Sanders Threatens Moderate Dems Who Won't Support Socialism

That’s one of the takeaways from the Vermont senator’s conversation with CNBC’s John Harwood this week in which he told Harwood that more moderate politicians on his ideological side of the aisle — inasmuch as they still exist — will vote for his plans once he’s in office.

Speaking to Harwood in a Des Moines, Iowa, coffee shop, Sanders touched on a wide variety of subjects, including the perfidy of big oil executives and why he hopes to become a 21st century’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (He seems a bit more Henry Wallace-ish to me, but whatever.)

None of this was particularly newsworthy stuff — until, that is, Harwood got to the kind of congressional support that Sanders could expect.

“Is Joe Manchin going to vote for your program? Is Jon Tester going to vote for your program?” Harwood asked.

Manchin and Tester, senators from West Virginia and Montana respectively, are two moderate Democrats from very red states who’d likely get significant pushback from voters if they decided to come out for, say, the Green New Deal. Did Sanders think he could persuade them to vote his way?