Bernie Sanders says he’s a “different Kind” of candidate..yet he appears to be the same ol’ same ol’ using whatever resources he can find, whether he believes in it or not, just to get coverage and money. I’ll let his own words speak about his loyalty to the Democratic party as well as his apparent dishonesty. Imagine the outrage around here if Hillary Clinton had said something like this:
Bernie Sanders on Monday told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he ran as a Democrat to get more media coverage.
Money also played a role in his decision to run as a Democrat, Sanders added.
“To run as an independent, you need — you could be a billionaire," he said. "If you're a billionaire, you can do that. I'm not a billionaire. So the structure of American politics today is such that I thought the right ethic was to run within the Democratic Party.”
The biggest argument was over running as a Democrat. Over and over, Bernie Sanders said he didn’t want to. He’d spent his whole life purposefully outside the Democratic Party. He treasured his status as the longest-serving independent in Congress. Running as a Democrat wasn’t who he was. He didn’t want to do it that way.
His longtime consultant Tad Devine and the rest of the group came down hard: this is never going to have a chance of working unless you get over it. Suck it up, they told him.
If what party elders take away from Sanders's MSNBC comments is that he doesn't really care about or need the party -- that last part is mostly true.