Left-wing populist Michael Tracey says it is a “major political liability” for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to be “percieved” of as endorsing an open borders agenda in the 2020 election.

During an interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Tracey — a supporter of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) — said Sanders should stick to his 2015 rhetoric in which he explicitly opposed hemispheric open borders as an effort by the billionaire class to drive down American wages.

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Tracey said:

Bernie has, in the past and even earlier on in this campaign … he was asked a question about open borders at a public event and he said, “No, of course, I don’t support open borders.” So it was more in line with what he said in the previous campaign. But I think in Bernie’s case, he’s also incorporated a lot of younger activists into his campaign, and those are certainly the people exerting influence on him in terms of advocacy or organizations that supported him — so he’s tempered his rhetoric a bit so as not to offend their sensibilities, which I don’t think is a great strategy for broad-based political appeal. Ironically, if he had just kept the same course on immigration that he articulated in that 2015 interview where he said it was a “Koch brothers scheme” essentially, I think he’d be in a much better place now because I just don’t think … even being perceived to endorse open borders … is a major political liability.

As Breitbart News reported, Sanders navigated his way through an interview with the New York Times in which he readily admitted that businesses importing cheaper foreign workers — often illegal aliens — suppresses the wages of America’s working and middle class.

“Yeah, if you’re being paid $5 — if you’re being paid $5 an hour, now, of course, it’s going to lower wages,” Sanders said. “Why would I hire at a higher wage?”

Later in the interview, though, Sanders backs away from immigration’s wage-suppression impact on Americans and focuses on a $15 minimum wage — suggesting that illegal aliens be legalized and paid the same wage as Americans.

“All I am saying is that if for whatever reason, I’m paying you $5 an hour, okay,” Sanders said. “You don’t think that’s going to lower the wages that she gets?”

The political liabilities, as Tracey notes, may come from Sanders’ embracing free health care for all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens for which American taxpayers would be forced to pay. The plan would likely cost Americans about $660 billion over the course of a decade, and experts have said such a policy would drive a migration of foreigners “with serious health problems” to America’s borders.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in September 2019 revealed that free health care for illegal aliens at taxpayers’ expense is the most unpopular policy position in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary, Breitbart News noted.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.