Sanders, Bernard (born September 8, 1941) is a Vermont senator and a prominent American politician and activist. He has been the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, but he is still very much a Democrat at heart. He caucused with Democrats in the House and Senate for the most of his time in office and ran for president for the Democratic Party in 2016 and 2020. People in the United States now look to Sanders as their progressive movement's guiding light.
Sanders was born into a working-class Jewish family and spent his formative years in New York City's Brooklyn borough. He earned a degree from the University of Chicago in 1964 after attending Brooklyn College. He participated in the civil rights struggle as a student activist, coordinating protests for groups like SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He moved to Vermont in 1968 and attempted to run for office as a third party candidate in the early to mid-1970s, but was ultimately unsuccessful. As an independent, he won the office of mayor of Burlington in 1981 and went on to serve three terms in office.
In the United States, Sanders won election. Congress in 1990, serving as a representative for Vermont's open seat. He helped establish the Congressional Progressive Caucus in 1991 alongside five other House members. Before becoming the president, Sanders served for 16 years in the House of Representatives. Senate in 2006, setting a record for the first non-Republican elected to Vermont’s Class 1 seat since Whig Solomon Foot in 1850. The years 2012, 2018, and 2024 all saw Sanders' reelection. During his tenure in the Senate, he served as chair of three committees: the Veterans' Affairs Committee (2013–2015), the Budget Committee (2021–2023), and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (2023–2025). On top of being the dean of Vermont's congressional delegation, he is also the senior senator.
Despite coming in second place in both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential selection contests, Sanders remained a prominent contender throughout. Even though most didn't think he could win 23 primaries and caucuses in 2016, he managed to rally a lot of support from the grassroots and received money from small-dollar donations. After early primaries and caucuses in 2020, he emerged as the Democratic Party's front-runner despite an unprecedentedly huge field of contenders. He became Joe Biden's trusted friend following the 2020 primaries.
It is widely believed that following his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders pushed the Democratic Party to the left. He is against neoliberalism and for workers' self-management; he is a progressive policy advocate. He is in favor of a Green New Deal, free higher education for all, paid family leave, healthcare for all, a national healthcare system, and worker ownership of businesses through unions, cooperatives, and democratic public enterprises. When it comes to foreign policy, he is in favor of cutting down on military spending, increasing diplomatic efforts and international collaboration, and negotiating trade deals with a stronger focus on worker rights and environmental protections. Sanders has lauded aspects of the Nordic model and is in favor of workplace democracy. Some have drawn parallels between his political philosophy and FDR's New Deal programs and left-wing populism.
== Beginnings ==
Bernard Sanders came into this world in New York City's Brooklyn borough on September 8, 1941. He came from a family of Polish and Jewish immigrants; his dad, Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders (1904-1962), was born in S? The town of Opnice in Austrian Galicia, which is now in Poland, was formerly a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1921, Elias Sanders became a paint dealer after migrating to America. Dorothy Sanders, who was born Bernie's mother, was born in New York City; her maiden name was Glassberg (1912–1960). Larry Sanders's younger brother is this man.
Sanders claims that his family history sparked an early interest in politics in him. While Poland was under German occupation in the 1940s, he lost several family to the Holocaust.
In Midwood, Brooklyn, Sanders resided. His primary schooling was at P.S. On the basketball squad, he was named borough champion in 197. In 1954, he celebrated his bar mitzvah after attending afternoon Hebrew school. Despite never being hungry or without clothes, his older brother Larry recalled that the family could never afford to buy "like curtains or a rug" while they were growing up.
While a student at James Madison High School, Sanders captained the track team and finished third in an indoor one-mile event in New York City. He ran unsuccessfully for student body president in high school, coming in third place out of three contenders, despite his platform's emphasis on helping orphans affected by the Korean War. In spite of his setback, he became involved in the school's efforts to help Korean orphans by planning a charity basketball game and other fundraising events. Sanders was a classmate of economist Walter Block in high school. His mother passed away at the age of 47 while he was just 19 years old. Two years down the road, in 1962, at the age of 57, his dad passed away.
Sanders spent 1959–1960 as a student at Brooklyn College, then transferred to the University of Chicago to get a BA in political science in 1964. Sanders indicated in subsequent interviews that he was an average college student who found class "boring and irrelevant" and who placed a higher value on his training through community service than in traditional classroom instruction.
In the beginning of one's professional life,
Activism in politics
In retrospect, Sanders's time in Chicago stands out as "the major period of intellectual ferment in my life." It was during this time that he became a member of the Young People's Socialist League, the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America, and was extremely involved in the civil rights movement as a student with CORE and SNCC. As chairman, he oversaw the merger of the university chapters of CORE and SNCC. Protesting President George Wells Beadle's segregated housing policy, he attended a demonstration outside the University of Chicago administration building in January 1962. Sanders remarked during the demonstration, "We feel it is an intolerable situation when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university-owned apartments" . Following this, he and thirty-two other students went inside and set up camp outside the president's office. Beadle and the institution established a panel to examine prejudice following several weeks of sit-ins. Summer 1963 saw the end of racial segregation in private university housing at the University of Chicago, following more protests.
According to Joan Mahoney, who was a fellow participant in the sit-ins and a member of the University of Chicago CORE chapter at the time, Sanders was "a swell guy, a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn, but he wasn't terribly charismatic. One of his strengths, though, was his ability to work with a wide group of people, even those he didn't agree with." Sanders had an incident where he spent a day posting fliers protesting police brutality, only to discover afterwards that Chicago police had followed him and removed them all. He was a witness to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. During a protest in Englewood that summer against segregation in Chicago public schools, Sanders resisted arrest and was fined $25 (about $249 in 2023).
While a student at the University of Chicago, Sanders was an active member of the Student Peace Union and other anti-war and peace groups, in addition to his work in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He sought to be exempt from military service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, but ultimately had his request denied. By that time, he had reached the mandatory conscription age. Despite his opposition to the war, Sanders has always advocated for veterans' benefits and has never attacked anyone who served in the military. In Chicago, he worked for a short time as an organizer with the United Packinghouse Workers of America. Additionally, he assisted the reelection campaign of Leon Despres, a well-known alderman of Chicago who ran against the Democratic Party machine of then-mayor Richard J. Daley. Sanders claimed that he devoted a significant portion of his college years to reading books by political thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John Dewey, Karl Marx, and Erich Fromm—"reading everything except what I was supposed to read for class the next day."
=== Initial years in the field and time spent in Vermont ===
Upon returning to New York City after finishing college, Sanders worked as a carpenter, psychiatric assistant, and Head Start instructor, among other positions. He was "captivated by rural life" and in 1968 relocated to Stannard, Vermont, a little village in Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom region with 88 persons according to the 1970 census. He was a writer, filmmaker, and carpenter there, and he supplied schools with instructional resources including "radical film strips" and other films. In addition, he contributed to The Vermont Freeman, an alternative newspaper, with many pieces. After settling there for a while, he uprooted to the denserly populated Chittenden County in the middle of the 1970s. He went back to the town to meet with residents and other contenders for reelection in 2018.
Efforts by the Liberty Union
Sanders lived in Montpelier between 1969 and 1971. He joined the Liberty Union Party, which was an umbrella for socialist-oriented state parties that had their roots in the anti-war movement and the People's Party, after relocating to Burlington. This was the beginning of his electoral political career. In 1972 and 1976, he was a candidate for governor of Vermont as a representative of the Liberty Union. In 1972, he also ran for U.S. senator in the special election, and in 1974, he stood for the general election. Behind two-term sitting U.S. senator and 34-year-old state's attorney from Chittenden County, Patrick Leahy (D), he received 5,901 votes, or 4% of the total. Republican Representative Dick Mallary received 66,223 votes, or 46% of the total.
Sanders received 11,317 votes for governor and the party in 1976, marking the peak of the Liberty Union's dominance in the campaign. Because of his impressive showing, the state legislature had to determine the down-ballot contests for secretary of state and lieutenant governor because none of the two main party candidates could win with a majority of the vote. After devoting so much time and money to the campaign, Sanders and Liberty Union attorney general candidate Nancy Kaufman announced their departure from the party in October 1977. Sanders served as one of Vermont's three Socialist Workers Party electors in 1980.
