can.
Sanders admitted that most of those laws will not pass, given the Republican obstruction and the machinations of Manchin and Sinema. He conceded that bringing the bills to the floor would really be about electoral politics ahead of this year’s midterm elections in which Republicans hope to win back the House and possibly the Senate, and the presidential race two years from now.
“Once we know where the people are,” he said, “then we can say, ‘Okay, look, we have 50 votes here, we only have one vote here, 49 votes here.
“But what has really bothered me is that Republicans are laughing all the way to Election Day. They haven’t had to cast a bloody vote, or two, which shows us where they are. And we have to change.”
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism