Bernie Sanders Leaves the Democratic Party

HS: The nomination was barely sealed up at the Democratic National Convention before Bernie Sanders, who had campaigned against Hillary Clinton for the party’s nod, went back to being an Independent.

Sanders, who considers himself, officially, an Independent in Congress because his views lean further left than the Democratic party’s platform, caucuses with Democrats. But until declaring an intention to run for the presidency in 2015, he had rarely, if ever, identified as a member of the Democratic Party (he’s been in politics since 1979).

And now, despite pleading with his base to support Hillary, even though they’re concerned that she’s too moderate, Sanders will return to Vermont and to his seat in the Senate, and he’ll do it with no official party affiliation. 

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign as Chairwoman of the DNC after leaked emails revealed she’d tried to keep Sanders from challenging Clinton for the party’s nomination, might even be vindicated—sort of.

Sanders has struggled all along with whether to call himself a Democrat, even ducking the question of his party affiliation, raised by local Vermont media, just days after he declared. He later tried to reinforce that he was, indeed, a Democrat. But Sanders certainly wasn’t a party player—and that’s exactly the concern Wasserman Schultz voiced in the Wikileaks document dump.…

read … Couldn’t Get Away Fast Enough

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A day after calling for party unity, Bernie Sanders goes back to being an independent

F: The morning after taking the podium at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and giving a full-throated endorsement of his political rival Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders told reporters that he will return to the Senate as an independent.

“I was elected an independent,” Sanders told reporters at a Bloomberg-hosted breakfast the morning after.

The move is somewhat expected, but the gravity of the decision feels a little off-putting, coming only hours after he tried to unify the Democratic Party, pleading for his own supporters to rally behind presumptive Democratic nominee Clinton.

Sanders, a self-described “Democratic Socialist,” has been officially been an independent politician since 1979, though he has often caucused with Democrats. Last year, he made the move to the Democratic Party in an attempt to win the presidency….

read … On Second Thought