Democrats should give up trying to appeal to racist, sexist or homophobic voters on the far right even as their party tries to preserve thin majorities in both congressional chambers, the progressive US senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday.

Sanders’ remarks came during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press after host Chuck Todd asked a question about attempting to woo over supporters of Donald Trump, which include white nationalists who helped stage the deadly January 6 Capitol attack on the day that Congress certified the former Republican president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Todd said Sanders “made a big deal about wanting to court Trump voters” in both the 2016 election that Trump won as well as the 2020 race that he lost and wondered if the Vermont senator still felt they were worth that.

“There are some extreme rightwing voters who are racists, who are sexists, who are homophobes – xenophobes,” Sanders said. “No, I don’t think you’re ever going to get them.”

Sanders nonetheless said Democrats should sympathize with “millions of … working-class people” who can’t afford healthcare, college tuition for their children or their prescription drugs. And he said one way to appeal to undecided voters is to have the political resolve to punish corporate greed from insurance firms, drug companies and Wall Street traders.

“Some of those people – I’m not saying all – will say, ‘You know what, I’m going to stand with the Democratic party because on these economic issues, they’re far preferable to right-wing Republicans,” Sanders told Todd.

Sanders is an independent but votes in line with the Democrats’ agenda on Capitol Hill.

He recently wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian that warned Democrats should not only focus on protecting abortion rights in the closing phases of this midterm election cycle but also needed to communicate a plan for the economic woes facing Americans that Republicans as a party purport to care more about.

Sanders said his voting record starkly illustrates his opposition to the US supreme court’s decision in June to eliminate federal protections for abortion, which a majority of voters believe should be legal in most cases, according to some polling.

The supreme court’s ruling overturning the nationwide abortion rights established by the 1973 Roe v Wade case has led to fears that the justices could also target the elimination of same-sex marriage.

But Sanders said his party should also be concerned about how six in 10 Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And he has said Democrats should be more vocal about how they have better ideas than Republicans on rectifying that reality, including through methods such as ending tax breaks, raising the federal minimum wage and even providing universal healthcare.

The Democrats go into the midterms with an eight-seat advantage in the House. The Senate is split evenly but Biden’s Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris currently gives their party a tiebreaker.