Bernie Sanders Recordings

Agree with him or disagree with him; it is safe to say that Bernie Sanders is consistent in his beliefs as a Democratic Socialist.

Born on September 8, 1941, just three months before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Bernie Sanders was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City to a working class Jewish family.  Because of his family background which consisted of many of his relatives having lived in German occupied Poland and being killed in the Holocaust in the 1940s, Sanders took an interest in politics at a very early age.  Growing up in Brooklyn the family never lacked for clothing and food but could not afford major purchases like curtains and rugs.  Simply put, they were just not affordable.

While a student at James Madison High School, Sanders was the captain of the track team; even finishing third in the New York City One Mile Indoor Race.  Politically, he lost his first election coming in last to three other students.  Sanders' platform while running for student body President was aide to Korean War orphans.  But to not be discouraged by the loss of the election, Sanders got involved in school fundraising and organized a charity basketball game for the Korean War orphans.

Self proclaiming himself as a mediocre student in college; Sanders believed that the classroom was boring and irrelevant but that the community was more important to his education.  Never the less, he did graduate from the University of Chicago in 1964 with a degree in political science.

While at the University of Chicago Sanders would join the Young People's Socialist League which was the youth version of the Socialist Party of America.  Sanders called his time in Chicago, the major period of intellectual ferment in his life.  He would get involved in the Civil Rights Movement by joining as a student the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  While a chairman at the University of Chicago Sanders managed to merge both CORE and SNCC.  He attended a rally in January 1962 at the University of Chicago to protest the University president's segregated campus housing policy.  At this rally, Sanders got up to speak stating, "We feel it is an intolerable situation when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university-owned apartments."  Along with 32 other students, Sanders entered the Administration Building and camped outside President George Wells Beadle's office.  By the summer of 1963, the University of Chicago revoked its policy on racial segregated housing on campus.

During the Vietnam War, Sanders became part of the Peace Movement having attended antiwar rallies.  He applied for conscientious objector status only to have his application turned down.  By this time however, he was too old to be drafted.  Even though he disagreed with the war, he never criticized those who were fighting the war.  He has always supported benefits for our veterans.

After graduating from college Sanders moved back to New York where he worked as a Head Start teacher, a psychiatric aide, and even a carpenter.  Because of his captivation with rural life, Sanders moved to Stanbard, Vermont in 1968.  Stannard is a small town in population and area in the rural Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.  At the time the residents totaled 88 inhabitants.  In addition to his being a carpenter he was also a filmmaker and writing having sold some radical film strips and other educational material to the schools.

By 1971, Sanders had registered as a member of the Liberty Union Party and was running for governor of Vermont the next year on that Party's ticket as well as in 1976.  Also in 1972, Sanders ran on the Party's ticket for a special election to the United States Senate.  He wold run for the Senate again in 1974.  In the 1974 campaign he would earn four percent of the vote losing to Patrick Leahy who earned forty-nine percent of the vote as well as Dick Mallary who earned forty-six percent of the vote.  After the 1976 election drained the Liberty Party's finances Sanders left the Party in 1977.  In 1980 he was one of three electors in the Presidential Election of 1980 Socialist Workers Party in Vermont.

Four days after Ronald Reagan had defeated President Jimmy Carter in the Presidential Election of 1980, Sanders announced his candidacy for mayor of Burlington, Vermont and formally announce his candidacy on December 16, 1980 at a City Hall Press Conference.  Who and what convinced him to run for mayor was Richard Sugarman, an Orthodox Jewish of religious studies at the University of Vermont.  Sugarman had shown Sanders a ward by ward breakdown of the 1976 Vermont gubernatorial election showing that despite only receiving six percent of the overall vote in Vermont, Sanders had received 12 percent in the city of Burlington.  Sanders would go on to win the mayoral race, initially by 22 votes, but that would later be reduced to ten votes.  Sanders would serve eight years, or four terms as mayor and declined to run for a fifth term citing, "eight years is enough and I think it is time for new leadership, which does exist within the coalition, to come up."  Also, as he was running for his fourth term, close associates to the Mayor said that Sanders was tired of being mayor.  Instead of running for that fifth term, Sanders went on to lecture in political science at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and in 1991, at Hamilton College.

