In a recent interview with New Yorker writer Evan Osnos, former President Barack Obama suggested that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s goals are not too far apart from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders , who was frequently attacked as being too far to the left of the political spectrum during his recent presidential run.
“If you look at Joe Biden’s goals and Bernie Sanders’s goals, they’re not that different, from a forty-thousand-foot level,” Obama said of the candidate’s recent shift to the left.
“They both want to make sure everybody has health care. They want to make sure everybody can get a job that pays a living wage. They want to make sure every child gets a good education.”
Afterward, Obama suggested that the significant difference between the two is what they believe is the best strategy to enact these policies.
“A lot of times, the issue has to do with ‘How do we go about that, and what are the coalitions we need?’ ” he said.
The former U.S. leader claimed that the current moment, which is defined by a pandemic and widespread civil unrest, has shifted Biden’s strategy — not because his values have changed but because of the unprecedented circumstances.
Obama’s sentiments were echoed in a recent FiveThirtyEight piece, which noted that the recent “reimagining” of the Biden campaign’s platform comes amid a crisis that the former vice president said could be just as devastating as the Great Depression. The publication also noted the Democratic Party’s gradual leftward shift over the years, which it said can be observed in the difference between Biden’s “fairly liberal” policies and those of the Obama administration.
In a recent interview with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show , Sanders touted Biden’s agenda as the most progressive since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Per Rolling Stone , the Vermont senator highlighted the Biden campaign’s plans for moving toward clean electricity, curbing pharmaceutical industry greed, and raising the minimum wage.
Sanders’ work with Biden has been a focus of attack for allies of President Donald Trump , some of whom believe that the Democrat is a Trojan horse for a radical left-wing agenda. As The Inquisitr reported, Vice President Mike Pence previously pointed to Sanders and Biden’s unity agenda and claimed that the former Delaware senator is nothing more than a placeholder candidate. Pence argued that under a Biden presidency, America would decline due to the influence of socialist policies he claims the Democrat is planning to enact.
