Sen. Bernie Sanders’ most loyal followers are finally splitting with the socialist icon — telling The Post they will never endorse former veep Joe Biden even as the Vermont senator pleads for them to get on board.
New York members of the Young Democratic Socialists of America — the campus-based section of the Democratic Socialists movement — say they are disappointed that Sanders, 78, endorsed Biden earlier this month and are unlikely to vote for him in November.
“Right now, I’m leaning towards not voting for Joe Biden, but there’s a lot of time between now and November,” said Alex Pellitteri, 19, a founding member of Hunter College’s YDSA chapter.
“If the election were held tomorrow, I wouldn’t vote for him. I don’t think simply running against Donald Trump makes you a progressive. You have to have that record,” he continued.
“Obviously, I don’t expect every candidate to be a socialist, but I think there is a bare minimum of an acceptable candidate and I don’t think he meets that.”
Facing an enthusiasm problem with young voters, Biden’s campaign is aggressively courting Sanders’ base, adopting some of his policies including a student debt cancellation plan and free public college.
But young socialist Democrats say Biden’s policies don’t go far enough and feel his attempts to win their support after he mocked Sanders’ socialist roots on the campaign trail are insincere.
“No DSA chapter that I think is worth its salt will endorse Biden, and the reason for that is because we have fundamental disagreements with the Democratic Party,” adds Garrison Grogan, 22, a founding member at Columbia University’s YDSA.
With Sanders out of the 2020 presidential race, his followers say their role now is to keep advocating the policies he championed, including a Green New Deal and Medicare For All, while also pushing Biden to support them.
“I think it would be a disastrous thing for the socialist left to campaign for Biden,” said Emmaline Bennett, 22, also a founder of Columbia’s YDSA chapter.
“Our political vision is based on breaking with this neo-liberal status quo that he is representative of,” she added, saying she will vote for Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, not Biden.
“I think what we should be doing is acting as a continual source of pressure on Biden and mainstream Democrats so these issues stay on the table,” Bennett said.
Prominent progressives and Democratic socialists are using their influence as a bargaining chip in this endorsement cycle.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Wednesday announced she would vote for Biden only after having policy discussions with his campaign to see if they shared common ground.
Grogan described feeling like being “between a rock and a hard place,” saying he didn’t want Trump to be re-elected but didn’t want progressives to give up the power that Sanders’ movement amassed.
“We don’t want to give explicit support to Joe Biden because we think it gives away any negotiating power we have, and then on the other hand, of course we don’t want people to vote for Trump,” he said.
While all three Big Apple socialists said they weren’t planning to vote for Biden, they said they would never shame someone else who did.
“Some people are planning to reluctantly vote for Biden,” Bennett said of some of her college friends.
“It is an individual decision and I’m not going to criticize people who are going to vote for Biden because it’s a problem with the terrible choices this system has given us, it’s not a problem with them,” she continued.
“I will not tell anyone to not vote for Joe Biden,” added Grogan, “but I will tell people not to endorse Joe Biden, not to advocate for Joe Biden’s ideas.”
For Pelliteri, the fight for progressive ideals like racial justice and college for all will continue even with Trump out of the White House.
“I think capitalism is a problem that created Donald Trump. It’s not like if we defeat Donald Trump, everything is fine and we can go back to normal. There will still be a lot of work to do,” he said.