Sanders 'humiliated' by Democrats' failure to connect with working class

Bernie Sanders on Monday said he is “deeply humiliated” by the Democratic Party’s inability to connect with white working-class voters.

President-elect Donald Trump successfully tapped into the anger and angst of white working-class voters, who helped propel him to the presidency over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.


“I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business,” Sanders, who was promoting his new book — “Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In” — told “CBS This Morning.” “It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.”

The Vermont senator suggested Clinton should have won the presidential election by 10 percentage points (Clinton leads the popular vote by nearly 1 million votes, but Trump clinched the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the White House) but refused to speculate whether he could have defeated Trump in a general election had he been victorious in the Democratic primary.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Sanders said. “Maybe. Maybe not. But this is what I do know: I know that the Democratic Party has got to stand with the working people of this country, feel their pain and take on the billionaire class, take on Wall Street, take on the drug companies.”

Millions of white working-class voters who supported President Barack Obama, Sanders continued, “turned their backs on the Democratic Party.”

“I think a lot of people do not think the Democratic Party is standing with them. That has got to change,” Sanders said, noting that he supports Keith Ellison to take over the Democratic National Committee because, in his view, the Minnesota congressman “will shake up” the party.