Former Bernie Sanders campaign manager: Biden will face progressive challenge in 2024

Jeff Weaver, who ran Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and was a Sanders adviser in 2020, predicts that President Joe Biden will face a progressive primary challenge in 2024 in background increasingly disillusioned on the left side of the Democratic agenda.

“Will there be a progressive challenger? Yes,” said Weaver Politico. He told the paper that a challenge would not be “repudiation” for Biden but a result of the party’s base increasingly moving to the left. “Progressive people eventually go up,” he said. “And if nothing else, a progressive run that gets a lot of support will demonstrate that the ideas that the progressive movement embraces are, in fact, universal.”

Despite Biden’s lifelong reputation as a moderate and pragmatic Democrat, progressives embrace Biden in the early months of his presidency, as he vowed to unite the party’s disparate factions to advance an ambitious agenda that includes many of the policy priorities that Democrats have focused on in the past. many years. But after successfully pushing the COVID relief bill last March, Biden’s first-year legislative achievement has been largely confined to the bipartisan infrastructure bill. has an author of the centrist Democrats with some support from leading Republicans. Improvement still united with Biden in an effort to pass his $3.5 trillion Better Rebuild proposal and largely avoid criticizing the scaled-down version (at half the size) intended to appease parties. conservative Democrats such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. But party leaders pushed for progress to back a bipartisan infrastructure vote before the Build Better Again deal is signed, cost to the left of its main leverage point even before Manchin explode BBB talks last month.

Weaver’s interview reflects the fact that a growing number of progressives see Biden’s initial presidency as a failure as the White House begins a new year with much of the same legislative agenda – and the The midterm elections are only 11 months away.

“He’s hugely unloved. He’s old as hell. He’s barely productive, unless we’re counting the umpires or whatever we’re using. , co-founder Founder of the progressive No Excuses PAC and former communications director for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., told Politico, endorsing Weaver’s prediction. DC is flooded with people who want to be president.”

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However, it remains unclear which prominent figure on the left will come forward to mount a potentially divisive 2024 campaign. Past presidents with high hopes for progress, such as Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., both have prominent roles in the Senate and are extremely unlikely to challenge a party incumbent. Democracy. It also seems far-fetched that a prominent Progressive House like Ocasio-Cortez would decide against Biden.

“Radicals in the House, in the Senate, in the Radical Caucus are not talking about voting primaries for Biden,” an aide to a senior member of the House told Politico.

With no top-ranked elected official likely to directly challenge Biden, some on the left are considering lesser-known candidates who could push Biden to the left.

When asked if Biden faces a major challenge from the left, one prominent progressive, who has not been identified, said, “Yes,” Politico reported, adding that it could be it. “someone like Nina Turner or Marianne Williamson. Suspect anyone currently elected”.

Turner, a longtime Sanders ally and former Ohio senator, unsuccessfully ran for Congress in a special election last year against now the House of Representatives. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, who was a lot of support founded by the Democratic Party. Williamson, a self-help expert, ran a fringe campaign in the 2020 Democratic primary before dropping out and endorsing Sanders.

“I think the president is definitely going to face a challenger in 2024,” Williamson told Politico. “The desire to make government actually work for the people again is so intense right now, and yes, absolutely, someone will stand up for it.”

Talk of a progressive primary challenger before Biden has even completed his first year in office underscoring growing discontent from the party’s left and it looks like additional names could emerge. in the coming months and years.

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“I don’t think the country and certainly not progressive within the party, who both tend to be younger, will sit on the sidelines,” former Sanders adviser Mark Longabaugh told Politico.

The main challenger or not, Biden, whose approval rating has been underwater since the summer, has tried to defend his left wing by joining calls for progress to extend the moratorium on the grand prix. translate above student loan payments, and to support Senate filter reform to advance stalled voting rights legislation. The president remains upbeat about the prospects for passing some form of the Build Back Better package, fulfilling a vow to invest in measures to combat climate change and expand the social safety net. Any potential BBB bill would require all 50 Democratic votes in the Senate – or at least one Republican vote, which seems to be even less.

There is also worry on the left that a failed challenge against Biden, who remains popular with Democrats overall, could damage the progressive cause.

“I think it’s very unlikely that a serious progressive challenger emerges if Biden stays in the race,” Max Berger, a former top Warren campaign aide, told Politico. “It would go against the sensitivities of Democrats whose ranks and profiles I don’t think it would necessarily be a great service to a progressive cause when our ideas have looks like that.”

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