Do we like Bernie Sanders?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades on the side of workers, with a record of support for LGBTQ+ people and climate action, minus a slow start on marriage equality and a messy endorsement.
Sanders has spent decades in Congress as the guy who shows up with amendments nobody else would touch. He pushed single-payer health care back in 2009 when it had no support, then secured more than $12 billion for community health centres. As Veterans' Affairs chair he helped broker the 2014 VA bill with John McCain and Jeff Miller.
His LGBTQ+ record is good but not spotless. He told the New York Times in 2015 “I'm not evolving when it comes to gay rights. I was there.” Reporting at the time showed that in Vermont he backed civil unions but declined to push for marriage, and around 2005 said “not right now”, before backing it in 2009. Defenders point to his votes against the federal marriage ban; critics say he oversold his own history.
The stain on his 2016 campaign came out in 2019. Former staffers alleged sexual misconduct and pay disparity, and a top adviser was accused of forcibly kissing a campaign worker. Sanders wasn't accused himself, but he was criticised for how the complaints were handled. He apologised publicly, saying “Our standards and safeguards were inadequate.”
He also isn't immune to a fact-check. In late 2019 he said he was the only Democratic candidate to have voted against all of Trump's defence budgets, and PolitiFact rated that false. He opposed the first two but missed the vote on the third, and Tulsi Gabbard had the cleaner record.
On the harm test he comes through clean. He flew a transgender flag outside his Senate office in 2019 as a show of support, and his 2019 plan aimed to eliminate fossil fuel use in the US by 2050, with a justice fund for frontline communities. We found no campaign against trans people, conspiracy-mongering or dodgy company, though his marriage-equality timing is a fair mark.
The recent mess is Maine. Sanders is campaigning for Graham Platner, and after the Wall Street Journal reported that Platner exchanged sexual texts with several women, which his campaign confirmed to Politico, Sanders said “certainly not” when asked if he was rethinking his endorsement. He says the focus should be on working people. Critics call it a blind spot, and supporters call it sticking with the fight against the donor class.