Sara Fagen Suggests Dems Should Snub Sanders Nomination at Convention

STEPHANOPOULOS: It does appear, Sara Fagen, that he’s replicating in part what happened in the Republican primaries last time around.

Getting 30 to 40 percent of the vote...

SARA FAGEN, ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Mm-hmm.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... splintered opposition, gave Donald Trump the opening back in 2016.

FAGEN: He did give Trump — Trump did have the opening in 2016 because of divisive Republican primary.

I think the difference, though, here is Donald Trump was ultimately espoused tenets of the Republican Party. He was a Republican. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. 15 times he’s been on the ballot in Vermont, and not one time did he say put his name forward on the Democratic nomination. He only runs as a Democrat because it’s the path of least resistance to getting the nomination.

I don’t understand why Democrats feel compelled to hand wring around their convention rules around a person who is not a member of their party.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You’re shaking your head.

SIMPSON: Well, first of all, Bloomberg is a Republican, so — Elizabeth Warren at one point was a Republican, has shifted.

He has a record of voting with the Democrats for a long time, and is most of his — I think he was in Democrats 95 percent of the time during his time in the Senate. He’s a democratic socialist, I think we have to continue to say that, so he is not one who believes...

EMANUEL: No, we don’t have to continue to say that.

SIMPSON: You should say that, because it’s the truth, right. He’s not — democratic socialism is different. Martin Luther King was a democratic socialist. Nelson Mandela was a democratic socialist. He believes in democracy, but believes that the economy should be looked at from a different perspective.