Sen. Elizabeth Warren says her presidential primary opponent Bernard Sanders may have a “foundation of hate” problem on his hands due to the actions of anonymous supporters.
The Massachusetts Democrat told reporters this week that politicians must take responsibility for the behavior of anyone who claims to be a supporter. She made the remarks after members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada were chastised over Medicare for All comments.
“I’ve said before that we are all responsible for what our supporters do, and I think Bernie has a lot of questions to answer here,” Ms. Warren said Monday, NBC News reported.
Mr. Sanders recently told PBS that it was bizarre to try and hold him accountable for the social-media behavior of anonymous accounts unconnected to his campaign.
“I don’t know who these so-called supporters are,” the Vermont senator said. “We’re living in a strange world on the internet. And sometimes people attack people in somebody else’s name.”
Ms. Warren disagrees.
“I am particularly worried about what happened in the attacks on members of the culinary union, particularly on the women in leadership,” she said, NBC reported. “That is not how we build an inclusive Democratic Party. … We do not build on a foundation of hate.”
The union in question has said that it will not endorse anyone during the primary elections and that Medicare for All legislation would erode the contractual gains it’s made over the years during negotiations.
John Sexton of the conservative blog Hotair responded to the Democrats’ internal strife Tuesday by saying conflict is to be expected when candidates embrace socialism.
“The real problem is that Sanders is running on a platform of ’political revolution’ and unabashed socialism backed by a long history of fondness for various real revolutionaries (in Cuba, Nicaragua, etc.),” Mr. Sexton wrote. “He is playing in the far left’s sandbox and for a portion of those people the revolutionary ideal means winning by any means necessary, even violence. To adopt Warren’s language, real revolutionaries are just fine with a foundation of hate so long as it’s hate for the right things.
“It’s no surprise so many of Sanders’ die-hard fans see extreme behavior in defense of his campaign as a feature not a bug,” he wrote.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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