President-elect Joe Biden has yet to appoint any prominent supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to his incoming administration in the month and-a-half since the November 3 presidential election.
The list of his twenty or so hires, both for Senate-confirmed and White House staff roles, includes several long-time aides, many former Obama administration officials, and even one or two “progressives,” such as California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
But almost all of those named supported Biden in the Democratic Party presidential primary.
One rare exception is Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM), whom Biden named as his choice for Secretary of the Interior this week, and who supported Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Pete Buttigieg, whom Biden selected as his pick for Secretary of Transportation, ran against Biden, but dropped out before Super Tuesday to endorse him.
One choice, Symone Sanders, backed the Vermont socialist in 2016, but served as a Biden surrogate in 2020. She has, bizarrely, been relegated to the Vice President’s office in favor of former Obama communications aide Jen Psaki, who will be Biden’s White House Press Secretary.
Sanders supporters have been grumbling online about their exclusion, given the fact that Biden relied on their votes to defeat Trump in the Upper Midwest and elsewhere:
Sanders himself complained about the issue indirectly on Thursday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, arguing that Biden had not nominated enough “progressives”:`
He made similar comments earlier this month:
Biden is somewhat constrained by the fact that Republicans still control the Senate and would continue to do so if they win at least one of the two Senate seats at stake in the Jan. 5 runoffs in Georgia.
Still, there are many senior administration positions that do not require the consent of the Senate.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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