Bernie Sanders, who had campaigned against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party’s nomination, went back to being an Independent.
“I was elected an independent, ” Sanders told reporters at a Bloomberg-hosted breakfast, only hours after he took the podium at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and tried to unify the Democratic Party, pleading for his supporters to rally behind Clinton.
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Sanders will return to Vermont and to his seat in the Senate, and he’ll do it with no official party affiliation.
Bernie Sanders tells @bpolitics breakfast w/reporters he’ll return to the Senate as an Independent, not a Dem: ‘I was elected as an Ind.’
— Susan Page (@SusanPage) July 26, 2016
Sanders who has been in politics since 1979, self-described “Democratic Socialist, ” always considered himself an independent in Congress because his views lean left to the Democratic party. Until declaring his intention to run for the presidency last April as a Democrat, he had rarely identified as a member of the Democratic Party.
When asked if he was a Democrat Sanders told Vermont paper, Seven Days, “No, I am an independent who is going to be working with the…”. Sanders cut himself off mid sentence.
In an April 24 email, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign as Chairwoman of the DNC after leaked emails, received Seven Days’ article, she wrote back, “Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what we do.”
Along the way he changed it up: “Of course I am a Democrat and running for the Democratic nomination.”
Warren Gunnels, Sanders’s policy director, told NBC News: “I think if you read the platform right now, you will understand that the political revolution is alive and kicking.”
Sanders contribution is deeply felt in many issues. The Democrats has moved significantly to the left, as has Clinton, in trying to keep up with Sanders’ broad appeal. The campaign, said Gunnels, got “at least 80 percent” of what it wanted from the party platform.