After Sanders left the Liberty Union Party in 1977, he directed the nonprofit American People's Historical Society (APHS) and worked as a writer. He made a 30-minute documentary about American labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who was a Socialist Party presidential candidate five times, when he was at the APHS.
From 1981 until 1989, I served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
=== Marketing ****
Sanders became the mayoral candidate on November 8, 1980. On December 16, he held a news conference at City Hall to officially declare his campaign. As his campaign manager, Sanders chose Linda Niedweske. In response to the Citizens Party's effort to nominate Greg Guma as mayor, Guma stated that he would find it "difficult to run against another progressive candidate" and so said no. Richard Sugarman, a good friend of Sanders's and an Orthodox Jewish professor of religious studies at the University of Vermont, had persuaded him to run for mayor after showing him a ward-by-ward breakdown of the 1976 Vermont gubernatorial election—an election in which Sanders had also participated—that showed him receiving 12% of the vote in Burlington despite only receiving 6% of the vote statewide.
After trailing incumbents Gordon Paquette, Richard Bove, and Joseph McGrath in the race for mayor, Sanders eventually prevailed by a slimmer margin of 10 votes. Paquette chose not to challenge the recount's outcome.
Since neither Sanders nor Bove were considered as formidable opponents, Paquette failed to campaign or promote his candidacy, which contributed to his defeat. Sanders was a first-time candidate for office. Additionally, Sanders' opposition to Paquette's proposed unpopular $0.65 per $100 tax increase contributed to his defeat. Sanders' campaign expenditure was close to four grand.
Paquette foretold Sanders' doom for Burlington in the event of his election, while Sanders criticized the incumbent for being pro-development and an associate of Antonio Pomerleau, a well-known shopping center developer. A rush of endorsements from academics, social welfare organizations, and the police union, together with a surge of hopeful volunteers, helped propel Sanders' campaign to victory. The outcome caught the local political elite by surprise.
Sanders rallied the Citizens Party and independents to support him. He declared his intention to run for reelection on December 3, 1982. Despite running as an independent, Sanders received the unanimous endorsement of the Citizens Party on January 22, 1983. He prevailed against James Gilson and Judy Stephany to win reelection.
On December 5, 1984, Sanders declared his intention to run for a third term, despite his earlier consideration of not doing so. On December 7, he officially began running for reelection. Though his close allies claimed he was sick of being mayor, Sanders—who had come third in the 1986 Vermont governor election—announced his intention to seek reelection to a fourth term as Burlington mayor on December 1, 1986. Sanders became victorious over Paul Lafayette, the Democratic candidate. According to him, "eight years is enough and I think it is time for new leadership, which does exist within the coalition to come up" when asked about his intentions to not run for reelection as mayor in 1987.
Sanders refrained from seeking reelection as mayor. He continued his political science lecturing that year at Hamilton College and the next year at Harvard Kennedy School.
== Operations ==
Sanders identified as a socialist while serving as mayor, and the media portrayed him as such. Among his first-term backers was Terry Bouricius, the first city councilor to serve as a member of the Citizens Party; together, they established what would later become the Vermont Progressive Party—the Progressive Coalition. With just six seats out of thirteen on the city council, the Progressives were able to prevent the council from removing Sanders's vetoes. Burlington became the first U.S. city to fund community-trust housing under his leadership. The city also became the first to balance its municipal budget, attract a minor league baseball team (the Vermont Reds), which eventually became the Double-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. Additionally, Burlington became the first to successfully sue its local cable television franchise, resulting in reduced rates for customers.
Sanders oversaw massive downtown renovation initiatives while serving as mayor. Improving Burlington's shoreline on Lake Champlain was one of his main accomplishments. Unpopular plans by Burlington entrepreneur Tony Pomerleau to turn the Central Vermont Railway's waterfront property—then an industrial site—into pricey condos, hotels, and offices were something he fought against in 1981. Supporting a proposal to transform the waterfront into a mixed-use neighborhood with residences, parks, and public spaces, he campaigned under the slogan "Burlington is not for sale" and was successful.
Sanders remained an outspoken opponent of Reagan's foreign policies toward Latin America throughout the '80s. Noam Chomsky gave a speech on international relations at Burlington City Hall in 1985. He was "delighted to welcome a person who I think we're all very proud of" and lauded Chomsky as "a very vocal and important voice in the wilderness of intellectual life in America" in his first remarks.
Bernie Speaks with the Community was Sanders's 1986–1988 public-access television program that he hosted and produced. For the 1987 folk album We Shall Overcome, he enlisted the help of thirty musicians from Vermont. Also in that year, U.S. Among the greatest mayors in the United States, Sanders was named by News & World Report. Burlington was named one of America's most livable communities in 2013.
Sanders spoke with Yaroslavl, Burlington's sister city's mayor, on housing and healthcare when in the Soviet Union in 1988.
The Burlington city councilman Bouricius remarked that Sanders had "changed the entire nature of politics in Burlington and also in the state of Vermont" when he stepped down from office in 1989.
The United States... From 1991 until 2007, the House of Representatives was in session. I
Electoral Process
Jim Jeffords, a Republican serving in Congress, chose to run for president in 1988. Senate, relinquishing his position as representative for Vermont's open seats in the House. Peter P. Smith, a former lieutenant governor, received 41% of the vote and so won the House election with a plurality. Sanders, an independent, received 38% of the vote and came in second; state legislator Paul N. Poirier, a Democrat, received 19% and came in third. He reran for the seat two years later and easily beat Smith, this time with a 56% to 39% margin.
First elected as an independent, Sanders made history in the United States Congress. The first socialist to be elected to the House since Vito Marcantonio, of the American Labor Party, who won his last term in 1948, and the first member of the House to win a second term since Frazier Reams of Ohio in 1952. Sanders served in the House of Representatives from 1991 until his 2007 election to the Senate, where he has maintained wide margins of victory every time with the exception of the 1994 Republican Revolution, when he received 50% of the vote but just 3% of the vote.
In the realm of law,
In his first year of congress, Sanders frequently upset friends and colleagues by accusing the two major parties of serving the interests of the rich. While he continued to reject membership in the Democratic Party and its caucuses, he co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus in 1991 and headed it for eight years. The caucus consisted of primarily leftist Democrats.
Because he had more roll call amendments approved than any other member since1995, when the House was totally under Republican control, Rolling Stone dubbed Sanders the "amendment king" in 2005. As an independent, he was able to forge alliances with people from other political parties.
The overhaul of the banking system
Sanders opposed repealing the parts of the Glass-Steagall Act that established a legal barrier between investment banks and regular banks in 1999 and voted accordingly. During a question-and-answer session with Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan in June 2003, Sanders expressed his worry that Greenspan was "way out of touch" and "that you see your major function in your position as the need to represent the wealthy and large corporations." Sanders was a strong opponent of Greenspan's policies.
* Cancer databases *
Sanders, worried about Vermont's high breast cancer rates, spearheaded the establishment of cancer registries to gather data on the disease on February 7, 1992. On October 2, 1992, Senator Patrick Leahy presented a similar measure in the Senate. After the House approved the Senate measure on October 6, President George H. W. Bush signed it into law on October 24, 1992.
The intersection between criminal justice and firearms
Sanders was one of the few senators who voted against the Brady Bill in 1993, which, by a vote of 238 to 187, would have required background checks on all gun purchases and placed a waiting period on American gun buyers. His Vermont voters viewed waiting-period restrictions as more suitably a state than a federal affair, therefore he voted against the bill four more times in the 1990s.
A number of other gun control initiatives did receive Sanders's vote. One example is his 1994 vote for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which he defended "because it included the Violence Against Women Act and the ban on certain assault weapons." However, he was skeptical of other provisions in the measure. He admitted that "clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them," but he insisted that government policies were largely to blame for "dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence." He went on to say that the bill's oppressive policies weren't solving the problem of violence, but rather than building more prisons, he could have addressed the root causes of violence.
Sanders has occasionally advocated for harsher punishments and more stringent law enforcement. He was one of the few senators who opposed a measure to ban the purchase of armored vehicles and tanks by law enforcement in 1996. Even for petty offenses like marijuana use, his 1998 vote would have raised the minimum sentence for federal crimes involving the possession of a firearm to 10 years in jail.
