Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has announced plans to rescue embattled Democrat candidates with a nationwide tour in the last two weekends before the midterm elections.
Sanders, perhaps the most far-left member of Congress, will hold 19 campaign stops in the eight states of Oregon, California, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The tour is designed to “rally” radical Democrats to “confront daunting national headwinds” the left is facing come November, the New York Times reported.
Though Sanders intends to help Democrats, it is not clear if any embattled Democrats will campaign with him. Yet Sanders’ intent is to be seen with candidates Val Hoyle of Oregon, Rep. Greg Casar (D) and Michelle Vallejo of Texas, Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, state Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin. Sanders also reportedly want to be seen next to Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) during her effort to win the mayorship of Los Angeles.
Matt Bennett, the co-founder of Third Way, a leftist group in Washington, D.C., has complained that Sanders appearing in the state may hurt Democrats’ chances in Wisconsin’s Senate race. “The Mandela Barnes campaign is planning to bring in Sen. Bernie Sanders,” he tweeted. “I desperately want Barnes to win, so I ask again of his campaign: Why would you do this? Why????”
Sanders told the Times his tour is intended to raise awareness about his socialistic policies of massive federal government spending and strategies to wage war on American energy.
“It is rather amazing to me that we are in a situation right now, which I hope to change, where according to poll after poll, the American people look more favorably upon the Republicans in terms of economic issues than they do Democrats,” Sanders claimed. “That is absurd.”
According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 93 percent of registered voters are concerned about soaring inflation and the poor economy. The soaring costs mean that after adjusting for inflation, wages for American families are down $6,000 under Democrat rule, a Heritage Foundation study revealed. That is an increase from an earlier estimate that put the decline in real wages at $4,200.
Eighty-one percent say the Democrats’ economy will be a “major” factor in how they vote. Eighty percent say the same about inflation. Sixty-four percent say the Democrats’ economic and energy policies were either very or somewhat responsible for inflation.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly said he is doing everything he can to lower costs for Americans. Yet Biden has not reversed course on several key stifling energy policies, Breitbart News reported:
Biden has waged war on both public and private financing of oil drilling while subsidizing green-new-deal-like energy plans. As a result, American oil production is down from 2019, the year before the pandemic. Hard numbers suggest 2022 oil production is 12 million barrels per day, or eight percent less than in 2019.
Biden has made it increasingly more difficult for oil companies to gain financing to drill on private lands. He has also halted new drilling on public lands and terminated the Keystone Pipeline project that would have transported vast amounts of oil to American refineries.
But Sanders appeared to ignore these facts and instead told the Times that Republicans are on the hot seat for not implementing socialist policies.
“They’re going to have to respond to why they don’t want to raise the minimum wage, why they want to give tax breaks to billionaires, why they want to cut Social Security,” he said. “Those are the questions that I think these guys do not want to answer. And those are the questions I’m going to be raising.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.