Ex-Clinton adviser: Sanders, Clinton divide will haunt Dems for next decade

A former adviser to President Bill Clinton says the Democratic Party will be haunted by divisions caused by the 2016 election for the next decade. 

Dick Morris, who advised Clinton during his time as Arkansas Governor and in the White House, said in an interview with John Catsimatidis that the Democratic party is divided between the ideologies of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former candidate Hillary Clinton.

“The pro-Hillary bias of the [Democratic] committee basically subordinating economic issues to social issues is going to be the fissure that will divide the Democratic Party for the next decade,” Morris said Sunday on the “Cats Roundtable.”

Morris pointed to a divide between the party’s champions of social policy and economic policy, suggesting that Clinton’s focus on social issues alienated voters who identified with both Sanders and Trump for their economic concerns.

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“The Democratic Party has always had a fundamental cleavage within it [between] those who made economic policy and those who made social policy their priority,” Morris said. “Bill Clinton took away the party from the control of the social activists and made it about economics and the working class. Hillary Clinton took it away from the economic focus and made it a focus on social rights: LGBT rights, reproductive freedom … rather than the need for jobs and higher wages and more income equality.”

“That cleavage fundamentally is mirrored in the Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton confrontation,” Morris said. 

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) came under fire this week after former DNC interim chairwoman Donna Brazile spoke out about a fundraising agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

Morris, who became a fierce critic of Clinton during the 2016 election, recalled President Bill Clinton’s shift toward economic issues under a Republican-majority Congress during his first term in office, which secured support from working-class Americans. 

“The voters are focused on economics,” Morris said. “That’s why Trump won the election.” 

President Trump is aiming to make good on his pledges for economic revival, as Republicans are preparing to push their new comprehensive tax-reform plan, revealed last week, through Congress.