Sanders supported SHOA (Shielding Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) in 2005. The act's sponsors hoped to shield the gun industry against negligence claims brought by victims of crimes committed with its goods. His 2016 statement indicated a shift in his views; he now plans to vote against this bill.
Disapproval of the Patriot Act
Sanders opposed the Patriot Act from the beginning. He was one of the lawmakers that opposed the initial Patriot Act bill. He introduced and voted for many amendments and measures to limit its consequences after it passed the House 357–66, and he opposed each reauthorization. He sought to alter the Patriot Act in June 2005 so that the government could not access people's library and book-buying records. Despite bipartisan support, the House rejected the amendment on November 4th, hence it never became law.
Those who are against going to war in Iraq
Not only did Sanders oppose the 2003 war of Iraq, but he also voted against the resolutions authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 1991 and 2002. For contentious military operations carried out after September 11, he cast a ballot in favor of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists. The unilateral declaration of war by the Bush administration was something he strongly disagreed with.
Policy on international trade
After China was granted permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status in October 2000, Sanders proposed a measure in February 2005 to revoke that status. He made the following statement before the House: "Anyone who takes an objective look at our trade policy with China must conclude that it is an absolute failure and needs to be fundamentally overhauled," referring to the American jobs that are being lost to overseas competition. The measure he introduced did not make it to the floor for a vote despite having 71 co-sponsors.
The United States... Senate from 2007 to now
Electoral Process
The year 2006
Sanders ran for president of the United States. Senator Jim Jeffords announced his decision not to seek reelection on April 21, 2005. Another James Madison High School alumni and current leader of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Chuck Schumer, backed Sanders. Because of this pivotal action, the Democratic Party no longer had any financial support for any of his opponents. Along with Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont and current chair of the Democratic National Committee, he also had the support of Senate minority leader Harry Reid. Sanders, according to Dean in May 2005, "votes with the Democrats 98% of the time." In March 2006, then-Senator Obama also campaigned for Sanders in Vermont. Similar to his deal when in congress, Sanders agreed to run in the Democratic primary but would turn down the nomination if he won.
Sanders won the state of Vermont by nearly two to one over businessman Rich Tarrant in the state's most costly political campaign ever. Right after the votes ended, before any returns were in, several major media outlets projected him as the winner.
The year 2012
In 2012, Sanders received 71% of the vote, ensuring his reelection.
2018 is here!
Sanders received 67% of the vote in 2018, ensuring his reelection.
Next year, in 2024,
Sanders declared his campaign for reelection to the Senate on May 6, 2024. Few weeks ago, a survey indicated that over 50% of people wanted him to run for reelection. Gerald Malloy, who had previously challenged Senator Peter Welch in 2022, was the Republican candidate against Sanders. In his statement after his reelection, Sanders said that this term will probably be his last.
In the realm of law,
Sanders sponsored fifteen joint resolutions and fifteen resolutions in the Senate during his time in Congress. He was instrumental in the passage of 218 of those bills. While he has always supported progressive causes, Politico said he has "rarely forged actual legislation or left a significant imprint on it." The New York Times said, "Big legislation largely eludes Mr. Sanders because his ideas are usually far to the left of the majority of the Senate... Mr. Sanders has largely found ways to press his agenda through appending small provisions to the larger bills of others." As a senator, he was less effective than the average senator in terms of the number of bills he sponsored that passed and successful amendments made. Regardless, he has been a sponsor of more than 500 bill changes, with some of them eventually becoming laws. The amendments have various effects, such as prohibiting the import of goods manufactured by children, allocating $100 million to community health centers, allocating $10 million to an outreach program for service members suffering from PTSD, TBI, depression, panic attacks, and other mental disorders, creating a public database of high-ranking DOD officials looking for jobs with defense contractors, and incorporating autism treatment into the military healthcare program Tricare.
Sanders supported the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 in the August 2022 vote. The law was simply a baby step forward, in his opinion, and he was not happy with it. Sanders was a co-sponsor of the Inflation Reduction Act with Democrats, which enabled Medicare to bargain for reduced medication prices and restricted the monthly cost of insulin for Medicare recipients at $35.
monetary policy and financial matters
Sanders had a dissenting vote on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 and 2009, which aimed to rescue failing banks by buying their hazardous assets and lending them money. To prevent the displacement of American labor by TARP funding, he supported an amendment on February 4, 2009. Following its approval, the amendment became a part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. One of his financial reform proposals involves auditing the Federal Reserve. This would make it less independent when it comes to deciding on monetary policy. However, officials from the Federal Reserve argue that such "Audit the Fed" legislation would put the bank under unnecessary political pressure from lawmakers who disagree with its decisions.
Campaigning against a bill that would have extended tax rates from the Bush administration, Sanders spoke for eight hours and thirty-four minutes on December 10, 2010, in opposition to the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. The bill, he said, will benefit America's richest citizens. "Enough is enough! ... How many homes can you own?" said the man. Still, the measure went through the Senate with flying colors and became law just one week later. With the author's share going to nonprofit charity groups in Vermont, the speech was published in February 2011 as The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class by Nation Books.
Sanders supported a bill to modernize the Federal Reserve System's audit in 2016 called the Federal Reserve Transparency Act.
*International relations*
Senators from the United States reached a consensus on a bill to penalize Russia and Iran once again on June 12, 2017. Just two Republicans, Sanders and Rand Paul, opposed the measure. He thought the penalties may jeopardize the Iran nuclear agreement, which is why he voted against the measure, even if he backed the sanctions on Russia.
Sanders and Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a bill in 2018 to terminate U.S. backing for the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, which has caused "millions more suffering from starvation and disease" and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. The measure sought to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Following the October 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi—allowed by Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, according to several intelligence agencies—his measure garnered support from across the political spectrum, and the Senate ultimately approved it by a vote of 56 to 41. With the following statement: "This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future." In March, President Trump vetoed the measure, which had previously passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 247 to 175 in February 2019.
Care for one's health
Sanders was able to get $11 billion to go toward community health centers, particularly those in rural regions, by inserting a clause into the Affordable Care Act in the middle of December 2009. The measure was able to garner the 60 votes necessary for ratification because it united liberal Democrats with conservative rural Democrats. He made the dire prediction that "thousands of Americans would die" due to the loss of health care coverage on May 4, 2017, in reaction to the House decision to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He made a "mostly true" claim, according to PolitiFact.
Sanders and fifteen other senators introduced Medicare for All, a single-payer healthcare program, in September 2017. Unlike Medicare, the measure will pay for dental and optical care. Several Republicans have referred to the bill as "Berniecare" or "the latest Democratic push for socialized medicine and higher taxes." In response, he stated that the Republicans lack credibility when it comes to health care issues, as they voted for a bill that would deprive 32 million Americans of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
In 2013, Sanders, while serving as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, proposed a bill to extend and enhance the Older Americans Act. This law provides funding for programs like Meals on Wheels and others that benefit seniors.
Policies regarding immigration
Sanders argued that the guest-worker program would lower wages for American workers, which led to the measure's demise in 2007. The bill introduced comprehensive immigration reform. His 2010 vote in favor of the DREAM Act would have allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children a chance to become citizens. For his part, he was able to get a $1.5 billion youth employment program provision in the Gang of Eight's 2013 immigration reform package, which he said would mitigate the negative effects of increased competition for jobs in the labor market from foreign nationals.
A breakdown of the wealth and income of the population
Senate Minority Leader Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed a measure to boost the federal contract workers' minimum pay from $12 per hour to $15 per hour in April 2017. His proposed Workplace Democracy Act, which he unveiled on May 9, 2018, would prohibit right-to-work laws and some anti-union sections of the Taft-Hartley Act, as well as certain techniques aimed at disenfranchising workers from their unions. When the proposal was announced, he stated, "If we are serious about reducing income and wealth inequality and rebuilding the middle class, we have got to substantially increase the number of union jobs in this country."
Sanders was completely against the Trump administration's proposed 2018 US federal budget, which he characterized as "a budget for the billionaire class, for Wall Street, for corporate CEOs, and for the wealthiest people in this country... nothing less than a massive transfer of wealth from working families, the elderly, children, the sick, and the poor to the top 1%."
