Hillary Clinton is not backing down from her comments about Bernie Sanders in her new book, defending them by saying that she's a proud Democrat who has worked hard for Democrats, and that she soundly defeated Sanders during the Democratic primary. Sanders, after all, Clinton remarked, technically isn't even in the Senate as a Democrat.
"I find this criticism from Sanders supporters to be so off base. He's not even a Democrat."
Clinton clarified her comments were not meant to be a "slam" on Sanders.
"I've been working on behalf of Democrats, to be elected, to be reelected, for decades. And so yes, I was familiar to broad parts of the electorate, and I'm proud of that," she said during the interview.
"And I did well across the country. I won by 4 million votes. That's a landslide. I won, really, by March and April."
I mean, she's not wrong--she really did with the Democratic primary by a landslide. She also received a bigger share of the popular vote than Donald Trump in the general, which means people seemingly supported her policies.
This, however, begs the question: why is the Democratic Party shifting so far to the left as a result of the election? In the wake of the 2016 election, we've seen people clamor to jump on the "Medicare-for-all" bandwagon for single-payer healthcare, and the focus on identity politics continues, despite swaths of Americans being uncomfortable with both of these things. It seems odd to cater to the desires of the Sanders electorate when a) he didn't win the primary and b) a lot of Sanders voters didn't even end up voting for Clinton in the general.
It'll be interesting to see how this pivot to the left works out--it could very well backfire.
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