Bernie Sanders is on track for success in a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination based on his record of decades of unwavering support for left-wing policies once far out of the mainstream.
But the party has also pulled the longtime self-described socialist to the left, on cultural issues: Immigration, guns, and matters related to race.
Sanders, 78, for years has favored sweeping liberal reforms, such as universal government-financed healthcare and a much higher minimum wage, sticking to unapologetic left-wing politics even when there appeared to be no market for them, as when Bill Clinton, the incumbent Democratic president declared in 1996 that “the era of big government is over.”
Yet, during his time representing Vermont in Congress as a representative from 1991 to 2007 and since then as a senator, Sanders also staked out positions in sync with the state’s rural white population and well to the right of where the party is today.
On immigration, for instance, Sanders for years was relatively restrictionist, opposing legislation to liberalize immigration for which endorsement is a litmus test among Democrats today.
“He definitely has shifted over the years,” said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for tighter immigration controls.
Most notably, Sanders voted against a 2007 bipartisan bill that many liberal immigration groups viewed as the best chance in many years to enact comprehensive immigration reform. The legislation split Democrats, and Sanders sided with the labor left in opposing it on the grounds that it would put workers at a disadvantage by boosting guest worker programs.
“I think this Senate should be spending much more of its time making it easier to create decent-paying jobs for American workers, instead of allowing corporate America to drive down wages by importing more and more workers from overseas,” Sanders said of the bill then.
Earlier in his congressional career, Sanders was vigilantly opposed to guest workers taking jobs that could be filled by U.S. citizens, for instance by asking the Labor Department to investigate layoffs at the Killington ski resort in 2007 out of suspicion the jobs might go to guest workers.
Yet in future years, he became a more reliably liberal vote on immigration. He voted for the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill in 2013 and favored executive action by President Barack Obama on behalf of young people brought to the United States illegally.
In the 2016 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, who had voted for the 2007 bill, sought to penalize Sanders for opposing it, saying in a debate that the measure was “our best chance.”
In running for president this year, Sanders’s platform is in line with those of other liberal candidates. Where he called in 2007 for strengthening the border and making it harder to migrate to the U.S. illegally, he now favors a moratorium on deportations and decriminalizing border crossings.
“He’s gone from principled objections because of the impact on American workers, to being oblivious to the concerns of … Or, at least appearing to be oblivious to the effects of mass migration, such as we have today, on American workers,” said Vaughan.
On guns, too, Sanders has erased the distance between his own positions of years past when he supported gun rights in rural Vermont and those of the contemporary Democratic Party.
“People of Vermont have changed, and I certainly have changed on that issue,” Sanders acknowledged in an interview with the New York Times editorial board published in January.
Sanders’s past support for gun rights was critical, rather than incidental, to his candidacy for federal office. In running for the House in 1990, he earned the support of the NRA over the incumbent Republican because he pledged to oppose a measure mandating waiting periods for handgun purchases.
For many years thereafter, Sanders maintained a relatively pro-gun rights voting record.
As late as 2007, Gun Owners of American spokesman Michael Hammond pointed out as a representative example, Sanders voted for a measure to prevent any foreign aid funding to go to groups that require registration or taxation of guns owned by U.S. citizens.
[Read more: Bloomberg campaign rips Sanders gun control record as ‘disqualifying’]
Sanders’s record on gun control allowed Hillary Clinton and other rivals to attack him from his left in the 2016 race, even as he noted that he had a D-minus grade from the NRA. Put on the defensive, he underwent a role reversal: While usually it was Sanders calling for a political revolution and dismissing rivals’ criticisms that his plans were unrealistic, in the case of guns, he was left arguing for pragmatism and realism.
“We can raise our voices, but I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not,” he said in the Oct. 13, 2015, debate.
Even before his 2016 run, though, Sanders began voting more reliably against gun rights and backed legislation to reverse a 2005 bill he voted for that protected gun makers from legal liability.
“He has changed,” said Hammond. “I suspect the people of Vermont haven’t changed commensurately.”
Sanders has also evolved on the issue of race, which has been tied during his presidential candidacy to criminal justice policy.
The rise of Black Lives Matter has caused a reckoning within the Democratic Party over its policies on criminal justice, most significantly regarding the 1994 crime bill signed by Bill Clinton that resulted in greater incarceration, particularly of minorities.
Sanders, as a member of the House, voted for that legislation.
In 2016, his campaign said that he voted for the bill because it contained the Violence Against Women Act and an assault weapons ban, and that he opposed the elements that generated greater incarceration, such as provisions that generated added mandatory minimum sentences.
This election cycle, he’s said more forthrightly that he regrets voting for the legislation, saying last year that it was a “terrible bill.”
Twice on the campaign trail in the 2016 cycle, Sanders had events disrupted by Black Lives Matters activists making demands regarding criminal justice reform.
Sanders also drew criticism from the Left for his rhetorical approach to race and Black Lives Matter. Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, for instance, criticized him for viewing the problems facing black Americans through the lens of class, as opposed to race, and for dismissing the concept of reparations out of hand.
Sanders still hasn’t endorsed reparations, as have some of his 2020 Democratic rivals, such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He has, however, changed the way he talks about the idea, making sure to identify racism as a major problem in discussing his economic agenda.
“As a result of slavery, and segregation, and the institutional racism we see now in healthcare, in education, in financial services, we are going to have to focus big time on rebuilding distressed communities in America, including African American communities,” he said in the July debate when asked about reparations.
Still, his own campaign staff sees Sanders’s evolution on race issues as a work in progress. “Obviously, we’ve got to do a better job of communicating that record and that vision,” his adviser Jeff Weaver told Time magazine in July. Weaver said that he needs to convey his ideas “in a culturally competent way.”
Sanders has worked to educate himself on black Americans’ experience with the criminal justice system in the years following his first presidential run and has noted his own evolution.
At a 2018 event in Los Angeles hosted by Real Justice, a group that backs “reform-minded” prosecutors, Sanders discussed what he saw as the biggest failures of the criminal justice system and their effects on minorities, such as the prevalence of cash bail. Sanders has described cash bail as creating the equivalent of debtors’ prison and has called for ending it.
“Five years ago, I did not know these things, like many Americans,” Sanders said as he ran down the list of his criticisms of the criminal justice system. “But I’m learning and I’m learning fast.”
