“It is incredibly important that people within the progressive movement and Democratic Party realize
that women are sick of this” stuff, said Erin Matson, a Virginia-based abortion rights activist, “and we’re not going to take it anymore.” (She used a more pungent word than “stuff.”) “What Bernie doesn’t seem to realize,” she added, “is that the abortion rights movement has really bucked up and gotten some tough ovaries in the last couple of years.”
Tom Perez, the party’s newly elected chairman, had been campaigning with Mr. Ossoff in Georgia when Mr. Sanders was in Nebraska.
“This is very raw,” said Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, conceding
that “after the presidential election, there is still this ongoing debate about identity politics versus economic opportunity.”
Mr. Sanders and the new leadership of the Democratic National Committee touched a party sore spot this week
when they took their “Unity Tour” to Omaha to rally for a mayoral candidate who opposes abortion rights.
The red-and-blue-state tour that Mr. Sanders and the Democratic National Committee officials are on “conveys to the public
that the Democratic Party is first and foremost a party of economic opportunity,” she said.
“It tells your most active political base that we’re just negotiable political property,” Ms. Hogue said of the statement sent by Mr. Sanders
and Representative Keith Ellison, the Democratic National Committee’s new deputy chairman, who appeared with Mr. Mello.