Bernie Sanders Democrat-by-convenience stance may hurt his campaign

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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, making his second Democratic presidential nomination bid, has spent most of his nearly three decades in Congress as an independent. And that’s not endearing him to some Democrats.

Some party activists have long memories about Sanders, recalling his criticism of President Barack Obama for not pursuing policies further to the left, as advocated by Sanders, a socialist first elected to the Senate in 2006 after 16 years in the House. Sanders was an independent throughout those years, and he only became a Democrat to pursue the party’s nomination in 2016, which he lost to Hillary Clinton.

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