He has never before chosen to run in a Democratic primary, but here he is, challenging Hillary Clinton—and doing it as an independent, technically permissible but highly unusual. How he’s trying to do this is how he always has—a calculated alchemy of outsider edge and insider smarts, provocation plus pragmatism, all learned and honed over what’s become a unique career in modern American politics.
“He plays it both ways,” said former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin, a Democrat who once successfully fended off Sanders from the left in a reelection bid. “He wants to be different, and yet he wants to belong—for political purposes.”
Sanders is nipping at Clinton in the polls, for now—but anybody who wants to, like Clinton, her campaign or its associated machinery, can fill fat files with quotes from Sanders in which he denigrates the Democratic Party whose mantle of legitimacy gives him a stature that unaffiliated candidates rarely enjoy.
“Clearly, it’s something he should answer for,” Democratic former Congressman Barney Frank said.
In an interview with Politico on the Senate subway, Sanders didn’t walk away from his criticism of Democrats—although he insisted he has developed over his long career a strong relationship with the party in Vermont, in Washington and the nation. Asked whether he still believed the party is “ideologically bankrupt,” Sanders answered by not answering the question.
“I think what we have today is, I think, a Republican Party which has moved from a center-right party over the last decades to a right-wing extremist party,” he said, the subway whooshing him from the Capitol to his office. “I think you have a Democratic Party which is not as strong as it should be in standing up for the working class of this country and taking on big-money interests. And that’s been my view for a long time.”
Sanders shut down follow-ups.
“That’s about it,” he said.
READ FULL ARTICLE +> Can Bernie Sanders Win the Love of a Party He Scorns?