Sanders declared, "we must end global oligarchy" and that "we need, in the United States and throughout the world, a tax system which is fair, progressive and transparent." This came after the Paradise Papers' revelations in November 2017 and a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies that found that just three individuals—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—own more wealth than the bottom 60 percent of Americans.
To alleviate the financial strain on taxpayers, Sanders and Ro Khanna introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act on September 5, 2018. This bill would make big businesses pay for their employees' food stamps and Medicaid services.
The Department of Veterans Affairs
In an effort to overhaul the Department of Veterans Affairs following the 2014 Veterans Health Administration scandal, Sanders co-sponsored the Veterans' Access to Care via Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 on June 9, 2014. He collaborated with Senator John McCain, who was one of the bill's co-sponsors. Following its passage by the House and Senate on July 31, 2014, and President Obama's signature on August 7, 2014, his measure became part of the final bill.
*Nominees for the Supreme Court *
Sanders stated his opposition to Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court on March 17, 2016, citing Gorsuch's "refused to answer legitimate questions" as the reason. He also stated that he would back Merrick Garland's nomination, but added, "there are some more progressive judges out there." His other point was that Republicans in the Senate were trying to "choke off debate and ram [Gorsuch's] nomination through the Senate" by playing the nuclear option. Along the Trump's other choices, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, he opposed the confirmation of Associate Justice Gorsuch. Sanders supported Joe Biden's 2020 Supreme Court candidate Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation.
Assignments to committees
Even though he is technically an independent, Sanders has established a pact with the Senate Democrats to vote in accordance with their positions on all procedural issues, barring a very unusual request from Democratic whip Dick Durbin to the contrary. As a result, he was able to retain his seniority and get the committee positions that would have been hiss as a Democrat; he presided over the US Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs from 2013 to 2014 (during the Veterans Health Administration crisis).
After two years as head of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, Sanders joined the Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and was named ranking minority member in 2021. He has presided over the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee since 2017. His report on helping to "rebuild the disappearing middle class" included suggestions to increase Social Security payments, infrastructure spending, and the minimum wage, and he appointed modern monetary theory scholar and economics professor Stephanie Kelton as the committee's chief economic advisor.
Appointments to Committees of the 119th United States Congress
Financial Oversight Committee
Committee on Public Works and Environmental Protection
Financial Oversight Council
As a ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Review Board for Veterans' Affairs
Membership in caucuses
Just three Vermont senators—Sanders, Jeffords, and Leahy—have caucused with the Democrats. In the 110th Congress, which took place in 2007 and 2008, his caucus helped the Democrats gain a 51-49 majority in the Senate. Since Vice President Dick Cheney would have probably broken any possible ties in favor of the Republicans, the Democrats needed 51 senators to win the Senate. The following caucuses include him:
Caucus for Progressive Reform in Congress
United States Senate Democratic Caucus
Caucus for the US Senate After-School Program
* Ratings of approval*
With 67% support and 28% disapproval, Sanders was the third most popular senator in the United States in August 2011, according to a poll by Public Policy Polling. Throughout his time in the Senate, he has received perfect grades from two organizations: the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He made it into The Forward 50's top five that year (2015). He made history in November 2015, when he received 83% of his people' support in a Morning Consult poll, surpassing all other senators in popularity. With a net favorability rating of +28 points, he topped all other important politicians featured in Fox News' March 2017 survey. In 2014, he came in third place; in 2015 and 2016, he was first.
Consistent with earlier surveys, a national Harvard-Harris Poll conducted in April 2017 indicated that, of all the political leaders included in the survey, Sanders had the highest favorability rating.
candidacy for president in 2016
Sanders allegedly contemplated challenging President Obama in the 2012 Democratic presidential primaries due to his dissatisfaction with Obama's "attempts to trade Social Security cuts for tax hikes." According to Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren could run for president and possibly gain his support if she did so. In 2011, Sanders said that someone should challenge Obama and "got so close to running a primary challenge... that Senator Harry Reid had to intervene to stop him." Sanders made similar comments in November 2013. He went on to say that he might run for office himself if no progressive candidate did. Warren announced her decision not to run in December 2014.
Sanders declared his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on April 30, 2015. On May 26, he formally began his campaign in Burlington. "I don't believe that the men and women who defended American democracy fought to create a situation where billionaires own the political process"—Sanders stated in his announcement—and this theme remained important to his campaign.
Warren stated, "I'm glad to see him get out there and give his version of what leadership in this country should be" in response to Sanders's decision to run for office, although she never officially backed him.
Sanders, who was a long shot at the beginning, ended up winning 23 primaries and caucuses and had around 46% of the delegates pledged, compared to 54% for Hillary Clinton. Leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in June and July 2016 revealed that the committee's leadership had favored Clinton over him and worked to ensure that Clinton won the nomination. His campaign was known for its enthusiastic supporters and for rejecting big donations from corporations, the financial industry, and any linked Super PAC.
Sanders officially backed Clinton's general election campaign against Republican Donald Trump on July 12, 2016, but he urged his followers to carry on the "political revolution" he started during his campaign. Sanders then spent weeks campaigning for Clinton after receiving her support; in the three months leading up to the 2016 election, he held 39 events in thirteen states.
Methods for the campaign
Sanders focused on small-dollar contributions rather than seeking financing from big contributors or a Super PAC, in contrast to the other prominent contenders. Within one day of making his public announcement, his presidential campaign had raised $1.5 million. More than one million individuals contributed 2.5 million dollars, or $73 million, to the campaign at year's end, with an average contribution of $27.16. The campaign raised $20 million in January 2016, bringing the total to 3.25 million contributions.
Sanders answered queries on Reddit and posted content on Facebook and Twitter to assist his campaign get traction. Through his internet efforts, he amassed a sizable grassroots organizational following. An online meetup on July 29, 2015, attracted 100,000 supporters to over 3,500 gatherings around the country.
The unexpected success of Sanders's campaign appearances in June 2015 caused nationwide overflow audiences, much to his surprise. Even though Sanders had already made several rounds across the state and Clinton's visit was her first in 2015, he still managed to draw greater numbers when they both made public appearances within days of each other in Des Moines, Iowa. He had the biggest gathering of any presidential contender running in 2016 up to that point—roughly 10,000 people—at his campaign visit in Madison, Wisconsin on July 1, 2015. His subsequent performances in Phoenix (11,000), Seattle (15,000), and Portland, Oregon (28,000) attracted even bigger audiences.
**Debate for the presidency**
In May 2015, the DNC announced that there will be a total of six debates. Half of the debates were scheduled for Saturday or Sunday nights, and critics said that the DNC was trying to shield Clinton, who was seen as the front-runner, by reducing the number of debates. There will be a total of 10 debates between the Clinton and Sanders camps; in February 2016, they both agreed in principle to host four more. With the California primary coming up, Clinton decided she needed more time to reach out to people in her home state and get ready for the general election, so she skipped the tenth debate. Sanders bemoaned Clinton's decision to postpone the debate only days before what he anticipated would be "the largest and most important primary in the presidential nominating process."
Surveys and media coverage
Some Sanders backers felt that major media outlets, like The New York Times, gave more attention to Trump and Clinton's campaigns than to Sanders's. At the time of her review, the Times' ombudsman concluded that the paper "hasn't always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of that is focused on the candidate's age, appearance and style, rather than what he has to say." Additionally, she noted that the Times covered Trump's campaign more extensively (63 articles) than Sanders's (14 articles), despite the fact that Trump's campaign was initially considered a long shot as well. The three big networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—had spent 234 minutes covering Trump and 10 minutes covering Sanders, according to a study from December 2015, even though their polling scores were equal. According to the article, in 2015, Trump had eighty-one minutes of airtime on ABC World News Tonight, while Sanders received less than a minute.
Sanders was under-reported in the media during the 2016 election, according to a study of election coverage. However, compared to Clinton, his coverage was generally in line with his polling performance, with the exception of 2015, when it significantly outpaced his polling performance. According to research, Sanders's media coverage was more positive than any other candidate's, while Clinton, his primary Democratic opponent, had the most unfavorable press. The media paid far more attention to Donald Trump in 2016 than any of the other contenders, and the Democratic primary was even less covered than the Republican one.
From Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman! noticed that the entirety of Trump, Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz's addresses were broadcasted on March 15, Super Tuesday III. Sanders was speaking at a larger-than-any-other rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on that date, but his address went unmentioned and unbroadcast. But according to political scientist Rachel Bitecofer's 2018 book on the 2016 election, the media made it seem like the race between Sanders and Clinton was "heating up" in mid-March 2016, even though the Democratic primary had already been decided based on the number of delegates.
If Sanders were the Democratic nominee, 53% of people would back him, compared to 39% for Trump, according to a May 2016 NBC/Wall Street Journal survey. At the time, Trump was the presumed Republican nominee, but Clinton was in a "dead heat" with him. At 43% positive and 36% negative, Sanders garnered more support than any other likely contender in survey history, while Clinton and Trump had the lowest support. Among Democratic voters, those over the age of 50 backed Clinton, while those under the age of 50 strongly favored Sanders, according to the polls. Twelve percent of Democratic primary Sanders voters ended up supporting Trump in the general election, according to a 2017 Newsweek research; this is lower than the percentage of 2008 Clinton voters who ended up supporting John McCain.
Leak of DNC email
Leaks of DNC emails in July 2016 gave the impression that DNC leaders were siding with Clinton rather than Sanders. During their many conversations, staff members cast doubt on his allegiance to the party and considered making his lack of religious convictions a campaign issue in southern states. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, referred to his campaign manager as "an ass" and "a damn liar." During a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, Sanders addressed the disclosure, stating, "it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying: the function of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates—to be fair and even-minded. But again, we discussed this many, many months ago, on this show, so what is revealed now is not a shock to me."
Support for Hillary Clinton
Clinton became the presumed Democratic candidate following the last primary election. Sanders officially backed Clinton on July 12. He pledged his support for the progressive policies put out by the Democratic National Convention organizers. Before the convention, Sanders flat-out refused to accept defeat. On July 25, 2016, he spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention and outlined his complete support for Clinton. When Sanders urged party unity, some of his followers booed and tried to demonstrate against Clinton's selection. He said, "Our job is to do two things: to defeat Donald Trump and to elect Hillary Clinton ... It is easy to boo, but it is harder to look your kids in the face if we are living under a Trump presidency."
Even though he was not running for office anymore, Sanders nevertheless managed to garner about 6% of Vermont's vote in the general election on November 8. In American history, this was the most percentage of presidential votes cast by a write-in candidate during a statewide election. More Vermonters chose him than the Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein put together. Three states—Vermont, California, and New Hampshire—published the precise totals of Sanders's write-in votes, out of twelve states where this option was available. With 111,850 write-in votes in just three states, he garnered around 15% of all write-in votes and less than 1% of the total votes cast nationally.
**Activities following the election**
When Sanders's book Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In was out in November 2016, it immediately became a New York Times Best Seller, peaking at number three. Nominations for Best Spoken Word Album came later for the audiobook. He started broadcasting his show, The Bernie Sanders Show, live on Facebook in February 2017. Attendees as of April 2, 2017, included Bill Nye, Jane Mayer, Josh Fox, and William Barber. According to 2017 polls, he was the most well-liked politician in America.
Russians spread misleading material during the 2016 U.S. presidential primaries to benefit Sanders and Stein and hurt Clinton, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, released in February 2018. Sanders stated he had not seen any proof that Russians had assisted his campaign, hence he disputed the investigation's conclusion. He went on to say that the Clinton campaign should have done more to stop Russian meddling. Afterwards, he claimed that his team had warned Clinton's campaign about Russian interference in the election and that they had taken measures to stop it. The Sanders team did not directly contact the Clinton campaign, according to Politico, but a Sanders campaign worker did call a PAC that backed Clinton's campaign in order to flag questionable activity.
Launched in November 2018 by the Sanders Institute and Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25, Progressive International is an international organization that brings together progressive activists and groups "to mobilize people around the world to transform the global order and the institutions that shape it."
Power in the Democratic Party
According to experts, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party were both pushed to the left by Sanders' candidacy. A group of individuals who had worked on previous campaigns came together in April 2016 to establish Brand New Congress, a new political party. The goal is to have lawmakers in Congress whose policies are similar to Sanders's. He established the political group Our Revolution in August 2016. Its stated goals include increasing voter awareness of issues, encouraging participation in politics, and the election of progressive politicians at the federal, state, and regional levels. During her segment on the PBS Newshour, Susan Page characterized the Republican Party as "Trump's party" and the Democratic Party as "Bernie Sanders's party." She went on to say that "Sanders and his more progressive stance has really taken hold." Page went on to mention Sanders's growing support for his national single-payer health-care program, $15-an-hour minimum wage, free college tuition, and numerous other campaign platform issues. According to an April 2018 opinion article in The Week, "Quietly but steadily, the Democratic Party is admitting that Sanders was right." In July 2016, an article on Slate referred to the Democratic platform draft as "a monument to his campaign," mentioning not only his call for a $15 minimum wage, but also his support for free college tuition.
Many young people, inspired by Sanders's presidential campaigns, have taken an interest in democratic socialism and social democracy again.
The campaign for president in 2020
Sanders declared his intention to run for president in 2020 by requesting the Democratic Party's nomination on February 19, 2019. He turned down the Democratic Party's candidacy for U.S. Senate from Vermont. His lost legal challenge to his 2016 Democratic presidential nomination campaign was due to his service in the Senate in 2006, 2012, and 2018. In addition to announcing his candidacy for president in 2019, he also pledged to continue to be a member of the Democratic Party and follow a new regulation regarding presidential candidates. A "loyalty pledge" he signed on March 5, 2019, officially states that he is a Democrat and would serve as such if elected. He reportedly signed the necessary papers the day before to run unaffiliated for reelection to his Senate seat in 2024, according to news sources.
Sanders had Faiz Shakir as his campaign manager. Representative Ro Khanna, Nina Turner, Carmen Yulín Cruz, and Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen served as the national co-chairs of the campaign.
Methods for the campaign
When Sanders declared his 2020 candidacy, NPR said he was "no longer an underdog" due to his huge national exposure since his 2016 campaign. With the help of the massive email list it had accumulated during the 2016 campaign, the 2020 campaign was able to quickly assemble over a million volunteers. It established a podcast and smartphone app for grassroots organizing, engaged several former NowThis News staffers to make professional films for social media distribution, and live-streamed different forums to its millions of followers on social media.
Aiming to Raise Capital
Similar to his 2016 campaign, Sanders's 2020 effort relied heavily on small-dollar donations and rejected a Super PAC. By June 2019, incorporating funds from his 2018 Senate campaign and 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders' 2020 campaign has amassed the largest sum among the Democratic contenders, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. The Sanders campaign broke the record for the quickest U.S. campaign reaching one million contributors in September 2019. With an average contribution of $18, the campaign reported on October 1, 2019, that it had raised $25.3 million in the year’s third quarter. That amount was more than any other Democratic contender had raised in a quarter. At the end of the 2019 fourth quarter, the campaign had raised $34.5 million.
Surveys and media coverage
As to the RealClearPolitics average, Sanders maintained a consistent polling position between 15% and 20% in the majority of national surveys conducted from May to September 2019. Until July, when Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris overtook Joe Biden, he was firmly in second position. Press accounts indicated that Sanders was the party's presidential front-runner from the middle of February 2020 to the beginning of March, when the Democratic primary was underway and she had surpassed Joe Biden in the polls.
Among the Democratic candidates mentioned on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC from January to August 2019, Sanders ranked third, behind only Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, according to a study by RealClearPolitics. But compared to Sanders and Harris, Biden got twice as many mentions. Among the candidates mentioned by ABC World News Tonight, Sanders came in second, much behind Biden. Sanders and Warren are reportedly "neck-and-neck" with Biden, and the online mentions "reflect a slightly more balanced picture" of their candidates.
=== Public appearances and forums ===
More than 2.55 million people tuned in to see Sanders' appearance on April 6, 2019, on Fox News for a town hall. In light of the Democratic National Committee's decision to exclude Fox from hosting any of its debates, his appearance on the network was fraught with controversy. His town hall outperformed every other Democratic presidential contender that year, with a 24% increase in total viewers and a 40% rise in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic. More than 1.5 million people have viewed the town hall on YouTube as of September 2019.
