Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bernie Sanders Has ‘Nothing Polite to Say’ After Donald Trump Win

Bernie Sanders set aside his grievances with Hillary Clinton during the general election, crisscrossing the nation on behalf of his ex-primary rival. He’s keeping his silence, though, in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the November election.

“We have nothing polite to say,” Sanders adviser told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny on Wednesday, refusing to comment on the race’s outcome.

It wasn’t clear if Bernie is stewing over Trump’s shocking win — or his belief that Hillary Clinton was a seriously flawed candidate.

After Clinton’s stunning defeat, Sanders’ primary boosters started to grumble that he would have carried the blue-collar, Midwestern states that Clinton lost to Trump.

Those complaints were in part a response to earlier claims that Clinton would be more electable than Sanders, which led the Democratic establishment to actively help her secure the nomination against her underdog challenger.

Ben Norton, a politics reporter at Salon, captured that mood in a Twitter post, writing, “hate to say we told you so, but Bernie Sanders warned the Democratic Party, and it didn’t listen; it sabotaged him.”

He attached a link to a June op-ed that Sanders wrote for the New York Times in the wake of Brexit, the vote that Britain to leave the European Union over concerns about immigration and which many have argued foreshadowed Trump’s success.

In that op-ed, titled “Democrats Need to Wake Up,” Sanders warned that America could see the victory of a similar ethnonationalist populism.

To prevent such an outcome, he counseled, “In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.