In this diary, I advocated that one metric for sifting through the very large list of Democratic candidates for President was to examine their backgrounds, looking at “broad life experience” for attributes that would contribute to (or detract from) the candidate’s ability to govern as POTUS—or ability to connect to voters on the campaign trail. So, as they’ve announced, I’ve writing a series of diaries, profiling the candidates, not as to “electability” nor on their platform policies (other diaries can focus on these topics) but looking for abilities or experiences that the candidate brings to the campaign and, perhaps, the office.
I have written eleven (11) of these diaries so far, because the field of Democratic candidates is so large this cycle. I have profiled Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Jay Inslee, John Delaney, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced this morning (Monday) and so this profile of his “life experience” will post this coming Friday as most of these diaries have been on Fridays.
Early Life and Education:
Bernard Sanders (b. 08 September 1941) was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York, NY to Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders and Dorothy (“Dora”) Glassberg Sanders. At 77, he is the oldest (so far) of the Democratic candidates for POTUS, and is even older than the ancient orange bigot the Russians have currently installed in the White House. Elias Sanders was born in Slopnice, Galicia in what was then part of Austria-Hungary and is now part of Poland. He emigrated to the U. S. in 1921 where he became a paint salesman in Brooklyn. Dora Sanders was born in NYC to Jewish parents who immigrated from Russia and Poland. Sanders has one sibling, an older brother, Larry (b. 1935), who has become a naturalized citizen of the United Kingdom. where he has been an academic, social worker, and politician, first in the Labour Party and, since 2001, in the Green Party.
Bernie Sanders was born only a few months before Pearl Harbor and grew up as part of a family of Jewish immigrants during World War II. Many of his relatives were killed in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. Sanders cites this as the beginning of his political education. Hitler’s ascension to power led to 50 million deaths during WWII, including 6 million Jews (1/3 of all Jews alive at the time) and young Bernie Sanders thus learned that politics can be a matter of life and death.
The Sanders’ family was fairly poor. His older brother, Larry, has said that the family never lacked for food or clothing, but that major purchases “such as curtains or a rug” were difficult to afford. It is likely that his passion for economic justice, like Elizabeth Warren’s, is rooted in these early experiences of privation and struggle.
Sanders grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn and went to public schools. He went to P.S. 197 for Elementary School (fellow alumni of P.S. 197 include Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and SCOTUS Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and won a borough championship on the school basketball team. He graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn in 1959, where he was captain of the track team and finished last in a 3 person election for senior class president. His mother died soon after his graduation at the age of 46.
Sanders followed his older brother, Larry, in enrolling at Brooklyn College (CUNY) for a year, before transferring to The University of Chicago where he obtained his B.A. in political science in 1964. This change is Sanders’ first major experience of life beyond Brooklyn. The core curriculum at The University of Chicago centers on The Great Books of the Western World, getting students away from textbooks to engaging directly with the great thinkers in history and debating those ideas directly. Such a curriculum encourages education that is broadly humanistic and not narrowly focused on one field and it encourages direct engagement with primary sources and active learning that interrogates texts and ideas and encourages debate and intellectual curiosity—all of which are traits one would want in a President and which are greatly lacking in the current White House occupant.
Sanders’ father died in 1962 (at age 57) while Sanders was a sophomore at UChicago. Losing both parents a few years apart before one has finished college has to have a profound impact, but it is not one about which Sanders has spoken much. I know that if I were a young person who had lost family in the Holocaust, and both my parents died young a few years apart, and I was separated from my only sibling by thousands of miles, I might feel abandoned in the world.
By his own admission, Sanders was, at best, a mediocre student. He described the classroom as "boring and irrelevant,” compared to what he learned by becoming a student activist in the Civil RIghts and Anti-War movements. (In this, he departed from the path of his older brother, who, after graduating Brooklyn College, went on to earn a J.D. at Harvard Law School and a Master’s degree in social work at the University of Oxford.) But I wonder if the deaths of his parents impacted his academic performance, or even the thoroughness with which he threw himself into movements for social justice. As an academic, I tend to be biased toward candidates who are good students, but I recognize that learning happens in numerous settings and that what should be prized for politicians is intellectual curiosity, openness to new information, judgment as to when to rely on experts and when to resist their advice, as well as emotional intelligence that allows for communication with people in a persuasive manner.