Sanders made an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast on August 6, 2019. Following the podcast, Rogan swiftly rose to the top of Twitter trending topics, with some admirers praising him for "hosting a pragmatic discussion" while others "seemed rather stunned by Sanders's decision to appear on the show at all." His discussion with Rogan prompted the host to declare, "I am not right-wing... I have interviewed right-wing people. I am 100% left-wing... Bernie Sanders made a ton of sense to me and I would 100% vote for him." As of October 2019, the podcast had accumulated over ten million views on YouTube.
**Debate for the presidency**
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released their tentative timetable for twelve official debates in December 2018. The first four months of 2020 will include the final six debates, while the first six will begin in June 2019. Announcers in the July and September debates characterized Sanders and Warren's shared progressive stances as a "non-aggression pact," drawing a contrast to the more conservative opponents. Debate coach Todd Graham gave Bernie Sanders the best grade of any contender in the October 15 debate—his first appearance since a heart attack—and Sanders received an A.
In January, CNN held the first of six debates for the 2020 presidential election. After Warren said that Sanders had informed her privately that a woman couldn't beat Donald Trump, co-host Abby Phillip grilled both men on the matter. In an interview following the debate, Sanders referred to it as absurd to think that he would question a woman's capacity to become president and pointed out that she had previously won the national popular vote, saying, "After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016." Phillip continued by asking Sanders, "Senator Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Senator Warren confirmed in a statement, that you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?" Ignoring Sanders's forceful denial, Phillip asked Warren, "What did you think when Bernie Sanders told you that a woman couldn't become president?"
=== Campaign Canceled ===
On April 8, 2020, Sanders made the announcement that he was going to halt his candidacy. Keeping his name on the ballot in the other states and working to amass delegates would allow him to shape the Democratic Party's agenda, he declared. Sanders gave her endorsement to Biden on April 14. Mr. Biden said, "I think that your endorsement means a great deal. It means a great deal to me. I think people are going to be surprised that we are apart on some issues but we're awfully close on a whole bunch of others. I'm going to need you—not just to win the campaign, but to govern."
Positions in politics
Sanders, a left-wing populist and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, is an admirer of European social democratic policies and an advocate for worker cooperatives, union democracy, and worker administration of public businesses. He blames modern neoliberal capitalism, which he dubs "uber-capitalism," for social problems including falling life expectancy and increasing despair-related disorders. His platform includes free higher education for all, paid parental leave, and healthcare for all under a single payer system. To reduce healthcare costs, he proposes changing patent rules to make it possible to sell generic copies of pharmaceuticals in the US at a lower price. Despite his reservations, he was an advocate for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. At Georgetown University in November 2015, he delivered a lecture outlining his thoughts on democratic socialism and its role in the administrations of FDR and Johnson. Putting forward what "democratic socialism" signifies for him, Sanders stated: "I don't believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down."
A lot of people think that, given his voting record and the positions he has taken throughout his career, his political platform was more concerned with tax-funded social benefits modeled after the Nordic model than with communal ownership of the production means. There are differing opinions on Sanders' political leanings; some see him as a reformist social democrat, while others see him as a democratic socialist, market socialist, or reformist socialist.
"Class struggle social democracy" is how Bhaskar Sunkara has described Sanders' political philosophy. According to Sunkara, Sanders views social democratic demands as a way to increase class awareness and sharpen class confrontation, in contrast to postwar social democracy, which sought to mitigate class conflict through the establishment of tripartite arrangements among businesses, labor, and the government. That Sunkara's statement "captures the nuances of Sanders' politics in a way that a socialist / social democrat binary does not" and that his election as president would mark "the triumph of a politics that is neither wholly socialist, nor social democratic, but a new fusion of the two" are parts of his arguments that George Eaton has echoed.
Changing weather patterns
Sanders is of the opinion that climate change is a major issue, and he pushes for strong measures to mitigate its consequences. Energy efficiency, sustainability, and the creation of new jobs should be the primary objectives of the massive infrastructure investment he proposes. The biggest danger to our country's safety, in his opinion, is climate change. Family planning, he argued, may be a weapon in the battle against global warming. He voiced his opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline's construction, arguing that it, like the Keystone XL Pipeline, "will have a significant impact on our climate." In 2019, he shared the platform of the Green New Deal with Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Blumenauer, and they introduced a bill to recognize climate change as an international and national emergency.
Concerns related to the economy
Among Sanders' economic priorities are the following: ending poverty, increasing the minimum wage, providing healthcare to all citizens, phasing out all student loans, taxing financial transactions to fund public higher education, instituting a 32-hour work week, and increasing Social Security benefits through the elimination of the payroll tax cap on incomes exceeding $250,000. He has come out as a strong advocate for legislation mandating paid family leave, sick leave, and vacation time for employees, pointing out that this policy is already in place in almost every other industrialized nation. Additionally, he is in favor of laws that would facilitate employees' ability to join or establish unions. Among his demands for extensive financial reforms are the dismantling of "too big to fail" financial institutions, the restoration of Glass-Steagall legislation, changes to the Federal Reserve Bank, and the provision of basic financial services by the Post Office to economically disadvantaged areas. He was opposed to the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Sanders has been vocal in her opposition to NAFTA, CAFTA, and the PNTR with China for a long time, and she voted against them all because she thinks international trade agreements should put more focus on workers' rights and environmental issues. He has characterized them as a "disaster for the American worker" and said that they are to blame for the outbound migration of American companies. Also, he claims that the TPP was "written by corporate America and the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street." On May 1, 2019, he tweeted: "Since the China trade deal I voted against, America has lost over three million manufacturing jobs. It's wrong to pretend that China isn't one of our major economic competitors."
Sanders is moreover vehemently against the practice of exporting American employment. To prevent the semiconductor manufacturers from outsourcing their jobs, he suggested a provision in the US Innovation and Competition Act that would have utilized the bill's funds to finance semiconductor production during a shortage. Additionally, the proposed law would prevent employers from banning unionization efforts. The majority of Democrats and all Republicans in the Senate rejected Sanders's idea. With the 2022 elections just around the corner, Sanders expressed his desire for the Democratic Party to prioritize unionization. He stated, "I think we should move to a system where, if 50% of the workers in a bargaining unit plus one vote to form a union, they have a union. End of discussion."
"I believe that, in the long run, major industries in this state and nation should be publicly owned and controlled by the workers themselves." Sanders first proposed workplace democracy in 1976, and he has introduced legislation multiple times from the 1990s to the 2020s to help workers who want to "form their own businesses or to set up worker-owned cooperatives." Sanders also supports empowering and expanding labor unions to advance union democracy. Sanders once stated: "Democracy means public ownership of the major means of production, it means decentralization, it means involving people in their work. Rather than having bosses and workers it means having democratic control over the factories and shops to as great a degree as you can." In his 2020 presidential campaign, he also proposed the following measures: that corporations with over $100 million in annual revenue should have 20% of their stocks owned by workers, and that corporations with over $100 million in annual revenue should have 45% of their board of directors elected by workers.
International relations
Sanders has shown his support for a shift away from military spending and toward increased diplomatic efforts and global collaboration. He was against the CIA's clandestine war in Nicaragua, which involved supporting rebels called contras who were fighting against the Marxist government. Mass monitoring and the USA Patriot Act are two of the many War on Terror programs that he has attacked. He was also against the US invasion of Iraq. He took issue with the United States' participation in the Saudi Arabian-led operation in Yemen and with Israel's behavior during the 2014 Gaza conflict. In light of the atrocities in Paris by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on November 15, 2015, he spoke out against Islamophobia, stating, "We gotta be tough, not stupid" in the fight against ISIL, and he also emphasized that the United States should keep welcoming Syrian migrants. He said that the drone strike on Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 was a reckless escalation of tensions that may cause a costly war.
Sanders has been vocal in her criticism of Israel and her support for Palestinian rights. He refused to attend the 2020 conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which he characterized as a forum for hate. "It would dramatically undermine the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and severely, perhaps irreparably, damage the United States' ability to broker that peace," he said in a scathing condemnation of Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. During the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, he blasted both Hamas and Israel for their actions, citing their attacks on civilians and bombing of Gaza, respectively. An earlier version of his statement claimed that he "doesn't know if a ceasefire is possible with an organization like Hamas," while a subsequent version referred to a humanitarian truce and asked Biden to deprive Israel of military supplies.
