Despite many reports to the contrary, the career of Senator Bernie Sanders has been just as opportunistic and inconsistent as the establishment he wants to dethrone.
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Ever since Senator Sanders first ran for President back in 2016, one of the big talking points of his supporters has been his consistency. In May 2019, CNN spent two segments, each only a day apart from each other, talking about how consistent Bernie has been. Rachel Maddow did the same thing on her MSNBC show in 2015.
Progressives have been making this point since forever ago. In 2004, Howard Dean (also from Vermont) started handing out flip-flops to make fun of Senator John Kerry. The Bush campaign later adopted this attack. It was so successful, people like not-yet-Senator Al Franken and Outfoxed director Robert Greenwald just forgot any connection it had to Dean. (Franken also blamed Bush for the swiftboating attacks against Kerry in his ironically named book The Truth: With Jokes. This, despite the fact that Bush disowned the ads.)
The Right has also made this point. Max Boot recently said on The Washington Post that Sander’s consistency is an issue, as has National Review author Kyle Smith.
However, this is the wrong direction. We should not be acknowledging Sanders’ consistency. It does not exist. As such, here are ten flip-flops from Senator Bernie Sanders:
1. In 1974, Sanders said there should be a 100% marginal tax rate on all income over $1 million. That would be about $5 million in today’s money. When he actually released a tax plan in 2016, the highest tax rate he proposed was 52% on all income over $10 million. Sanders has also consistently made $1 million a year ever since he published the book Our Revolution in 2016.
2. In June 2019, Sanders told the New York Times that “by the end of my first term, I think our troops would be home.” One of the biggest points of the Sanders campaign has undoubtedly been his anti-war beliefs, especially regarding our conflict in Afghanistan. Yet, in 2001 Sanders voted for the joint Authorization For Use Of Military Forces Of 2001 resolution. That was the resolution that allowed President Bush to invade Afghanistan in the first place.
3. In February 2018, Sanders said that “what we should be doing is passing a clean DREAM Act with a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and their parents.” However, when Senator Harry Reid introduced the failed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, the Sanders was one of the strongest fighters against it. The previous year, Sanders fought against Senator Arlen Specter’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006. All of this legislation was quite similar to the DREAM Act. Don’t forget Sanders didn’t do a thing to try and get Senators Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin’s DREAM Act through Congress.
4. While not technically a flip-flop by Sanders himself, one of the many reasons supporters of Sanders have declared Vice-President Biden a racist is because of him writing the Violent Crime Control And Law Enforcement Act of 1994. However, not only did Sanders vote for the bill, but he also called tough on crime approaches “equally important” as prevention.
5. On the topic of this legislation, in 1994 Sanders said he voted for it because “You have more money going to law enforcement, more money going into jails. You have, on the other hand, significant sums of money going into prevention.” In 2016, he said the only reason he voted for it was that the act included the Violence Against Women Act.
6. Oh, and Sanders has gone after Biden for hanging out with segregationists like Senator Fritz Hollings. However, Sanders was much nicer to Governor George Wallace back in 1972. Back then, he said the racist Governor “advocates some outrageous approaches to our problems, but at least he is sensitive to what people feel they need.” Biden, in 1976 as a young Democratic Senator, said he’d sooner vote for President Ford than Governor Wallace.
7. In 2019, Sanders signed a pledge by the organization Common Defense which stated he would “fight to reclaim Congress’s constitutional authority to conduct oversight of U.S. foreign policy and independently debate whether to authorize each new use of military force.” Yet, in 1999 Sanders supported the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. He did this even after admitting intervention by the US was unconstitutional. Something he also made sure of when he opposed Rep. Tom Campbell’s formal declaration of war against Kosovo.
8. In early 2016, Senator Sanders worked with Senator Rand Paul to introduce legislation that would audit the Federal Reserves. However, when Rand Paul’s father Ron introduced legislation to do the same thing back in 2009 and 2010, Sanders was the deciding vote to kill it. This is also despite working with Ron Paul for months to create perfect legislation regarding this audit.
9. Despite Sander’s support for the fight for 15 movement, which tries to create a minimum wage of $15 an hour, Sanders did not pay his employees that much for a long time. In fact, up until mid-2019, Senator Sanders tended to only pay his interns $12 an hour.
10. Currently, Sanders is a hardliner when it comes to fighting for gun control. He supports banning assault weapons, universal background checks, and closing the gun show loophole (which doesn’t exist). However, Sanders use to be a very strong hardliner in the other direction. He voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and voted for the Protection Of Lawful Commerce In Arms Act. This even got him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association a handful of times, an organization Sanders now hates.
Consistent? Principled? No! This is the behavior of a two-faced flip-flopper or the kind of person Bernie’s supporters say everybody but him is. Sanders is a con-man, plain and simple. He will say whatever is needed to get support at that moment.
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