The panel on CNN’s Inside Politics Monday afternoon took turns dragging Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party.
“I believe you’re going to see it in Montana. I believe you’re going to see it all over this country. In the many so-called red states, working people are going to wake up and say wait a second, Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and education and they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars of tax breaks to the top one percent. No, that’s not what we elected Trump to do. Yeah, climate change is real, it’s not a hoax,” Sanders said in a clip played by Inside Politics host John King, who proceeded to fact-check Sanders’ claims.
“There is zero indication President Trump — Bernie Sanders just said they want to cut Medicaid and Medicare. Yes, there are Republican budgets that have been put on the table in the past, but to be fair to the president, he has said no. We’ll see what happens when we get to that process. It’s unfair to say the president wants to do that right now,” King said.
“I mean, Bernie Sanders in some ways sounds like a broken record,” CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson said, before bashing the entire Democratic Party.
“They don’t have any sort of unifying message and you can tell even in what [Sanders is] saying, talking about the EPA and climate change and wrong there in terms of what he’s talking about on Social Security. The Democrats always thought that diversity was their strength — in many ways it’s not,” Henderson said. “There are too many sort of competing factions, competing demographics in many ways and you have Republicans who have a very solid message in many ways. They have the presidency, obviously, and these voters are committed to Donald Trump — they are emotionally attached to his message.”
“The challenge for Democrats is not to be pulled too far to the left but is this going to be sort of a repeat on the left-hand side of what happened in 2010, 2014? we don’t know. There are those voters in the middle, whoever speaks to them,” White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny said. “But Bernie Sanders is one of the leaders of the Democratic party right now and that is both a blessing and a curse for the Democratic party.”
“If we learned anything from the Hillary Clinton campaign, no matter what party you’re in, spend a lot of time on what you’re for, not just what you’re against,” King concluded. “My two cents worth.”
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