Sanders outlined a foreign policy agenda for more international cooperation, support for U.S.-led multilateral accords like the Paris Agreement and the framework for the Iran nuclear deal, and the advancement of democratic principles and human rights in a speech she gave at Westminster College in September 2017. With the phrase "must always be a last resort" in his mouth, he demanded that the United States reduce its reliance on military force and highlighted the repercussions of climate change and economic inequalities between nations. He went on to say that the United States is less safe now because of its Cold War support for "murderous regimes" in countries like El Salvador, Iran, and Chile. He went on to criticize President Trump's handling of the Russian influence situation and the 2016 U.S. elections. In northern Syria, he denounced the Turkish military operation against U.S.-aligned Kurdish troops, demonstrating his disapproval of Turkey as a US partner.
Gun control measures
A prohibition on assault weapons, universal background checks for all gun sales, and the elimination of the "gun show loophole" are all policies that Sanders backs. For the 1990 election, he ran for U.S. Peter Smith, who had changed his mind on gun control and waiting periods for handgun sales, ran a rival campaign that Representative benefited from since the National Rifle Association of America opposed. Although he has stated his support for repealing the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (which established background checks and wait periods) and had voted against it in 1993 while serving as a U.S. representative, he had voted in favor of legislation that granted gun manufacturers legal immunity from claims of negligence in 2005. Though he opposed increasing CDC money for gun violence research in 1996, he advocated for more funding for the same cause in 2016.
=== Problems with society ===
Bernie Sanders has long been a progressive voice in the political arena. He opposes cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, identifies as a feminist, and supports women's autonomy in the abortion decision. In 2009, he backed Vermont's effort to legalize same-sex marriage, continuing his long history of advocating for LGBT rights. Sanders has spoken out against racism in society and has pushed for changes to the criminal justice system to lower incarceration rates, as well as to end police brutality and private prisons run by corporations and the death penalty. He is on board with the BLM movement. Additionally, he is in favor of federal marijuana legalization. He has pushed for changes to campaign finance laws, more public engagement in democracy, and the reversal of Citizens United v. FEC by a constitutional amendment or a court ruling.
The Trump government
Sanders voiced her disapproval of President Trump's cabinet appointments that included many millionaires. In his critique of Trump's decision to repeal Obama's Clean Power Plan, he referenced Trump's denial of the scientific consensus about the impact of human activity on climate change. After pledging to depose "Trump and Trumpism and the Republican right-wing ideology" in 2017, he cautioned against becoming involved in the Syrian civil war, stating, "It's easier to get into a war than out of one."
Sanders referred to Trump as "compulsively dishonest" and chastised him for causing "a looming immigration crisis" by terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in his online response to Trump's January 2018 State of the Union speech. As far as he was concerned, Trump had ignored the evidence that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election and "will likely interfere in the 2018 midterms we will be holding... unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin."
A group of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Bernie Sanders said: "[Trump] has made it clear that he will do anything to remain in power – including insurrection and inciting violence [and he] will go down in history as the worst and most dangerous president in history."
In 2020, Sanders supported Trump's conviction on both counts of his first impeachment trial, which was for urging a foreign leader to probe Joe Biden. In 2021, she supported Trump's conviction on the single count of instigating the attack on the Capitol.
The administration of Joe Biden
As stated before to Biden's nomination, Sanders had an impact on the environmental policy objectives of the Biden administration. The Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces made climate-related suggestions, and Biden's policy staff implemented some of those ideas.
A number of progressive organizations, like the Sunrise Movement, voiced their support for Sanders' possible selection as Labor Secretary following Biden's election as president. Sanders stated his willingness to accept Biden's candidacy should it be extended; nevertheless, the office was ultimately filled by Boston mayor Marty Walsh. Biden said that he had discussed the nomination with Sanders when he announced Walsh's candidacy, but the two senators reached a consensus that the Democrats' tenuous Senate majority would have been jeopardized had Sanders resigned and a special election been held.
By voting against Tom Vilsack's confirmation as Agriculture Secretary on February 23, 2021, Sanders made history as the first senator from the Democratic caucus to reject one of Biden's cabinet selections. Sanders had reservations about Vilsack's history as a lobbyist and his connections to powerful companies.
Though Sanders had attacked Republicans' use of budget reconciliation to accomplish the tax cuts in 2017, he enthusiastically endorsed Senate Democrats' choice to utilize it to pass the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and avoid filibusters. On March 11, 2021, Biden signed the measure into law after it had passed the Senate with a 50-49 majority.
The Biden administration has not shied away from Sanders's persistent influence. Sanders has stated that their long-lasting relationship is built on trust and respect: "We have had a good relationship. He wants to be a champion of working families, and I admire and respect that." In response to being mentioned as a key voice in Biden's administration, he said, "As somebody who wrote a book called Outsider in the House, yes, it is a strange experience to be having that kind of influence that we have now."
Sanders has previously referred to the 2022 midterms as "the most consequential midterm election" in modern U.S. history, claiming that they will determine the destiny of democracy, abortion, and climate change. As far as he was concerned, the Democratic Party had "not done a good enough job" of reaching out "to young people and working-class people."
After Biden resigned from the 2024 US presidential campaign in April 2023, Sanders backed Harris for president at the Democratic National Convention, after his endorsement of Biden in April 2023. Sanders issued a statement after Trump's 2024 victory in which she blamed the Democratic Party's rejection of "working-class people" for the party's loss.
Members' Political Allegiances
Sanders was born into a politically active family; his brother Larry, who was a member of the Young Democrats of America and ran for Adlai Stevenson II in 1956, was the one who initially exposed him to politics. While running for many posts in Vermont, Sanders never came close to winning any of them. In 1971, he joined the Liberty Union Party. He rose to the position of party chairman before stepping down in 1977 to pursue independence. For the Socialist Workers Party, he was an elector in 1980. Sanders beat the Democratic incumbent in his 1981 independent bid for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and went on to win three consecutive reelections. Despite his self-identity as an independent, he supported Jesse Jackson for president in 1988 and Walter Mondale for president in 1984. While he passionately backed Jackson, his support for Mondale was ambivalent (as he warned reporters, "if you go around saying that Mondale would be a great president, you would be a liar and a hypocrite"). Sanders was reportedly encouraged to forge closer ties with the Democratic Party by the Jackson campaign, according to the Washington Post.
During the 1983 Socialist Party USA convention, Sanders delivered a speech.
Sanders campaigned for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988 and for the U.S. Senate in 2006, using the same tactic of sweeping through the Democratic Party primary, removing all Democratic opponents, then running as an independent in the general election. This tactic served him well during his 2018 reelection campaign for the Vermont Senate. He has maintained his status as an independent during his time in Congress. He refused to join the party but caucused with Democrats in the House, and he now does the same in the Senate. Since he identified as a socialist, several conservative Democrats in the south of the House originally tried to keep him out of the caucus out of fear that he would hurt their chances of elective office. During his time in Congress, he voted with the Democratic Party more than 90% of the time, and he quickly learned to work effectively with them.
Sanders' statements during his 2016 presidential campaign hinted to his Democratic affiliation and said that he would continue to do so in future elections. In response to Clinton's question on his political affiliation, he confidently declared, "Of course I am a Democrat and running for the Democratic nomination." Given that he succeeded Clinton as an independent senator, his U.S. The press and the Senate website kept calling him an independent all during the campaign and when he returned to the Senate. Despite calls for him to run as a Democrat, Sanders said in October 2017 that he will seek reelection in 2018 as an independent. Again, in March 2019, he signed a formal "loyalty pledge" to the Democratic Party, indicating that he was a member of the party and would serve as a Democrat if elected president. This made his party status unclear once again. He signed the commitment the very next day after officially registering to seek for reelection to the Senate in 2024 as an independent.
In the aftermath of Trump's 2016 election triumph, Sanders proposed sweeping changes to the Democratic Party, urging it to "break loose from its corporate establishment ties and, once again, become a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor." Sanders drew comparisons between his campaign and the Labour Party's approach to the 2017 UK general election. "The British elections should be a lesson for the Democratic Party," he wrote in The New York Times, urging the party to abandon its "overly cautious, centrist ideology." He went on to say that "momentum shifted to Labour after it released a very progressive manifesto that generated much enthusiasm among young people and workers." Previous to this, he had lauded Jeremy Corbyn's policies on class issues. Sanders and Angus King are the only two Senate independents who do not belong to any political party; they both caucus with the Democrats.
