LAS VEGAS — Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who won the 2020 Nevada Democratic presidential caucus but not the nomination, came to swing state Nevada on Thursday to rally about 200 supporters behind Vice President Kamala Harris’ Oval Office bid.
He just didn’t tell the crowd to vote for her.
Billed by the local Harris-Walz campaign as “a town hall discussion” that would “highlight the economic stakes of this election for Nevadans,” Sanders’ 54 minutes on stage largely recapped the themes of his abortive White House run without his ever saying the words “Vote for Kamala Harris” or “I support the Harris-Walz ticket.”
Instead, the three-term senator — who faces a re-election contest in November — spent six minutes expounding on the dangers of a second term for former President Donald Trump.
“It’s imperative that we defeat Trump,” said Sanders, 83.
“I say this regardless of your political views. I don’t care if you’re a conservative Republican. You tell me whether you think it is appropriate to have somebody who is not only a bully but a pathological liar in the White House, all right?”
While railing against the ex-prez on the stump, Sanders engaged in some revisionist history.
After emphasizing Trump’s 2020 election loss and subsequent challenges to results in some states, Sanders said Democrat Al Gore, who narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush, refused to “keep appealing” and instead decided to concede.
In fact, while Gore reportedly called Bush to concede, he later withdrew that statement and went to court challenging the Florida vote count. The Gore campaign’s appeals eventually reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 against a Florida Supreme Court decision requiring a statewide recount of ballots.
Sanders also claimed Trump’s 2016 rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, uncomplainingly accepted her shocking defeat.
“Hillary Clinton’s heart was broken in 2016 — it was a close election,” Sanders said. “She got the majority of the vote, lost the Electoral College. She didn’t go whining. She didn’t go crying. She conceded and wished the new president well.”
But in her 2017 memoir “What Happened,” Clinton blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin, then-FBI chief James Comey, President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the media for her loss — all of whom she accused of overemphasizing issues surrounding her use of a private server and missing emails as secretary of state.
She even rapped Sanders, whose primary-campaign “attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
And let’s not forget her other famous election scapegoat: Russia. In cable-news appearances and on Twitter, Clinton repeatedly alleged Russian interference on Trump’s behalf influenced Americans to vote against her.
The remainder of Sanders’ time was spent rehashing his greatest hits: billionaires and trillionaires, the high costs of pharmaceuticals and the minimum wage.
“Right now, you have billionaires spending huge sums of money against candidates who are fighting for the working class and supporting reactionary candidates who want to give tax credits for the very wealthiest people,” he said.
In the face of several audience complaints about the high cost of prescription medicines, Sanders said the United States must be able to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers. He also called for a hike in the minimum wage to $17 an hour, eliminating the “starvation wages” he said some Americans earn.
But Sanders conceded that “a couple of years go, I introduced the minimum wage bill. … We did not get one Republican who supported it, not one, but we lost six Democrats as well.”
Sanders also complained the media aren’t paying attention to the situation in Gaza now because of “what’s going on in Lebanon and the Iranian missiles that came into Israel, which is also horrible, but children are starving to death right now in Gaza.”
The senator ended the rally by calling for an end to the Middle East war, but he left without asking his audience to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket.