Bernie Sanders.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW - Interview

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders talks these days about how he United States is becoming a plutocracy. It's serious stuff, with facts, figures, and poignant tales of full-time workers struggling in poverty while billionaires bank their federal bailouts. Sanders is engaging in a discussion that the politicians and the media generally ignore. But as crowds pack the events where he speaks, it's obvious that the democratic socialist from Vermont is striking chords that connect with the American people. He certainly connected in early September when he argued that, instead of rushing to war in Syria, the White House and Congress should be fighting unemployment, low wages, and income inequality.

In a series of discussions during those heady days, Sanders opened up about the degeneration of our politics and the media, and about his frustration with the Democratic Party that he works with but refuses to join.

Q: Why aren't you a Democrat?

Bernie Sanders: I am not a Democrat because the Democratic Party today does not represent--and has not for many years--the interests of my constituency, which is primarily working families, middle-class people, and low-income people. While, obviously, the Democratic Party is far preferable to the rightwing extremist Republican Party, one would be very naive not to know that the Democratic Party is also heavily influenced by corporate interests and big money interests.

Q: You caucus with the Senate Democrats. In the last several Presidential elections, you have supported the Democratic nominee. How do you sort that out? Where do you draw the line between yourself and the Democrats?

Sanders: When I was elected mayor of the city of Burlington in 1981, I ran as an independent. I defeated a Democrat and, in fact, during the eight years that I was mayor, my strongest opponents were the Democrats. What we did was put together a nonparty; it was called then the Progressive Coalition. The Progressive Coalition was a grassroots organization of working families, lower-income people, unions, women's groups, environmentalists, and so forth.

We ended up having a very good presence on the city council, and I was elected four times. At that particular moment, in that particular context, moving in a third-party way was what made sense. So that's what we did. Out of that has come what I suspect is the strongest progressive third party in America [the Vermont Progressive Party], which now has 10 percent of the state senators--three out of thirty--and a number of folks in the House of Representatives in Vermont. I am not active in that party but that emanated from what we did in Burlington.

I was elected to the United States House in 1990 as an independent. My choices were: to caucus with Republicans, which would have been unthinkable; to have no party, no caucus at all, which would have meant no committee assignments and significant ineffectiveness; or to caucus with the Democrats. And I did caucus with the Democrats. In 1990, there was a lot of opposition among conservative Democrats to my being in that caucus. In 2006, when I was elected to the Senate, I was supported by top Democrats, and have been working in the caucus ever since.

So the reality for me is, in this moment...