If the Democratic Party thought Bernie Sanders supporters would coalesce around former Vice President Joe Biden now that their nominee is out of the running, they got a rude wakeup call this weekend. Bernie voters are not about to support a candidate who's condemned Medicare for All, voted for the Iraq War, and helped deport hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants during the Obama administration, among other policy decisions. He's apologized for some of those actions, but it's not enough to appease the young voters who worship Bernie.
The Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that is an obvious fan of the Vermont senator, tweeted on Sunday that it had no plans to endorse Biden.
We are not endorsing @JoeBiden.
— DSA ?? (@DemSocialists) April 12, 2020
Several student groups shared the same news. Here's a helpful roundup.
“We are Not endorsing Joe Biden.” pic.twitter.com/3SN5ja2wWJ
— Hamdia Ahmed (@hamdia_ahmed) April 13, 2020
Yale Students for Bernie went the extra mile to give the DNC a fair warning on Easter Sunday.
By the way, if the DNC actually replaces Biden with some other corporate shill Democrat at the Zoom convention, we also will NOT be endorsing them.
— Yale Students for Bernie (@yaleforbernie) April 12, 2020
We didn’t organize students for months for the DNC to blatantly subvert democracy.
Good luck @TomPerez @DNC ??
Progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) didn't express much confidence in Biden during her recent interview with The New York Times. The olive branches that the Biden camp has tried to extend have "insulted" progressives, she argued.
"They floated this olive branch to the progressive left of lowering the Medicare age to 60," she complained. "And it’s almost insulting. I think Hillary was looking at policies that lowered it to 50. So we’re talking about a 'progressive concession' that is 10 years worse than what the nominee had in 2016."
A conglomerate of established progressive groups, including Alliance for Youth Action, IfNotNow, Justice Democrats, March for Our Lives, NextGen America, Student Action, Sunrise Movement and United We Dream, published a wish list that they want the Democratic nominee to acknowledge and accept before they consider endorsing him. What they want from Biden is a full-throated endorsement of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, an expansion of DACA, free undergraduate tuition for public colleges, and other lofty plans.
What they don't want is what Biden has been pledging. A return to normalcy.
Instead, we grew up with endless war, skyrocketing inequality, crushing student loan debt, mass deportations, police murders of black Americans and mass incarceration, schools which have become killing fields, and knowing that the political leaders of today are choking the planet we will live on long after they are gone. We’ve spent our whole lives witnessing our political leaders prioritize the voices of wealthy lobbyists and big corporations over our needs. From this hardship, we’ve powered a resurgence of social movements demanding fundamental change. Why would we want a return to normalcy? We need a vision for the future, not a return to the past.
Awkward for Biden, since he voted for one of those "endless wars" and Bernie never let him forget it.
One democratic socialist who did finally endorse Biden? Bernie himself.