Bernie Sanders Throws South Carolina Voters Under The Bus By Claiming They Aren’t Working Class

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 02:14 pm

As mainstream Democrats flock to Joe Biden’s campaign after his resounding win in South Carolina over the weekend, Bernie Sanders sought to curb the former vice president’s momentum.

During a press conference on Monday, Sanders basically said the votes that Biden earned in South Carolina don’t count because they didn’t come from working class people.

“When we talk about South Carolina, and when we talk about other places, we are winning working-class people by big numbers,” the Vermont senator said.

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But as Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Jamerson pointed out earlier, “Exits showed Sanders lost black voters to Biden by 44-points in SC. I assume many of them were working-class people?”

Sanders risks further alienating African American voters

Despite Sanders’ claim that only he has earned the votes of working class Americans, Biden won every county in South Carolina on Saturday. He was also the top candidate among “every significant demographic group” in the state, according to The Washington Post.

Not to mention: Among the first four primary states that have weighed in so far, South Carolina is arguably the most representative of the Democratic Party as a whole.

By discounting the voters in South Carolina simply because they overwhelmingly supported Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders isn’t just throwing that state’s Democratic voter base under the bus, but he’s further alienating African American voters – the heart and soul of the Democratic Party he hopes to lead in November.

If he wants to win the Democratic nomination, Sanders is going to have to change the way he talks about African American voters.

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Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.