Bernie Sanders: It would be ‘enormously insulting’ for Biden to leave progressives out of cabinet

By Chuck Ross

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an interview published Friday that it would be “enormously insulting” for President-elect Joe Biden to leave progressives out of his cabinet.

“It seems to me pretty clear that progressive views need to be expressed within a Biden administration,” Sanders told The Associated Press.

“It would be, for example, enormously insulting if Biden put together a ‘team of rivals’ — and there’s some discussion that that’s what he intends to do — which might include Republicans and conservative Democrats — but which ignored the progressive community.”

Wikimedia Commons/Lorie Shaull

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren are at the top of progressives’ wish list to fill out a Biden cabinet.

Sanders, who was Biden’s closest challenger in the Democratic presidential primary, said on Nov. 11 that he would be Biden’s Labor secretary if asked to join the administration. Warren is reportedly eyeing the top post at the Treasury Department.

But the Biden camp has signaled with its first wave of White House staffing announcements that Biden plans to fill out his administration with moderate Democrats.

Biden selected Ron Klain, a longtime Democratic lobbyist, as his chief of staff. Klain represented a group of businesses in the mid-2000s that sought to cap payouts in asbestos lawsuits.

Biden’s top counselor, Steve Ricchetti, is also a longtime lobbyist who has worked in Democratic politics. Ricchetti played a key role in the Clinton administration in 2000 in helping push through a bill that normalized trade relations with China.

Sanders, then a member of the House, opposed the bill, saying that it would hurt U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Biden is reportedly leaning towards appointing other moderate Democrats to key cabinet positions. CNN reported that Biden is considering former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to serve as his Transportation secretary.

The New York Times reported that Biden is leaning towards selecting Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard to lead the Treasury Department. The Times noted that progressives view Brainard as too moderate to hold the position.

Biden’s nominations are likely to be shaped by the outcome of two runoff elections in Georgia in January that will determine which party controls the Senate. Republicans will retain majority control if they win at least one of the runoff contests. Should that happen, Biden would likely opt for more moderate cabinet picks in order to ensure they can make it through the Senate confirmation process.

“I think that would be very, very unfortunate,” Sanders told the Associated Press of progressives being frozen out of the Biden cabinet.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Lorie Shaull

25 thoughts on “Bernie Sanders: It would be ‘enormously insulting’ for Biden to leave progressives out of cabinet

  1. They operate under the rules of radicals, Saul Alinsky. We need to get off the dime and reverse their tactics and throw it back at them. When you are at war some times the manual needs to be overlooked, throw it out and fight back!

  2. I just heard Sidney Powell say in this Newmax interview from last night it was these Dominion Voting machines that stole the election from Bernie Sanders, the person that told Bernie that this had happened is talking to Sidney, so Bernie knew about this and did nothing..
    these same machines that did this were just used again in Vermont!

    Bernie got the lakehouse and shut his mouth. Sidney just said this.
    This interview was aired at 9pm last night, I don’t see these guys names, there are two men.
    My clip seems to have not included their names.

  3. “Enormously insulting”?……..Is this from the same Senator Bernie Sanders who over the past year has opened every event or interview by calling Trump a racist, sexist, xenophobe, a religious bigot…..blab, blab, blab?

    Joe Biden may want to take a look a Bernie in action……..Because if he doesn’t do what Bernie dictates, he’ll be the next one subjected to Sanders tirades…….Take a look a Vermont’s own Junior Senator in action:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgka6-fQ9FI

  4. What’s insulting, is that this socialist barking buffoon represent Vermont,
    our state is the laughing stock of the country !!

    Vermonter’s should hang their heads in shame, and if you want socialism, maybe
    find a socialist country and move there for a while, let me know how you like it.

    Hypocrite Sanders making a lively hood on capitalism and promoting socialism and
    people follow this fool…….. he’s a joke.

    • He’s reluctant to give 50% of his income to the feds, isn’t he.

      Our education system and propaganda network have insulated him and many Vermonters have taken the bait because of it.

      While I was walking one day, thinking…how come we don’t have more american patriots in Vermont…we used to.

      The school system used to educate our kids, they built a great bench of civic minded people who understood right and wrong, history, science, etc.

      We are building a bench, deep and wide of NWO pimps and socialist utopidiots. Throw out the church and you’ve got a perfect breeding ground for Bernie and others to be imported, and sent out to “change the world”.