Describing himself as a Socialist during his tenure as mayor, Sanders had balanced Burlington's city budget.  He had attracted a Double A baseball team to the Cincinnati Reds; the Vermont Reds to the city.  In addition he had sued the local cable franchise resulting in winning reduced rates for consumers.  Burlington, under Sanders' leadership also became the first city in the United States to fund community trust housing.  Then there was his saving the Lake Champlain waterfront from developers.  By the time he left office in 1989 it was said of Bernie Sanders that he had changed the entire nature of politics in Burlington as well as in the entire state of Vermont.

By the time of the Presidential Election of 1988 was coming around, Jim Jeffords who was Vermont's at-large Congressman had decided to run for the US Senate.  Sanders ran in that election to replace Jeffords in the House of Representatives as an Independent and came in second place behind Republican Peter P. Smith.  But, with a Midterm during the George HW Bush administration coming up in 1990, Sanders was successful in defeating Smith in a rematch.  He would serve as Vermont's at-large Congressman for the next 16 years.  He was the first Socialist elected to the US House of Representatives since 1948.

As a member of the House, Sanders would criticize both Democrats and Republicans claiming that both political parties were working primarily on behalf of the wealthy.  In his first year he would co-found the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which he chaired for eight years.  Despite his refusal to join the Democratic Party or caucus with them the Progressive Caucus was mostly liberal Democrats.  He would support banking reforms, and cancer registries, while opposing the Brady Bill, the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq, and our current (at the time) trade policies.

In 2005, Senator Jeffords, who had become an Independent early in George W. Bush's first term had decided to not seek re-election.  In a gutsy move, Senator Chuck Schumer, Chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee had endorsed Bernie Sanders to run for that seat.  In addition, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic National Committee endorsed Sanders too.  That meant that the Democratic Party candidate would not be receiving financial backing.  Sanders would win the 2006 Midterm Election and win re-election again in 2012 when Barack Obama was re-elected president of the United States, and again in the 2018 Midterm of the Donald Trump administration.  He would and is still critical of the war in Iraq and tax policy.  He still advocates for veterans as well as common sense policies for gun control and policies that benefit the middle-class and the poor.

By the time of the start of the Presidential Election of 2016, President Obama could not run for a third term and because of the 2015 death of his son, Beau Biden, Vice President Joe Biden didn't have the heart to run in a national campaign.  That left Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the frontrunner for the Democratic Nomination for president.  Clinton, who had her share of baggage from Benghazi to missing e-mails; which Representative Kevin McCarthy admitted after the 11 hour House Benghazi Hearings they did that to hurt Secretary Clinton politically and the Republicans and Donald Trump ran with the missing e-mails issue to which in a Democratic Primary Debate Sanders declared, "No one cares about your damn e-mails."  Sanders had such a strong showing; Bernie Bros throughout the Democratic Primary Season and up to the Democratic National Convention that they felt the system was rigged against Sanders in favor of Clinton.  In that election, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, and many believe that was because many Sanders supporters stayed home on Election Day because the mainstream media had Clinton winning that election.

By 2019, many Democrats felt that the country under Donald Trump's leadership was going in the wrong direction.  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasn't running to have a rematch with President Trump.  After Charrpollotsville in 2017, Former Vice President Joe Biden decided to come out of retirement and run for president; his third time since 1988.  California Senator Kamala Harris made a run but would drop out late in 2019, and Senator Sanders ran for a second time.  There were a slew of other candidates as well.  By March 2020, the Primary came down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.  Despite his slow start, Biden ended up securing enough delegates to win the Democratic Nomination and winning the 2020 Election against President Trump.  The difference in this Democratic Primary vs. the one in 2016 is that Bernie Sanders got out early and endorsed Biden to avoid the Party infighting of 2016 that delivered Donald Trump to the presidency.

The history of Bernie Sanders is still being written as he is still in the United States Senate, but this collection gives you a pretty good history of the man's career in politics and earning him a place in American history.

See also these members of the Senate:

• Vice Presidents
• Harry S Truman Speeches
• Lyndon Johnson Speeches
• Hubert Humphrey 
• Richard Nixon
• Joseph McCarthy
• John F. Kennedy
• Barry Goldwater
• George McGovern
• Ted Kennedy 
• Robert F. Kennedy
• Walter Mondale
• Bob Dole
• Joe Biden
• Al Gore
• John Kerry
• John McCain 
• Hillary Rodham Clinton
• Barack Obama
• Kamala Harris
• Mitt Romney