Early Career:
During his time at The University of Chicago, Sanders joined the Young People’s Socialist League (founded in 1907 and dissolved in 1971). This was the youth chapter of the Socialist Party of America, the party of such American progressive champions as Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, Helen Keller, W.E.B. duBois, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Michael Harrington. (In 1972, its name was changed to Social Democrats, USA to distance itself from more Marxist forms of Socialism.) As far as I can tell, the Young People’s Socialist League is the only socialist organization to which Bernie Sanders has ever belonged. Sanders was also very active in the Civil Rights movement as a college student. He was an active member of The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “Snick”), the organization led by the great Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) back during his student days. Sanders helped desegregate student housing and was fined $25 for resisting arrest during his attempt to desegregate Chicago’s public schools. Sanders was at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.”
Sanders was also active in the peace and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s, especially as a member of the Student Peace Union. In his draft registration, Sanders applied for “conscientious objector” status (whereby one is excused from military service because of one believes war is always wrong—objecting to only some wars does not qualify under the law). Eventually, the draft board rejected Sanders as a conscientious objector, but, by the time it did, Sanders had aged out of eligibility for selective service.
After graduation, Sanders returned to New York City and worked at a variety of jobs for several years. He was a teacher in the Head Start program, a psychiatric aide, and carpenter. In 1968, Sanders became “captivated by rural life” and moved to Vermont. There he worked as a carpenter, a writer, and film maker. He created radical social educational materials for schools,
In 1971, Bernie Sanders began his career electoral politics in 1971 with Vermont’s Liberty Union Party, a social democratic party that originated in the anti-war movement. Sanders ran as the Liberty Union candidate for VT governor in 1972 and 1976 and as the Liberty Union candidate for U.S. Senator in 1974 and 1976. He lost all of these races badly. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Losing races can often help a candidate learn to win later races.
Sanders resigned from the Liberty Union Party in 1977. He then worked as a writer and director for the non-profit American Peoples’ Historical Society for which he made a documentary film on the life and work of Eugene Debs, railroad union leader turned Socialist candidate for U.S. President (5 times, the last campaign from prison—at which Debs still received over 1 million votes).
Mayor of Burlington, VT, 1981-1989.
In 1980, Sanders ran for Mayor of Burlington, VT as an independent (and calling himself a democratic socialist). He won by 10 votes. That was his only close election as Burlington’s mayor. He was reelected 3 times.
He was well regarded as mayor, balancing the budget, convincing a minor league baseball team (the Vermont Reds) to come to Burlington, and successfully revitalizing downtown Burlington with small businesses and parks. It became known as one of the country’s most livable cities and U.S. News and World Report listed Sanders as among “America’s best mayors.”
Although governing a city of 38,000 is a long way from governing a country of 300 million, this does give Sanders executive experience that many of his top tier primary opponents lack.
In 1986, Sanders ran for Governor of VT and lost in a 3 way race in which he received only 14% of the vote.
U. S. House of Representatives, 1991-2007.
In 1988, Sanders ran for VT’s At Large House Seat. He lost, but placed 2nd in a 3-way race. In 1990, he tried again and won with 53% of the vote, thereby becoming the 1st Independent elected to Congress since 1950. Sanders served 16 years in the House. His only close reelection during his time in the House was during the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, when he retained his seat by only a 3% margin of victory (with 50% of the vote).
Sanders’ record of success in the House is mixed. On the one hand, he co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus and chaired it for the 1st 8 years. (Early members included Reps. Ron Dellums, Barnie Frank, Maxine Waters, Nydia Velasquez, Pete Stark, Lynn Woolsey, and, believe-it-or-not-haters, Nancy Pelosi.) When the caucus was founded in the early 1990s, it was dwarfed by conservatives and, especially, the Clintonian “Third Way” New Democrat Caucus. But the Congressional Progressive Caucus has grown until it is the largest caucus among Democrats in the House.
On the other hand, Sanders has a dismal record of actually passing legislation, a subject to which we’ll return in discussing his Senate experience. As a House member, Sanders refused to caucus with the Democratic Party and was so critical of both political parties that he had no allies.
He did take a number of important votes that show his strong progressive values, including voting against the Iraq War, against repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (which separated ordinary banking from investment institutions), for the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act, against the Online Freedom of Speech Bill that would exempt internet advertising from McCain-Feingold restrictions, and against the draconian Patriot Act.
But Sanders also had a number of votes that are problematic for a progressive, especially on gun control. He voted against the Brady Bill. He voted for the crime bill of 1994 that greatly increased mass incarceration (and yet, in 2016, Hillary Clinton got more flack for that bill by just being married to the man who signed it!), and voted for the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act which prevents gun manufacturers from being sued for how their weapons are used—the strategy which finally worked against Big Tobacco. He also voted against a 1996 bill that would have prevented police departments from purchasing tanks and armored carriers—and since the bill was defeated, this means that Sanders has contributed to the militarization of the police in today’s America.