      Molly Gray is the latest. It would be so wonderful if somebody, somebody in leadership just said, hey….let’s get a judges ruling on this to make sure she’s eligible. They should be able to find a judge to cover their tracks…..but then somebody would be at least on record of going against the constitution. If nobody asks the question, we’ll have another NWO pimp working her way to higher office. Probably to replace Sanders/Welch/Leahy.

      I’m doing my job as a citizen, looking for someone to pass the ball to.

      • Hi Neil,
        I’ve lived up here for all of my life and there is one thing that I have found to be very true; “Good People Vote With Their Feet.”

        It’s getting to be pretty clear that as all of New England has slid Leftward, some right off the rails, we have also suffered population loss.
        I’ve watched my neighborhood turn over in the last 10 years and I talked to every family that we lost. They were all good people, they were often from up here and they all said basically that they refuse to live under what goes on up here- and then they have a story to tell, a bad story.

        They’ve watched their freedoms and their rights erode away year by year. Taxes through the roof as the schools and services decline. Then to add to a bad situation, we can’t even vote our way out of it because of the corruption and voter fraud.
        Look at what is going on right now with this election.. this is certainly not new stuff to us up here, we know all about voter fraud. It’s not hard up here to know every person in your town and yet, somehow it goes Blue? when you don’t seem to know but 4 Democrats?

        So they pack up their kids, their wealth, their education, and off they go to the South.
        Back when were were growing up, it was a cheap life up here.. my parents raised a family on one income- and it wasn’t even a big one. You could be free to do a lot that gave you a good quality of life because the taxes were reasonable and the living was good and simple. This is all gone now.. then you add on our climate.
        So my point, Freedom loving American Patriots are not going to live under the boot of Socialism, they just won’t and they aren’t. This is why it’s so thinned out up here.
        I know this is the truth because I’ve watched this all happen over the course of my life here. I sure know a lot of people that have left.

  5. Sanders needs to be insulted as a response to the insults he has perpetrated on the citizens of VT for years!

    • Biden wants to keep far away from SOCIALISM

      Trump will not away.

      He will take revenge for all the BS the Dem/Progs have have been subjecting him to for the past 4 years, and then steal the election with CHAOTIC MAIL-IN shenanigans.

      Republicans will gain even more seats in the next two years, because Dem/Progs do not know the business of the US is business, and they do not know how to govern, except according to the rules of discredited Socialism.

  6. Well, it may be enormously insulting, but it would be exceedingly smart for the prez-elect to leave the progs in the ditch.

  7. Sanders, if this election proved anything, it is that your socialist message is being rejected far and wide. At least have the brains to listen to people who actually had to live under socialism and finally escaped to this country. Socialism is for fools looking to take by force what they cannot earn or produce themselves. Either go back to Brooklyn or move to Venezuela where you can “enjoy” your socialism!!!
    You have never created one real job and you have never done anything to actually help anyone other than yourself. You are not now,and never will be, a Vermonter!!!!!

  8. In my opinion, no progressives should hold cabinet positions. They are anti-American; anti-law and order and anti-freedom and liberty. Just take a good look at the “squad”! The worst bunch of liberal fools ever put on this earth.

    If Bernie and his followers are so unhappy with the United States of American and the Constitution by which we live, let them move to Venezuela, China or Cuba! They’d be much happier there and Americans would not have to deal with these fools!

    • Or be elected period. Many are in actuality true communists such as Saint Bernard and have sneaked into the Democrat Party bc they too are totalitarian socialist sympathizers and many have gone to the communist side also.

  9. I hope that Biden will leave the dark blue, and it is a given the dark red (will be), on the fringes and unites the middle ground, which in my opinion is a sizable majority. Leaning to far left will result in the pendulum swinging so far over the next 4 or 8 years that it will result in a repeat of the Obama-Trump scenario……..please find workable middle ground…….eagerly watching what he does (not the rhetoric)……..

    • Hasn’t been elected yet and as Hussein hardliner will never unite anything except his nose to the hair of little girls.

      • How you do couch your comments. Dark red is not ‘on the fringes’ sir – we are now the party of the worker and overwhelmingly, 87% support president DJ.

    • Interesting comment Kevin. My hope is as well that Biden governs from the center. It would be better for American and the middle ground is in fact where most Americans are. The Governor’s race that resulted a landslide for Republican Governor Scott over Progressive Zuckerman is a good indication of how even blue Vermont prefers competence and practicality over a leftist agenda.

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