‘Our hearts are heavy’: Activists react, turn toward Biden after Bernie bails

By Chris White

Activists are coming to grips with the realization that Sen. Bernie Sanders will likely not become president in 2020 after the self-described socialist ended his White House bid on Wednesday.

Many of these environmentalists and youth activists are turning their eyes toward former Vice President Joe Biden, who is struggling to collect votes from the millennial generation. They are also lamenting what they say is Biden’s core campaign message: a return to normalcy.

Bruce Parker/TNR

Bernie Sanders supporters are disappointed, but now must look ahead to supporting the next closest candidate: former Vice President Joe Biden.

“We’re not going to sugarcoat it: our hearts are heavy,” Sunrise Movement spokeswoman Aracely Jimenez said in a statement following Sanders’s announcement.

Her group was one of the first to jump on board the infamous Green New Deal, which Sanders championed.

“In Bernie Sanders, we had a presidential candidate whose visionary solutions — Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, paid sick leave — are exactly the policies we need to get out of the crises we’re living through now,” Jimenez added.

Other liberal activists were similarly despondent. Sunrise Movement was one of eight groups to write a letter to Biden chastising the former vice president for not being a transformative figure. They say he represents a wing of the Democratic Party that is stagnant and lacking progressive principles.

“While you are now the presumptive Democratic nominee, it is clear that you were unable to win the votes of the vast majority of voters under 45 years old during the primary,” the groups wrote in the notes. Justice Democrats and NextGen American were among those that signed the letter.

They asked the former vice president to consider taking up much of Sanders’s positions as they believe it is not good enough to return to a world before President Donald Trump. “Messaging around a ‘return to normalcy’ does not and has not earned the support and trust of voters from our generation,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, Biden is trying to bridge the gap. He said in a Medium post Wednesday that the movement Sanders helped create will become an indispensable tool that will promote change in the future. The olive branch represents a departure from what Biden was saying earlier in the primary.

“The only thing, the only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party,” Democratic strategist James Carville said on MSNBC in February before the coronavirus pandemic caused Biden and everyone else in the country to isolate themselves to prevent the spread.

“That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days … so I’m scared to death,” said Carville, who has called Sanders a socialist in the past.

Biden, for his part, is running up the numbers among older voters but is failing to capture the imagination of the younger people who flocked to Obama in 2008. His inability to energize the millennial generation and its peers has not gone unnoticed in Sanders’s camp.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Images courtesy of Gage Skidmore/Flickr and Bruce Parker/TNR

10 thoughts on “‘Our hearts are heavy’: Activists react, turn toward Biden after Bernie bails

  1. Bernie’s Defeat Shows Why Socialism Doesn’t Work

    Socialism is about ego and greed, not helping people.
    Thu Apr 9, 2020
    Daniel Greenfield 170
    Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

    Senator Bernie Sanders, berated his staff, forced female staffers to sleep in the same rooms as men, exposed them to sexual harassment, spread hate, allied with terrorists, all to win two elections he lost.
    The only thing the socialist got out of his failed campaigns was membership in the 1 percent.
    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/bernies-defeat-shows-why-socialism-doesnt-work-daniel-greenfield/

  2. Have any of these people figured out that the US is not going to become a communist nation?

  3. I’m looking forward to another flood of progressive tears and threats from washed-up, worn-out celebs to move out of the country.

  4. Oh you poor babies, Bernie has bitten the dust. One down, hopefully, Sleepy Joe will not be too far behind.

  5. Bernie did not loose. He made a serious impact on the Dem party. The country will get the big one shoved, you know where if the Dems win the next election. Sorry, I am not good at sugar coating things.

  6. And with not one, or even two but three half-million $ estates – even calling one of them a “camp on the lake” ‘as many VTers own’ lol…he purchased the Washington estate bc he believed he would always hold high office there.

    Following all of his antics including failure to connect w/women and black voters, dismissively turning a blind eye to women being sexually harassed and forced to sleep in close quarters w/males on campaign trail, refusing to pay the $15 minimum wage he demands that every other employer do, consorting w/thuggish domestic terrorists including Antifa and serving as apologist for murderous dictators – and this is only a partial listing.

    He treats ppl like sh** bc he hates ppl but loves power period. Nothing but an arrogant, selfrighteous, mean spirited, tempermental, misogynistic and hateful miserable waste of skin as is his dumpy wife.

    • That’s the best description of Bernie that I’ve seen in a long time! Millions of people pinning their hopes on a fraud. Bernie figured out how to turn the desperation of people into a political fortune for himself. He has never produced anything of value for anyone except himself and certain members of his family through political capitalism. He started as a Liberty Union party candidate in the 70’s, consorted with communists in the beginning of his political career, honey mooned in the Soviet Union, sang the praises of Castro and the false virtues of socialism eventually selling enough snake oil to become a millionaire. Now if we could just get him out of Vermont!!!

      • Also, when the time comes, there should be a spot in the Hope Cemetery in Barre to his liking. Bernie has been hopeful of many things. Don’t wish it on him, but everybody will meet the maker sometime.

        Hey, he’s 78 and I’m 80. You never know.

  7. ” Our hearts are heavy ” activists react to Sanders Bailout, I guess they just
    figured out the free stuff ” Socialist Santa ” was promising is gone !!

    I hate to break the news to these millennial fools, but your Socialist Pied Piper
    was making promises, that he knew would never come to fruition.

    Secondly, Sanders is not a ” Democrat “, and one would think that after being
    stabbed in the back in 2016, he would have learned, nope this clown jumps
    back in bed with the ” DNC ” and guess what, stabbed again Sleepy Joe is
    getting the DNC Nod ………….Bernie folds again.

    If Sanders really believed his own rhetoric & propaganda about socialism then
    he needs to run as a Socialist, he won’t even he knows it’s all BS.

    So now Bernie will ask all his supporters broken-hearted as they are to back
    Sleepy Joe, stabbed in the back or is it money in the pocket ??

    Socialist Sanders, promoting socialism living life as a capitalist………Hypocrite, Oh yeah !!

Comments are closed.