If people somehow needed more proof that the Bernie Sanders Show Featuring That Tom Perez Guy Or Whatever Tour was an abject failure, this weekend both men appeared to not-so-subtly take shots at each other.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders apparently hasn't changed his message in the least, calling the Democratic party "failing" on CBS's Face the Nation.
“I think what is clear to anyone who looks at where the Democratic Party today is, that the model of the Democratic Party is failing,” Sanders told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Sanders cited President Trump’s win, the GOP-controlled Congress, and Republican victories in state legislatures as reasons why Democrats are in trouble.“Clearly the Democratic Party has got to change. And in my view, what it has got to become is a grassroots party, a party which makes decisions from the bottom on up, a party which is more dependent on small donations than large donations,” Sanders said.
Sanders, who ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2016, also emphasized the need for Democrats to connect to working-class and middle-class voters.
“The Democratic Party has got to take the lead, rally people, young people, working people, stand up to the billionaire class,” said Sanders.
“And when we do that, you’re going to see voter turnout swell. You’re going to see people coming in and running for office. You’re going to see Democrats regain control of the United States Congress.”
Nowhere in Sanders's message did he mention "black people, brown people, or women" which is I guess why he thinks it's failing. Meanwhile, DNC chief Tom Perez fired at Sanders on Friday with a very clear statement on Democrats supporting a woman's reproductive rights.
Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez became the first head of the party to demand ideological purity on abortion rights, promising Friday to support only Democratic candidates who back a woman’s right to choose.
“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” Perez said in a statement. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”
“At a time when women’s rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country,” he added, “we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice.”
Perez’s statement follows the DNC’s controversial embrace of Heath Mello, a Democratic mayoral candidate in Omaha, Nebraska, whose years-long history of voting against abortion rights in the state Legislature drew fire from progressives this week. Daily Kos, a liberal website that raises money for lesser-known Democratic candidates, pulled its endorsement of Mello this week after discovering his history on the issue, and NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue slammed the DNC for adding him to its cross-country unity tour.
“The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women — one of the most critical constituencies for the party — of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid,” Hogue said in a statement.
So yeah, the "unity" tour was a horrible idea because the guy who refuses to be a Democrat wants the party to change, and the guy running the party has decided that the Dems need to actually start standing for something, full stop.
And away we go.
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