Nancy Pelosi has hit out at Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for blaming Kamala Harris‘ election loss on Democrats ‘abandoning working class families.’
The fracas began even before the vice president’s concession speech on Wednesday when Sanders blasted her failed campaign in a post on social media.
‘It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,’ the 83-year-old senator wrote.
‘While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.’
But the former House Speaker, 84, who remains a major figure within the Democrat Party, told the New York Times The Interview podcast on Thursday she ‘completely disagreed’ with Sanders and does ‘not respect’ his remarks.
She claimed that the ‘purpose’ of the Democratic Party is to support the working class, and noted that Harris ‘ran ahead of Bernie Sanders in Vermont.’
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi hit out at Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for his claims that the Democrat Party ‘abandoned working-class voters’
She said she has ‘a great deal of respect’ for Sanders, ‘but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned working-class families. That’s where we are.’
Pelosi then went on to rattle off what she sees as accomplishments under President Joe Biden’s administration.
‘For example, under President Biden, you see the rescue package, money in the pockets of people, shots in the arm, children in school safety, working people back to work,’ she said.
‘What did, what’s his name, what did Trump do when he was president? One bill that gave a tax cut to the richest people in America.’
Instead, Pelosi suggested cultural issues were to blame for Harris’ loss to former President Donald Trump.
‘Guns, God and gays – that’s the way they see it,’ the former speaker said of Trump supporters.
‘Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue and now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose.’
Sanders shared his thoughts on Vice President Kamala Harris election loss hours before she gave a concession speech on Wednesday
He wrote on X that: ‘It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them’
But Pelosi didn’t stop there – going on to lay part of the blame for Harris’ loss on Biden’s refusal to drop out of the race sooner.
It took weeks after his disastrous debate with Trump in June for Biden to end his campaign for president, and when he finally did drop out, he immediately endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination.
‘Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,’ Pelosi told the Times.
‘The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,’ in which delegates from each state would vote on who they thought the Democratic nominee should be.
‘And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in [a primary] and [would have] been stronger going forward.
‘But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen,’ she argued.
‘And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at the time.
‘If it had been much earlier, it would have been different,’ she said, arguing it is time to look forward and stop reflecting on what may have gone wrong.
