 Literally, just one day after Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden for president, he already was essentially placing blame for the possible loss in November, not on Joe Biden, but on his supporters who refused to fall in line. And I find this incredibly problematic, morally reprehensible, and quite frankly, cowardly. It's unbecoming of a progressive leader to basically take the entire burden and drop it on the heads of your supporters and absolve Joe Biden of any responsibility whatsoever of actually winning them over. But let's get to what he said specifically here. Steve Peoples of AP reports, Bernie Sanders said Tuesday that it would be irresponsible for his loyalists not to support Joe Biden, warning that progressives who sit on their hands in the months ahead would simply enable Donald Trump's re-election. And lest there be any question, the 78-year-old Vermont senator confirmed that it's probably a very fair assumption that he would not run for president again. He added with a laugh, one can't predict the future. He seemed to distance himself from the campaign's former national press secretary, Breonna Joy Gray, when asked about her recent statement on social media, refusing to endorse Joe Biden. She is my former press secretary, not on the payroll. Sanders noted, a spokesperson later clarified that all campaign staffers were no longer on the payroll as of Tuesday, though they will get a severance check in May. Sanders said his supporters have a simple choice now that Biden has emerged as the presumptive nominee. Do we be as active as we can in electing Joe Biden and doing everything we can to move Joe and his campaign in a more progressive direction? Or do we choose to sit out and allow the most dangerous president in modern American history to get re-elected? He continued, I believe it's irresponsible for anybody to say, well, I disagree with Joe Biden, I disagree with Joe Biden, and therefore I'm not going to be involved. So first of all, I find it absolutely indefensible that he would throw his former press secretary under a bus. This has been a problem with Bernie Sanders for quite some time. He never defends the people who defend him. Like when Zephyr Teachout penned an op-ed talking about Joe Biden's corruption, he apologized to Joe Biden and denounced Zephyr Teachout's article. So he never stands by the people who go to bat for him. And that's a problem. The core issue that I have with this is that Bernie Sanders isn't reading the room correctly. If he were to say, look, I get where my supporters are coming from, but you've got to suck it up and vote for Joe Biden for purposes of harm reduction. I think that is a reasonable approach. Nobody is going to, you know, bemoan the fact that you're telling them to support the lesser of two evils, even if they won't actually do that. We can, we can understand and justify your position. But for you to suggest, which I think is implied here, that Joe Biden has zero responsibility, it's not irresponsible at all for Joe Biden to win over Bernie Sanders supporters. I just find that completely unacceptable. So, you know, the way that he worded this, and I'll give him a chance to kind of respond and correct the record here is that we have to go to Joe Biden. He doesn't have to come to us and earn our votes. We have to go to him. We're obligated to go to him. And at no point does Joe Biden ever have to do anything to actually win us over. I mean, maybe Bernie, if you truly thought that Donald Trump was a threat, maybe you should have ignored Obama when he pressured you to drop out. Maybe you should have stayed in a little bit longer to extract maybe just like, I don't know, one concession and maybe behind the scenes. Bernie Sanders did that. But I'm sorry, proposing Medicare at 60 when we're asking specifically for Medicare for all. And after Hillary Clinton proposed Medicare at 50, I mean, how could you say this with a straight face? How could you not suggest that it's irresponsible for Joe Biden to not be aggressively campaigning to get our votes? How could you not say it is very deeply irresponsible of Joe Biden to ignore the issues, the legitimate crises that people on the left are talking about? It's irresponsible for Joe Biden not to endorse Medicare for all. It's irresponsible for Joe Biden not to cancel all student debt. It's irresponsible for Joe Biden to not end the wars. How could you possibly think that the entire burden of all of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of your supporters? I don't think Bernie Sanders to his core believes that because if you do, then you're not the person I thought you were, Bernie. But you've got to understand that this approach is deeply, deeply ineffective. AOC in an interview with the New York Times, I think she actually had a very human reaction. She said, we can't just throw all of the issues that the left raise, you know, under the rug and pretend like they don't exist. Now that Biden is the nominee, we can't do that. So we need we need more from Joe Biden. It's insulting that he proposed Medicare 60 after Hillary offered us Medicare 50. It's like after 2016, Democrats should have learned the importance of uniting the left and the center even after they preached about it. But now it's like they're saying, you know, yeah, I get that we lost without the left. You know, they are the ones that blame Bernie Sanders supporters and third party voters, but what do they do in response? They throw us less crumbs than they did in 2016. It's like a huge fuck you. And then we have Bernie Sanders dogpiling on us along with the corporate establishment. I mean, do you want to know what happened as soon as this article came out? Joy Reid of MSNBC tweeted this out. So now that he's won them over after they berated you for more than a year, actually, fuck it, since you ran for president back in 2015 and 2016. Now, you know, they're using you. As you're attacking your own base. Don't do this, Bernie. Don't do this. You know that this is not effective. Trying to come from a place of understanding that is a good place to start if you truly want some of your supporters to flip. Now, it's a fact of reality that a large portion of Bernie Sanders supporters are not going to vote for Joe Biden. I'm not voting for Joe Biden. I live in Oregon. All of my state's electoral votes are going to go to Joe Biden regardless. So to me, it doesn't matter. So I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden. But if you want to get people to vote for Joe Biden in those key swing states, you've got to acknowledge and understand their real disgust. Acknowledge where they're coming from. And I think Bernie knows this because he talks to people. He's not insulated from the public like people like Joe Biden. But for him to say this, it's really not a good look. And I'm sorry, where are you, Bernie, on the rape allegation against Joe Biden? How could you continue to be silent on this? Don't you have a responsibility to call on Joe Biden and tell him maybe he should address it, maybe give us some signal that he actually cares about women's rights after the Democratic Party has been screeching about women's rights ever since, you know, forever. It's just it's like, you know, he is he's not understanding that people aren't going to support Joe Biden enthusiastically, even if his supporters and I think most of them probably will end up backing Joe Biden. They're not going to do it, you know, enthusiastically. They're going to do it begrudgingly because they don't want Donald Trump to fill another Supreme Court seat. They don't want Donald Trump to be in control for the next four years, which elevates the prospect of war with the wrong. So Bernie of all people should be understanding of where his movement is coming from, but the fact that he's saying that they're responsible and it's not Joe Biden who's irresponsible for not trying more to win them over. After he just spit in our eyes with his I'm not a socialist fundraiser, scolding people isn't going to work. It's insulting. So, yeah, I think that Bernie Sanders of all people should know this is not a good look and it pains me to say this. But sorry, Bernie, most people aren't going to respond to you blaming them for the incompetence of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden. And to an extent your own campaign, because, you know, this is what happens like so many people go to bat for Bernie Sanders. Brianna Joy Gray, Zephyr Teachout, all of his millions of supporters and not even a day after he endorses Biden, this is the type of bullshit that we have to put up with. Like if he were saying this in September, I can understand it more, right? Because there's a real urgency. If it seems like Joe Biden's going to lose, you know, he's kind of frantic and panicking, but it's April. You didn't drop out in 2016 until July. Maybe just give him a week, Bernie. Can they get a week to process it? I mean, Elizabeth Warren hasn't even endorsed Joe Biden yet. So maybe give your supporters a little bit of time for self care. Just give them a fucking little bit of time to breathe.