Nancy Pelosi came out of a House Democrats retreat on Friday heaping praise on 2016 Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Another House Dem eluded to plans to use young Bernie supporters to boost Hillary’s numbers in the November general election.
“I think Bernie Sanders has a very positive message,” Pelosi said just following the three-day Baltimore event. ABC 7 quoted her: “It’s about fairness, it’s about opportunity, and we are united for opportunity.”
Pelosi’s did not object to raising taxes but said such an effort is not realistic at this time.
“I’m very proud of the way Senator Sanders has expanded the universe of young people especially interested in the political process,” Pelosi went on to say. In 2008 then candidate Barack Obama overcame opponent Hillary Clinton with the help of an extensive youth outreach. He went on to garner 66 per cent of the youth vote in his first election as President.
Since then Obama’s youth favorability seems to have waned. Breitbart News’s Ben Shapiro wrote in July 2015, “These millennials helped President Obama redefine and radically transform America, and now it turns out that they dislike what they’ve built.”
Pelosi called Sanders’ suggestions excellent.
“Sen. Clinton has already as well recognized the value that Bernie Sanders has brought to the campaign in energizing those young people,” Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) was quoted as saying.
Crowley pointed to a greater plan to use the Sanders’ supporters to boost Clinton’s support in the general election. “At the end, those folks will come to her.”
Pelosi even went on to call socialist Sanders’ influence a “very wholesome effect on our political process.”
The ABC 7 report noted anxiety among retreat attendees as they questioned the Senator’s credentials and sought to lower expectations for how Clinton will come out after Monday’s Iowa caucus.
Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) —deemed a Clinton “surrogate” in the report — said that members “see Clinton as a problem solver and less of an ideologue.”
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
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