="life outside of work"
Sanders and his undergraduate roommate Deborah Shiling Messing spent a few months volunteering in the Israeli kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim in 1963. They wed in 1964 and purchased a Vermont vacation house; they divorced in 1966 without having any children. His son Levi Sanders was born to his then-girlfriend Susan Campbell Mott in 1969. He is his sole biological kid.
Sanders tied the knot with Jane O'Meara Driscoll, formerly Mary Jane O'Meara, in Burlington, Vermont on May 28, 1988. Jane went on to become president of Burlington College. As part of an official trip in his role as mayor, the couple traveled to the Soviet Union the day following their wedding. Their property portfolio includes a Capitol Hill row house, a Burlington home in the New North End, and a North Hero vacation cottage on the lake. He views Heather Titus (née Driscoll; 1971), Carina Driscoll (born 1974), and Dave Driscoll (born 1975) as his own children.
Larry Sanders, the older brother of Sanders, resides in England. From 2013 until his retirement, he served as a county councillor for the East Oxford division on Oxfordshire County Council as a Green Party member. In the 2015 British general election, Larry was a Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon, and he finished in fifth. Sanders told the network, "I owe my brother an enormous amount. It was my brother who actually introduced me to a lot of my ideas."
Condition of Health
At a campaign rally in Las Vegas on October 1, 2019, Sanders felt chest problems, which led to her hospitalization. The next day, his campaign made an announcement regarding the insertion of two stents after discovering a blockage in one coronary artery. There will be no additional campaign appearances or activities scheduled at this time. He announced his heart attack diagnosis two days later through his campaign. He left the hospital the very day. Here are the statements made by Sanders's doctors:
Myocardial infarction was the diagnosis for Senator Sanders when he went to an outside institution complaining of chest pain. The medical staff at Desert Springs Hospital transported him to their facility without delay. As soon as the senator arrived, he was sent to the cardiac catheterization lab, where two stents were swiftly inserted into a coronary artery that had been occluded. The rest of the arteries tested negative. There was no change in his hospital course, and he made the expected progress. His discharge order included a recommendation that he consult his primary care physician again.
Several days after getting back home, Sanders spoke to the reporters outside his house. He revealed that he had been dealing with chest pain and exhaustion for about two months before to the event, and he expressed remorse that he hadn't sought medical help sooner, saying, "I was dumb."
At the Democratic debate on October 15, Sanders made his first public appearance since his heart attack, saying, "I'm healthy, I'm feeling great." Asked how he would reassure voters about his health and his ability to handle the presidency, Sanders said, "We are going to be mounting a vigorous campaign all over this country. That is how I think I can reassure the American people." The critique was that he was "lively and sharp at the debate."
Sanders presented letters from three doctors in December 2019, three months after his heart attack, in which Attending Physician of Congress Brian P. Monahan and two cardiologists deemed Sanders healthy and recovered from his illness.
Prizes and recognition ===
Although Sanders did not obtain the editorial board's prize, she did win Time's 2015 Person of the Year readers' poll on December 4, 2015, with 10.2% of the vote. He received the honorary Lushootseed name dx? on March 20, 2016. Hello, shudi! Regarding his emphasis on Native American concerns during his presidential campaign, Deborah Parker in Seattle paid tribute to him.
Brooklyn College bestowed the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree to Sanders on May 30, 2017.
Religion, family history, and morals
In a 2016 speech, Sanders outlined his Jewish upbringing in the United States. He said that his father only went to synagogue on Yom Kippur, that he went to public schools while his mother "chafed" at a Hebrew school's yeshiva on Sundays, and that their religious practices consisted mostly of attending communal Passover seders. In regards to their parents, Larry Sanders stated, "They were very pleased to be Jews, but didn't have a strong belief in God." Bernie's bar mitzvah took place in the historic Kingsway Jewish Center in Midwood, Brooklyn, where he came of age.
Sanders and his first wife volunteered at the northern Israeli kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim in 1963 in conjunction with the Labor Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. His goals in going on the journey were more social than Zionistic.
Sanders, when serving as mayor of Burlington, overrode the ACLU's objections and permitted the installation of a Chabad public menorah at city hall. He blessed the candles used in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and formally debuted the menorah. The public lighting of menorahs in cities and towns all across the world would not have been possible without his early and unwavering backing. Sanders has expressed his gratitude for his Jewish background by stating, "proud to be Jewish."
Sanders keeps his religious views to a minimum. "Not particularly religious" and "not actively involved" with organized religion is how he characterizes himself. His office announced his religion as Jewish in a press package. When asked about his religious beliefs, he replied, "I think everyone believes in God in their own ways." This suggests that his faith is not strictly orthodox. "It signifies, in my view, that we are all interdependent, interdependent on life, and interdependent on one another," Jimmy Kimmel said in an October 2015 appearance on his late-night talk program! , he said, "You say you are culturally Jewish and you don't feel religious; do you believe in God and do you think that's important to the people of the United States?" Sanders responded by saying:
Our shared humanity is fundamental to my identity, my faith, and my spiritual practice. That I do not think it is a healthy thing for us to assume we can ignore the pain and suffering of others... Pope Francis is arguing that we should not put too much emphasis on praising wealthy individuals and the pursuit of ever-increasing wealth; this is not a Jewish position. Beyond that, there is life.
In 2016, he said he was experiencing "very strong religious and spiritual feelings" , further stating, "My spirituality is that we are all in this together and that when children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, it impacts me."
Sanders doesn't observe Rosh Hashanah in the same way that devout Jews do; he also doesn't go to synagogue very often. Along with the mayor of Lynchburg on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah in 2015, he attended a Tashlikh, an atonement service, and he has also attended yahrzeit observances in commemoration of the father of a friend who passed away. Richard Sugarman quotes him as saying, "his Jewish identity is certainly more ethnic and cultural than religious." His wife is Roman Catholic, and he frequently expresses his admiration for Pope Francis, stating, "the leader of the Catholic Church is raising profound issues. It is important that we listen to what he has said." He also describes Francis as "incredibly smart and brave" when it comes to economics, and he feels very close to Francis's teachings. He received an offer to speak at a Vatican conference on economic and environmental concerns in April 2016 from Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, an advisor close to Francis. During his time in the Vatican, he had a short meeting Pope Francis.
In the realm of popular culture,
Sanders collaborated with thirty Vermont artists on the 1987 folk CD We Shall Overcome while serving as mayor of Burlington. He sang in a talking blues manner since he was terrible at singing.
"Culture of the Internet"
Sanders and his campaigns have been the subject of several internet memes and other content due to his two prominent campaigns in the 2020 Democratic primary and 2016 as well. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash Facebook group—where members could post memes centered around Sanders—attracted a lot of attention for being the first of its kind. In 2020, during the primaries, a retouched version of a fundraising video still with Sanders stating, "I am once again asking for your financial support" became an internet sensation. A video of Twitch streamer Neekolul lip-syncing to "Oki Doki Boomer" while wearing a Bernie 2020 jersey also went popular the day before Super Tuesday 2020. The year 2021 saw the rise to internet fame of a clip from Joe Biden's inauguration that included Sanders, clad in patterned mittens and a jacket similar to the one in the "I am once again asking" meme. The clip was either captioned or spliced into other photos, including several classic movie sequences.
When it comes to movies and TV shows,
Sanders played a guy who hands out candy to little trick-or-treaters in the 1988 comedy-drama film Sweet Hearts Dance, in which he had a brief appearance. His role as Rabbi Manny Shevitz in 1999's My X-Girlfriend's Wedding Reception was his acting debut. Sanders reflected his childhood in Brooklyn in this part, as he lamented the relocation of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. He co-starred with Sanders's sixth cousin once removed Larry David as a Polish immigrant aboard a steamer that was sinking near the Statue of Liberty on Saturday Night Live on February 6, 2016.
Roman Sionis wants Harley Quinn dead for a number of reasons, including the fact that she "voted for Bernie" in the DCEU film Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).