Sanders, withholding endorsement, seeks influence with Harris

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has held off on officially endorsing Vice President Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee and is trying to help shape her campaign focus and agenda if she is elected.

Sources close to Sanders say he has no intention of challenging Harris, who is on track to win the nomination following President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election.

Harris has not seen any significant opponents line up to challenge her, and a candidacy for Sanders, who twice came second in the Democratic presidential primaries, is “out of the question,” according to a source close to him.

“Of course she will be the nominee,” said a source close to Sanders, who, however, cautioned that it is unclear whether Democrats are “better situated against Donald Trump” with Harris rather than Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. .

“She has energy and enthusiasm now, and I assume there will be a [polling] collision, but the question is how long it lasts,” the source added.

Sanders has encouraged Biden to stay in the race and has spoken with the president and his top policy advisers and politicians in recent weeks to help outline Biden’s plan for the first 100 days of his second term.

He is trying to play an equally influential role in Harris’ campaign for the White House, according to people familiar with Sanders’ contact with the Biden administration.

Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership team, believes it will be critical for Harris to defend the populist economic ideas that made him a force to be reckoned with in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries.

“The vice president is the Democratic nominee and I will do everything I can to make sure she is president, but I think for her to become president, she will have to speak out on issues that impact 60 percent of the population. Americans, workers who live paycheck to paycheck,” Sanders said in a brief interview with The Hill.

Harris was chosen to lead the Biden administration’s efforts to address the root causes of mass migration from Central America, and also played a prominent role in advocating the administration’s support for protecting voting rights and abortion rights.

But she played a smaller role in selling Biden’s economic agenda to the American public and addressing one of the campaign’s biggest issues: inflation.

Sanders is expected to support Harris’ presidential bid, but how enthusiastically he does so will depend on how far she goes in embracing the economic justice issues he has championed throughout his career, such as proposals to lower the cost of medicines. prescriptions and health care. .

“The views of working-class voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are critical to the course of this election cycle. Right now, you look at where her standing is among a lot of working-class voters, and there’s a lot of room for Kamala” to improve her standing, the Sanders ally said.

“Since becoming vice president, she hasn’t really stated very strong opinions about how she thinks and talks about the economy,” the source added.

Sanders allies say the popular 82-year-old senator could help Harris with young people and progressives. A USA Today/Ipsos poll conducted in 2022 found that Sanders had the highest favorability rating among 23 potential White House candidates in 2024.

Harris embraced some of Sanders’ boldest ideas before the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, when she co-sponsored Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation.

Since then, Sanders has put more emphasis on expanding Medicare to cover dental and vision care and expanding the $2,000 limit on out-of-pocket prescription costs to more people.

A Democratic senator who isn’t a big fan of Sanders’ progressive brand of policymaking, however, said Harris won’t need his enthusiastic support to get voters to the polls.

“Democratic voters want to turn the page on people over 80, including Bernie Sanders, and I think they are holding on to Kamala Harris, which is good,” said the senator.

“The young people who felt totally excluded from all of this are happy that she is there. Maybe Bernie’s most angry, bitter, angry supporters” won’t support her without the Vermont senator’s endorsement, the senator added.

“She will never agree to what he wants her to agree to,” predicted the lawmaker.

Other progressives in Congress, such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), also enthusiastically supported Harris.

Sanders, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, helped craft the outline of Biden’s 2021 Build Back Better agenda.

As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee three years ago, Sanders pushed the Biden administration to adopt a $6 billion budget reconciliation proposal that included Medicare expansion and proposals to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

A Democratic strategist allied with Sanders said the Biden administration has not acted aggressively enough to combat inflation and challenge what the source called “price manipulation” by American companies.

“This is the challenge that Kamala Harris has: this campaign exploded because of President Biden’s performance in the debate, but we cannot forget that we were losing before the debate. So if someone is just Joe Biden 2.0, that’s not a winning strategy,” said the strategist. “There needs to be a more frank recognition of the economic pain that many middle-class and working-class people are feeling in this country.

“You can’t just have talking heads on TV talking about how great things are, and if you don’t think they’re great, then you’re clearly mistaken or stupid. This will not build credibility with anyone. We have to recognize that prices are too high”, added the source.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a prominent Senate progressive who also ran against Harris in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, defended the vice president’s long record on economic justice.

“I’ve known Kamala Harris for almost 15 years, when she was attorney general in California and I was putting together the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.] She and I were fighting shoulder to shoulder against the giant banks that were trying to scam homeowners,” said Warren, who supported Harris.

“She has since worked through student loan debt, rising prices [and on] hundreds of ways giant corporations deceive people. This is a big part of his resume and his deep personal commitment. I have no doubt about who she is and what she will fight for,” she added.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story