U. S. Senate, 2007-2019.
Sanders successfully ran for the U. S. Senate (still as an Independent) in 2006. His successful election was aided by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), then head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the organization tasked with electing Democratic Senators, who endorsed him, cutting off DSCC funds to any Democrat in that race. Sanders was also endorsed by then-Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and former VT. Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT), who was then running the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and who said that Sanders “votes with Democrats 98% of the time.” Then freshman Senator (and rising star) Barack Obama (D-IL) campaigned for Sanders, too. All this aid from Democrats doubtless helped Sanders win that first Senate election, but it also must be said that he was a stronger candidate than any VT Democrat (other than Dean who was running the DNC) then available and that Sanders’ victory (and subsequent caucusing with Senate Democrats) was a factor in Democrats’ successful re-taking of the Senate in the 2006 election.
Sanders was easily reelected in 2012 and 2016. Yet, in the Senate, as in the House, Sanders has not been a successful legislator. In his entire time in Congress, he has succeed in passing only two bills that he either sponsored or co-sponsored—one raised the cost-of-living adjustment for veterans benefits and the other renamed a post office. It has only been since his 2016 presidential campaign that many of Sanders’ legislative proposals have found significant allies in Congress.
Presidential Campaign of 2016.
Early in the 2016 presidential election cycle, it looked as if former Sec of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) would have no significant challenge in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Even Clinton supporters recognized that a “coronation” would be a bad idea. The 2008 primaries had made both the finalists, Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama, better candidates and arguably prepared Obama to win in the general election. So, when Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy, the DNC worked to make sure he could run as a Democrat despite not being a member of the party. (To his credit, Sanders did not want to run as a Howard Schultz-style “spoiler.")
Sanders did not win the nomination, but he did give Secretary Clinton a run for her money. He won 23 caucuses and primaries and secured 43% of delegates to the Democratic National Convention of 2016. Further, several elements of Sanders’ progressive platform was adopted by the DNC and became part of Hillary’s general election campaign. Sanders’ campaign made policies such as single-payer universal healthcare (“Medicare-for-All”) and tuition-free education at public universities, once considered "fringe ideas” far more mainstream. The energy of today’s Democratic party is in the progressive wing. This is not due only to Sanders, but it must be said that he helped.
Further, Sanders’ refusal to take PAC money or cultivate a SuperPac, but to rely entirely on small donations (raised online) from thousands of ordinary citizens has transformed the way Democrats’ campaign and brought new energy to calls for campaign finance reform.
Negatively, it must be said that Sanders’ attacks on Hillary Clinton as entirely a creature of Wall Street, hurt her general election campaign and bitterly divided the party. There was also huge sexism in his campaign, though not from him personally. These divisions were exacerbated by the Russian social media attacks.
Even some, like myself, who voted for him in the 2016 primary, were not happy that Sanders never released his tax returns (a major Democratic criticism of Donald Trump), the slowness and lack of enthusiasm with which he endorsed Clinton as the nominee. Speaking only for myself, I find Sanders’ failure to follow through with his promise to join the Democratic Party enraging and something that should not be permitted by the DNC in 2020.
Personal Life:
Bernie Sanders is Jewish, but he is not very observant. He went to Hebrew School in the afternoons as a boy and had a bar mitzvah. Sanders has pushed back against claims that he is merely culturally Jewish without any faith in God. He claims to have a non-traditional belief in God, but admits to not being very involved in organized religion. If elected, he would be the first Jewish U.S. president as well as the first specifically non-Christian president.
He is in his second marriage. He married Deborah Schilling Messing in 1964, after meeting her in college and working with her for months in an Israeli kibbutz. They had no children and divorced in 1966.
Sanders’ second (and current) wife is Jane O’Meara Driscoll Sanders, who was President of Burlington College (now defunct) from 2004 to 2011. They married 1988. Jane Sanders has several grown children from a previous marriage and Bernie Sanders considers them his children, too. Jane Sanders is Roman Catholic.
Sanders has one son, Levi Sanders, born in 1969 to his then-girlfriend Susan Campbell Mott.
Conclusion:
These profiles are not meant as endorsements, but I will not hide my own biases. I think Bernie Sanders has several strengths that will make him a formidable candidate, both in the primaries and general election. However, he also has numerous weaknesses and will not be my choice in the primaries. The progressive energy that Sanders’ brought to the 2016 campaign is now better suited, in my opinion, to be carried forth by others. However, should he become our nominee, I will work my ass off to get him to the White House.