Sarah McBride, Delaware’s lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives, revealed how her political thinking is evolving and discussed strategy to counter the Trump administration during a very special episode of the Highlands Bunker podcast that drops today.
In the podcast, recorded Friday, Feb. 28, McBride talked about how the Democratic Party needs to rebalance identity and economic concerns as it reckons with its shattering defeat in November’s elections for Congress and the White House.
“I think the reality is we are going to have to be a party that creates more space for people who are in different places in their journey of understanding of the full diversity of society. We’re going to have to include people who haven’t wrapped their minds around trans identities, for instance,” said the freshman Congresswoman, who was known as a moderate Democrat during her tenure in the state Senate.
“I do think that we shoot ourselves in the foot, both electorally and from a substantive policy perspective, when we actively push people away who are not yet where we want them to be on a whole host of issues that are deeply personal for many of us. But we have to grapple with where people are and we have to deal with the reality of the world as it is if we want to build a world that is kinder and more just and fairer.”
Speaking of her own identity, she added: “I do believe that in this moment, when trans people are facing horrific attacks by the Trump administration and far too many state governments, that the thing I can most constructively contribute to, tangibly contribute to for the trans community, is reinforcing that trans people are multidimensional human beings, that we are not the caricature of self-obsessed, single-issue individuals.”
McBride then described how in recent years she has developed more of an appreciation for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
“I think one of my biggest evolutions in the last 10 years has been I think the critique that I had very early on of sort of the Bernie Sanders movement, that it was class reductionist, and that it did not center identity enough, that it didn’t center sort of civil rights and human rights struggles enough, and I think as I have grown up, as I have done this work, as I frankly become more comfortable in my own self, as I’ve seen how change comes, I have moved in a place where I think we have to recognize, one, the centrality of economics to all of these issues, right, that so much of the discrimination and prejudice that we face from an institutional perspective is in pursuit of distracting and dividing people in order to pick the pockets of American workers, in order to undermine the right to organize in unions in this country, in order to privatize Social Security and Medicare, right? It is part of that politics, that political strategy of misdirection. And I also I think, more sort of practically, have seen that if we are going to build a diverse, multiracial, majoritarian coalition in support of the policies that we believe in, then we need to be less exclusionary in the language we use, in the policies that we sort of prioritize in our messaging and our policy work and really have a economic-focused message that does unite people and to say that we don’t have to think that you are right on every issue for us to be fighting for you. And to respect people by delivering for them not only across their identities but their political ideology as well.”
To which Rob Vanella, the notoriously leftist podcast host (and coordinating editor of Delaware Call), responded, “You’re turning into a Bernie Bro, I love to hear it,” provoking laughter from McBride.
Other topics included Gaza, Ukraine and the possibility that the federal government will shut down if Democrats refuse to come to Republicans’ rescue this month. Listen to the interview above or here.