Sen. Bernie Sanders returned the The View on Monday. This time there was no ice cream.

In explaining the outcome of last week’s election, Sanders admitted that President-elect Donald Trump “touched a nerve” in his appeal to economic concerns of working class voters in a way Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party failed to do.

“In my view, the Democratic Party has not been as strong as it should be in saying ‘Yeah, we’re going to stand with the working people'” said the Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential candidate.

“Well you did,” interjected co-host Joy Behar.

“I did,” Sanders replied.

Behar suggested Sanders would have won if he were the Democratic nominee, instead of Clinton.

Sanders shrugged.

“The answer is who knows and who will ever know,” he said. Later in the interview, Sanders said despite Clinton’s proposed policies, working class voters did not believe she “was prepared to stand up and fight for them.”


Going forward, Sanders said Democrats should work to hold Trump accountable on his pledges to help the working class and to call for a higher minimum wage, pay equity for women, increased infrastructure spending, reformed trade policy, and some other issues he believed there may be shared ground with the president-elect.

But Sanders also pledged to “fight against sexism, racism and xenophobia” under Trump’s administration and said the controversial appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist “should get us very nervous.”

Bannon joined Trump’s campaign in August after taking a leave as chairman from Breitbart, an alt-right news and opinion website.

“I will be damned if we’re going to go backwards and try to divide up this country again,” Sanders said. “We are going to bring our people together. We are not going back.”

Sanders said that on individual issues, most Americans agree with his side.

“I don’t call it the left. I call it the vast majority of the people,” he said.

Pressed on why the country elected Trump, Sanders questioned whether the Democratic Party had effectively communicated its message to the working class.

“Where was the Democratic Party?” he asked. “Has the Democratic Party been doing its job in telling working people in Iowa, and in New York, and in Wyoming, ‘We’re going to stand with you. We have the guts to take on Wall Street. We have the guts to take on the insurance companies, and the drug companies and the fossil fuel companies.'”


“I don’t think most people believe the Democratic Party has done that,” he added.

He reiterated that point in a series of tweets Monday.