![\"Bernie](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/e13cbf0e0fdd97b4a86fa217bedb56168b0c0c39\/0_3482_5504_3302\/master\/5504.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=f644564bb04922a8ed8bd6d05588efab\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe US senator from Vermont added that he was in contact with the White House pressing that point. \u201cWe hope to make clear to the president and his team that they are not going to win this election unless they come up with a progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of the working class of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sanders\u2019 warning comes at a critical time in American politics. On Monday, Republicans in Iowa will gather for caucuses that mark the official start of the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden faces no serious challenger in the Democratic primaries. But concern is mounting over how he would fare against Trump given a likely rematch between them in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recent polls have shown\u00a0Trump not only doing wellin key battleground states but gaining traction with demographic groups who proved vital to Biden\u2019s 2020 victory, including\u00a0Hispanic\u00a0and\u00a0young voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his Guardian interview, Sanders cast the threat of a second Trump presidency in existential terms. \u201cIt will be the end of democracy, functional democracy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He predicted that over a further four years, Trump would shift the electoral goalposts so that \u201cmany people who would vote against Trump are unable to do so. He will make it harder for young people, people of colour, to participate in the political process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is in that dystopian context that Sanders criticises the president\u2019s re-election team for failing to bang the drum hard enough. \u201cThey\u2019re not their own best advertisers, they don\u2019t do a particularly good job in explaining what Biden has accomplished,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sanders praised Biden for the $1.9tn Covid\u00a0rescue plan\u00a0which he said helped avoid economic collapse during the pandemic, and for the\u00a0Inflation Reduction Act\u00a0which pumped money into transforming US energy away from fossil fuels. He was also effusive about\u00a0Biden\u2019s historic decision\u00a0to join a United Auto Workers (UAW) picket line during the union\u2019s strike with the three biggest carmakers, which he said made him \u201cthe strongest pro-union president that we have had, certainly, since FDR [Franklin D Roosevelt]\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Sanders urged the White House to resist sitting back on its laurels. \u201cThe president has got to do something that\u2019s very, very hard,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe should be proud of his accomplishments, but he\u2019s also got to say that he understands that there is a housing crisis, that people can\u2019t afford healthcare or prescription drugs or childcare \u2013 that he\u2019s trying, but he hasn\u2019t yet succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden could find a historical template for such messaging, Sanders suggested, in Roosevelt\u2019s 1936 re-election campaign. By then, the Democratic president had been in office for almost four years and had implemented the first two of his groundbreaking New Deal programmes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRoosevelt didn\u2019t go around saying, \u2018Look at all I\u2019ve done\u2019,\u201d Sanders explained. \u201cHe said: \u2018I see a nation that is ill-clad, ill-housed. We made some progress, but I know there are enormous problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Critics will accuse Sanders of attempting to press his own brand of politics on to the establishment of the Democratic party. But he has credibility when it comes to presidential campaigns, having come close to securing the Democratic nomination twice and having given Biden a leg up into the White House in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Vermont senator not only rallied his millions of young supporters to vote for Biden, he also used his influence as runner-up in the 2020 Democratic primaries to push the candidate in a more progressive direction. He formed a set of \u201ctaskforces\u201d in which top Biden and Sanders advisers worked together to forge policy agreements in several key areas including the economy, immigration and the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his new book, It\u2019s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, Sanders sets out a similar progressive agenda for 2024. He calls for the Democratic party to wean itself from \u201ccorporate elites\u201d and redirect its sights on to working-class struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told the Guardian that if that does not happen, he fears that many young Americans will simply stay at home in November. \u201cThe polling is clear. Given the choice between Biden and Trump, a lot of people are saying, \u2018Thank you, but no thank you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The danger of support for Biden fading among young voters has been enhanced by the Israel-Hamas war. The senator said that Biden\u2019s staunch support for Israel\u2019s military operation in Gaza could affect his standing among young progressive voters in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He implored Biden to detach himself from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who has taken a hard line on the military assault. \u201cI hope that he [Biden] understands that you can be pro-Israel without supporting Netanyahu and the horrific war he is waging against the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opinion polls have shown a generational divide, with younger Americans tending to be more critical of US backing for the bombardment of Gaza. Almost three-quarters of voters aged 18 to 29 disapproved of Biden\u2019s handling of the conflict, a recent\u00a0New York Times\/Siena College\u00a0poll found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sanders also faces challenges over his position on the war. Though he has become steadily more damning of the Israeli onslaught, calling it a \u201cmass atrocity\u201d, he continues to resist calling for a permanent ceasefire which he says would open the door to further Hamas outrages following the 7 October attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That has strained relations with some of his army of young supporters. Asked whether he feared that the coalition he has so diligently nurtured since the 2016 presidential election was in danger of splintering, he said: \u201cI think, at the end of the day, we\u2019ll be all right\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The senator said he was actively working with allies to develop what he called a \u201cprogressive strategy to defeat Trump\u201d. Central to that is \u201crallying the working class of this country to stand up to Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said he draws confidence from recent labor union victories, including\u00a0wage increases\u00a0won by the UAW and new agreements secured by the Teamsters at UPS and by Hollywood writers and actors. \u201cWe are seeing the revitalisation of the trade union movement in this country in a way that we have not seen for many, many decades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bernie Sanders, America\u2019s leading progressive politician, has issued a stark warning to Joe Biden at the start of presidential election year: be more aggressive in addressing the anxieties of millions of struggling voters or risk handing back the White House to the anti-democratic demagogue Donald Trump. In an interview with the Guardian\u00a0from his home base […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[12487,8217,183,5304,6063,3115,5178,10387,12283,9233,10767,5222,7747,8440,11606,913,2825,6144,5196,911,12328,5494,6738,6665,2629,5930,6000,2490,10771,11715,6094,6546,11493,10340,3095,2471,5525,5572,9683,5612,12287,990,5568,5485,5424,7574,3805,11377,1776,3174,6944,6575,5807,6687,6082,5818,1502,10329,7231,10698,184,6348,10331,10885,5251,6571,2982,11660,594,5140],"class_list":["post-41176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-agenda","tag-army","tag-assault","tag-attack","tag-battleground","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-biden","tag-campaign","tag-ceasefire","tag-collapse","tag-conflict","tag-covid","tag-crises","tag-crisis","tag-democracy","tag-democratic","tag-democratic-party","tag-drugs","tag-economy","tag-election","tag-elites","tag-energy","tag-families","tag-fuels","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-hispanic","tag-hollywood","tag-horrific","tag-housing","tag-immigration","tag-inflation","tag-interview","tag-iowa","tag-israel","tag-joe-biden","tag-labor","tag-military","tag-millions","tag-money","tag-movement","tag-new-york","tag-palestinian","tag-pandemic","tag-politics","tag-presidency","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-presidential-election","tag-prime-minister","tag-republican","tag-republicans","tag-risk","tag-runner","tag-senator","tag-strike","tag-tax","tag-trade","tag-union","tag-united-auto-workers","tag-united-states-president-donald-john-trump-jr","tag-us","tag-vermont","tag-victory","tag-war","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-working-class","tag-who","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41177,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41176\/revisions\/41177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}