Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said that the GOP has a good shot of snagging control of the House and potentially even the Senate during the upcoming midterm elections.
“You really can’t win an election with a bumper sticker that says: ‘Well, we can’t do much, but the other side is worse,'” the lawmaker said, according to Politico.
“The Republicans stand an excellent chance of gaining control of the House and quite possibly the Senate,” he said.
Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, noted that “the enthusiasm level within the Democratic base is extremely low. And it’s not only working class support that is fading away.” The senator said, “Unless we turn around, the voter turnout is going to be very, very low on the Democratic base.”
“Say to the American people: ‘Look, we don’t have the votes to do it right now. We have two corporate Democrats who are not going to be with us,'” Sanders said. “The leadership has got to go out and say we don’t have the votes to pass anything significant right now. Sorry. You got 48 votes. And we need more to pass it. That should be the message of this campaign.”
“Two corporate Democrats, Sens. Manchin and Sen. Sinema, sabotaged [Build Back Better]. And it has been downhill ever since for the Democratic Party,” Sanders said, according to the outlet.
Politico reported that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said in a statement, “I have never berated Sen. Sanders for his socialist views. It is a shame he refuses to accept the more moderate views I share with my constituents.”
Democratic candidates could face serious headwinds during the 2022 election cycle if Americans continue to get hammered by high inflation and skyrocketing gas prices — as of Thursday, the AAA national average price for a gallon of gas is $4.97.
In a recent opinion piece, Washington Post contributing columnist Matt Bai argued that if Democrats get badly bested at the ballot box this year, that would actually set them up for a win during the 2024 presidential contest. Bai said that for Democrats, “The good news is that getting blown out in 2022 may well be the only path you have to holding the White House in 2024.”
“I’m not saying the costs of a Republican takeover in November won’t be steep in the short run. These aren’t the conservative revolutionaries of 1994 or even tea-party types of 2010. This is the mutant-gene version of a Republican uprising, a full-on crazy-eyed dystopian movement of conspiracists and authoritarians,” Bai wrote. “But everything we know about modern politics suggests that the best way — maybe the only way — for a Democrat to be reelected is to also be the last guy standing between the broad American electorate and a whole lot of Republican crazy.”