‘Really hard thing to spin out of’: Dem strategist blames Obama, Bernie Sanders for hurting party’s blue-collar image

Democratic strategist Basil Smikle on Monday blamed former President Barack Obama and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for weakening the party’s brand as a champion of working-class Americans.

CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten in September highlighted how strongly former President Donald Trump was performing with “working-class voters,” a demographic that traditionally leans Democratic. Smikle, on “Chris Jansing Reports,” argued that both Obama and Sanders contributed to a long-term perception that the party does not prioritize the working class — without even mentioning Trump.

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“If you really think about it, since 2008, when Barack ran, he didn’t run really using the party tools. He kind of created a proprietary organization to run and support his candidacy,” Smikle said. “And then you had years of Bernie Sanders basically calling out the Democratic Party for being too elitist. So for 16, 17 years, you basically heard that the Democratic Party isn’t the community or isn’t the party that helps solve the problems of the working-class in this country.”

“And that’s a really hard thing to spin out of. That’s really not an election-year solution,” he continued. “It is a multi-year solution that is going to be difficult, but it really has to evolve through the next generation of voices willing to take on that fight.”

After Trump won the 2024 election against former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sanders criticized the Democratic Party for neglecting working-class voters in a statement posted to X.

“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,” he wrote. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Polls conducted by CNN/SSRS and NBC News that were published on Sunday found the Democratic Party at all-time lows in terms of popularity with voters.

Pollster Frank Luntz said on “On Balance with Leland Vittert” in February that “paycheck-to-paycheck voters” were pleased with how Trump was acting on his second-term agenda, including deporting dangerous illegal immigrants and improving government efficiency.

“That they are really happy that people who should not be here are being asked to leave, that they’re really happy that Washington’s being held responsible and accountable for wasteful Washington spending, that they want to see the government be more efficient, more effective and more accountable,” Luntz said when host Leland Vittert asked what he is currently hearing from these voters. “The only criticism that they have is they don’t want the president to take his eye off the ball when it comes to how much their day-to-day life costs them.”

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