Progressive Spotlight: Bernie Sanders.

Long before Bernie Sanders started lobbing blistering critiques of America’s unfair economic system, making him every progressive’s favorite curmudgeonly elected official, he had been a well-known activist, supporting everything from civil rights to economic justice.

But his political ambitions started well before his activist days as a college student in Brooklyn and later Chicago. Sanders, perhaps not surprisingly, vied for class president at his Brooklyn high school on a platform that included generating scholarship funds to support orphaned children in Korea during the war.

The anecdote was the lead of a Time magazine story about Sanders during his first bid for president in 2015. It noted that Sanders lost the class president election, but the eventual winner welcomed Sanders’ proposal anyway. The result, the magazine noted, could be repeated by the Vermont Senator, who it described as having “a solid shot at second place in the Democratic nomination fight” and a seemingly even better shot at pushing the heavily favored Hillary Clinton to the left.

The article was published eight months before the first Democratic primary of the 2016 election cycle—when the establishment had effectively crowned Clinton the Democratic nominee before a single vote was cast.

In the same Time piece, Sanders reflected on his upbringing, stating, “The lack of money caused stress in my family and fights between my mother and father. That is a reality I have never forgotten: today, there are many millions of families who are living under the circumstances that we lived under.”

No one was prepared for how deeply Sanders’ message resonated with vast swaths of the American electorate, from industrial heartlands to major American cities. During his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, Sanders proposed several progressive policies, including universal healthcare (Medicare for All), free tuition at public universities and colleges, increased taxes on the wealthy, campaign finance reform, stricter regulations on Wall Street, climate change action through the Green New Deal, and a $15 minimum wage (a threshold he has since raised).

While Clinton eventually won the primary—the preferred outcome of the ostensibly neutral Democratic National Committee (DNC)—Sanders became a household name, with his brand of populism fueling the movement he had promised to build.

He used the momentum he built in 2016 to propel him into the 2020 presidential election cycle as he sought to unseat Donald Trump. His early wins in New Hampshire and Nevada created massive excitement within his base and had Democratic establishment forces reeling.

Sanders’ Nevada victory was particularly concerning to traditional Democrats, with long-time MSNBC host Chris Matthews comparing the senator’s win to the Nazi invasion of France. It also prompted calls from many within the party to “coalesce” around a single candidate to prevent Sanders from claiming more states, which manifested in multiple challengers dropping out of the race and endorsing Joe Biden.

Sanders eventually lost to Biden but had accumulated significant political capital despite his electoral losses. After Biden won the presidency and Democrats took control of the U.S. Senate—with Vice President Kamala Harris being the tie-breaking vote in the chamber—Sanders landed influential committee assignments, including as chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He is also involved in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Committee on Environment and Public Works, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, and Committee on Budget.

In recent years, Sanders has continued championing progressive causes and fighting for the policies he has long advocated for, using his newfound influence in the Senate to push for change.

And he shows no sign of slowing down.

Image Sources

• Sgt. Denis Nunez, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• Bernie Sanders 1972 or 1976 gubernatorial campaign, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.