Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has one word for the Democrats and media pundits who have spent the last two weeks seeking to poke, prod and pull President Joe Biden away from the race for the 2024 election: Enough.
"I will do all that I can to see that President Biden is re-elected. Why? Despite my disagreements with him on particular issues, he has been the most effective president in the modern history of our country and is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump — a demagogue and pathological liar," Sanders wrote in an opinion article published Saturday by The New York Times.
Sanders’s endorsement of Biden comes after two weeks of what the senior senator from Vermont called a "circular firing squad" — Democrats and progressives who are so worried about Biden’s candidacy and frightful debate performance against Donald Trump that they are pulling at every thread to unravel the sitting president. It also stands as somewhat of a repudiation of his junior colleague from Vermont, Sen. Peter Welch, who earlier this week became the first sitting U.S. Senator to urge Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election.
Welch is one of more than twenty Democrats on Capitol Hill calling for Biden to leave the race.
Sanders doesn’t shy away on his disagreements wtih Biden, listing splits on U.S. Support for Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, as well as his preference for a single-payer healthcare system instead of the Affordable Care Act. And he acknowledges that Biden "is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr. Trump."
"But this I also know: A presidential election is not an entertainment contest. It does not begin or end with a 90-minute debate," Sanders said, echoing Biden’s call urging Americans "to stop treating politics like its entertainment or reality TV" at a rally in Detroit Friday night.
"I understand that some Democrats get nervous about having to explain the president’s gaffes and misspeaking names. But unlike the Republicans, they do not have to explain away a candidate who now has 34 felony convictions and faces charges that could lead to dozens of additional convictions, who has been hit with a $5 million judgment after he was found liable in a sexual abuse case, who has been involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits, who has repeatedly gone bankrupt and who has told thousands of documented lies and falsehoods," Sanders wrote.
The president’s record, Sanders said, is one that supporters can be proud of. He touts Biden’s American Rescue Plan for bolstering the economy after pandemic-era shutdowns; he credits Biden for funding infrastructure and climate action, for cancelling student debt, for cutting prices on life-saving medications and for pushing back on conservative attacks at reproductive rights.
But Sanders also urged Biden to "propose and fight for a bold agenda" benefitting working families in the U.S. More than 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, childhood poverty is higher than in nearly any other major country and housing is increasingly unaffordable.
"This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We can do better. We must do better. Joe Biden knows that. Donald Trump does not. Joe Biden wants to tax the rich so that we can fund the needs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. Donald Trump wants to cut taxes for the billionaire class," Sanders said, among a cutting repudiation of the expected GOP nominee. "Joe Biden respects democracy. Donald Trump attacks it."
On Saturday, Biden continued speaking to key groups of House Democrats to try and shore up support, including members of the influential Congressional Progressive Caucus, having what their membership called a "productive and engaging conversation."
"The president has been a champion for working people and families across the country and throughout his time in office and we have been proud to partner with him in passing major legislation to cut costs and raise wages," CPC Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said in a statement. "We spoke frankly to the president about our concerns and asked tough questions about the path forward. We appreciate his willingness to thoughtfully answer and address our members."
American voters, Sanders said, must take a lesson from France’s centrist and progressive political parties who joined together to defeat an extremist right-wing party that won sizably in European parliamentary elections last month.
"This election offers a stark choice on issue after issue. If Mr. Biden and his supporters focus on these issues — and refuse to be divided and distracted — the president will rally working families to his side in the industrial Midwest swing states and elsewhere and win the November election," Sanders wrote. "And let me say this as emphatically as I can: For the sake of our kids and future generations, he must win."