Van Jones: Voters see ‘something defective’ with ‘mainline Democrats’

CNN’s Van Jones says the Democratic Party is in turmoil because Americans see “something defective” in its “mainline” candidates.

The political analyst made the comment Wednesday evening after the party’s remaining presidential hopefuls took the stage in Las Vegas.

“From a party point of view, mainline Democrats are being squeezed out by Bernie and Bloomberg,” Mr. Jones said, referring to Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Bernie is leading a bottom-up insurgency from the left, and he’s not actually a Democrat. And then now you have this top-down incursion from the right from, uh, from Bloomberg — millions of people billions of dollars — he’s not really a Democrat, either.”

He then concluded that what viewers witnessed was a symptom of a much deeper dysfunction.

“There’s a judgment going on with the American people that the mainline Democrats — there’s something wrong, there’s something defective, there’s something that’s not cutting the cheese, and so these outside forces are coming in, squeezing them out,” Mr. Jones said before turning to entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

“Frankly, one of the people I had the most hope in is you because you had a different set of ideas,” Mr. Jones told the failed presidential candidate. “People should be looking in the mirror in this party to figure out what is going on here because really we should have other choices than just these two outsiders.”