(USA Features) Voters who have loyally supported socialist Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders increasingly say they will leave the Democratic Party if former Vice President Joe Biden wins the 2020 presidential nomination.
If that pans out, the New York Post reported, it could have a very positive effect on President Donald Trump’s reelection chances in November.
“We will never – NEVER boost or support Joe Biden or defend his abysmal record and terrible policy positions,” Henry Williams, executive director of The Gravel Institute, told The Post.
“We will tell people, as we always have, to vote their conscience and to make decisions based on the interests of all the world’s oppressed people … I do expect a massive exodus from the Democratic Party,” he continued.
David Oks and Henry Magowan, along with Williams, are the driving forces behind the brief presidential campaign of Mike Gravel, an 89-year-old former Alaska senator who left the race in August.
They all then became enthusiastic “Bernie Bros.”
“I don’t know if I could vote for Biden,” said a high-profile local Democratic Socialist, the Post reported. “Biden is just an old white guy who inspires nobody. I sincerely think he will lose the electoral and popular vote and I know I won’t be voting for him in New York.”
The grumbling from Sanders supporters isn’t simply an idle threat, the paper reported. Some 12 percent of voters who supported Sanders’ failed 2016 presidential bid wound up supporting Trump on Election Day, according to an analysis by Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
That added an additional 216,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to exit polls. Trump’s combined margin of victory in those states was 77,744.
Other Sanders supporters most assuredly sat out the 2016 election while some also probably voted for a third-party candidate in protest, political analysts noted, according to the Post.
This article originally appeared at USAFEATURESMEDIA and was republished with permission.
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