Bernie Sanders Launches 2020 Presidential Campaign, No Longer An Underdog

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Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is giving it another go, launching a second campaign for the White House four years after surprising Democrats with a strong bid for the party's 2016 nomination.

"We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign, and now it's time to move that revolution forward," the independent senator told Vermont Public Radio in an interview airing Tuesday morning.

But this 2020 bid will undoubtedly be a very different presidential campaign than his quest for the Democratic nomination as an underdog in 2016. Sanders enters the race as a top contender who, along with former Vice President Joe Biden, tops most early polls, far outpacing other Democratic candidates in support and name identification.

It's a sharp contrast from when Sanders seemingly came out of nowhere to surprise the political class — and at times himself — by winning several key primaries against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Buoyed by a big early win in New Hampshire, Sanders fought Clinton for the Democratic nomination through the final June contests, drawing tens of thousands of supporters to rallies in the process.

In the years since his loss to Clinton, Sanders has remained a national leader of the Democratic Party, though he still refuses to join.

"I think we have had real success in moving the ideology of the Democratic Party to be a pro-worker party, to stand up to the billionaire class," Sanders told NPR during the 2018 midterms. "We've got a long way to go."

Many of the issues he has promoted for years — most notably a Medicare-for-all national health care plan and a $15 an hour minimum wage — have shifted from the party's fringe to its mainstream, and are now seen as effective litmus tests for presidential candidates.

Indeed, Sanders' most recent Medicare-for-all bill was cosponsored by fellow presidential candidates Sens. Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. The Senate's other presidential candidate, Amy Klobuchar, co-sponsored Sanders' most recent $15 minimum wage bill, in addition to the other four.

Sanders pointed to the Democratic Party's leftward shift as a reason for a second run. "It turns out that many of the ideas that I talked about — that health care is a right, not a privilege, and that we've got to move toward a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system: very, very popular. The idea that we have got to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour," he told Vermont Public Radio. "When I talked about making public colleges and universities tuition-free and lowering student debt, that was another issue that people said was too radical. Well, that's also happening around the country."

But running in 2020, Sanders could be a victim of his own success.

While Sanders provided liberal Democratic primary voters with a sharp contrast to Clinton's political pragmatism in 2016, progressives will have no shortage of candidates to choose from in the increasingly broad and diverse 2020 field.

Most declared Democrats support Sanders' vision of nationalized health care, and more robust federal programs and policies, all funded by higher taxes on top income earners.

And in a party that has placed an increasing premium on being more representative of the broader electorate and country in recent years, many other candidates will offer voters the 77-year-old's platform — with the added benefit of youth and diversity.

"My question is, does he provide added value in this campaign for 2020? Or are there a lot of people who sort of carry very similar messages? Does it have to be him? I don't think it does, and I admire him," New Hampshire radio host Arnie Arnesen, a 2016 Sanders supporter, recently told NPR. "I think it's time for us to start creating a new bench. And the new bench isn't old, it shouldn't be white and it probably shouldn't be male."

Asked by Vermont Public Radio how he will pitch his candidacy in such a diverse and progressive field, Sanders argued, "We have got to look at candidates not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or gender and not by their age. I think we have got to try to move us toward a nondiscriminatory society that looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for."

There have been hurdles as Sanders prepared to run again in 2020. His campaign has had to answer to charges of sexism and harassment by staffers in 2016, with his former campaign manager acknowledging "a failure." Sanders also had to clarify comments about the role of racism in the 2018 campaign, addressing the losses of gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum in Florida and Stacey Abrams in Georgia.

Sanders took several steps to maintain his national political profile and strengthen his presidential prospects in recent years, including his support for Democratic candidates in 2018.

Frequently criticized by the Clinton campaign during 2016 for ignoring foreign policy, he delivered several high-profile speeches laying out a progressive worldview that attempts to thread the needle between a broad, America-As-World-Police approach to international politics, and President Trump's isolationist views.

Sanders also played a lead role opposing Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and engaged with the Democratic National Committee that famously opposed his 2016 campaign, as revealed in internal emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted to Wikileaks.

In the wake of the 2016 campaign, the DNC changed its presidential nominating process, in part by largely removing party leaders known as "superdelegates" from influencing the selection, a move Sanders supported.</s>Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announces bid for Democratic nomination for president in 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announces bid for Democratic nomination for president in 2020.</s>(AP) – Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says he’s running for president in 2020.

The 77-year-old self-described democratic socialist challenged Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary in 2016 and told Vermont Public Radio on Tuesday that he planned to again seek the nomination.

Sanders has reshaped Democratic politics and earned a loyal following with his passionate defense of liberal proposals including free college tuition and single-payer health care. But he will face off against several other Democratic candidates who also want to appeal to the party’s base.

Still, Sanders’ name recognition, fundraising prowess and passion for liberal policies makes him a top-tier 2020 presidential contender.</s>Bernie Sanders announced he is running for president on Vermont Public Radio Tuesday morning.

It will be Sanders’ second consecutive bid for the Democratic nomination after losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Sanders enters the 2020 race as one of the frontrunners — a remarkable turn for the democratic socialist who, three years ago, was viewed as a protest candidate from the political fringe.

Today, Sanders is one of the most popular politicians among Democratic voters and his policy agenda — a suite of progressive proposals to expand health care, broaden the social safety net and make higher education free — has been embraced by many of the Democratic party’s leading figures.</s>Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive iconoclast who emerged from the ideological fringe four years ago to build a movement that reshaped the Democratic Party, entered the race for the 2020 presidential nomination Tuesday morning. Sanders announced his decision in an interview on Vermont Public Radio.

In announcing his bid, Sanders plunged into a very different race than the one he nearly upended in 2016, when he was the only progressive in a tiny field dominated by Hillary Clinton.

This time around, several other candidates will vie to represent the party’s left, and many progressives, including some former prominent supporters of his, are skeptical that Sanders is best suited to carry their mantle.

But his sustained popularity in early voting states, massive network of small donors and powerhouse digital operation, including a social media network far larger than any Democrat, give Sanders big advantages as the race gets underway.

“He’s got a very strong, loyal following,” said Joe Trippi, who has advised campaigns for several major Democrats. “It makes him somebody the rest of the field has to take very seriously, and who has a better shot than many of them at emerging as one of the three or four who actually competes long-term for the nomination.”

The transformative campaign the 77-year-old ran in the last presidential cycle drew masses of disaffected voters, including many millennials, to politics. The senator’s plans for expanding government, especially in guaranteeing health coverage, and his excoriations of the wealth of the richest Americans are now embedded in the Democratic Party’s platform.

As much as he changed the party’s positions, Sanders’ bigger impact may have been in proving the viability of a new model for how to sustain a campaign. He unleashed a small-donor revolution that enabled him to raise unprecedented amounts without taking a dime from corporate political action committees or getting trapped into the relentless cycle of big-dollar fundraisers.

Some 2.5 million Americans gave to him in the last presidential cycle. His invocation of the size of the average donation — $27 — became a staple of his campaign rallies, which routinely drew audiences that dwarfed those at events held by Clinton. More than 1.4 million people came out to see him.

If Sanders this time around raises only half the $228 million he did in his last run, he’d have a war chest most of the other candidates could only envy. Sanders is well positioned to get there, said Nicco Mele, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, who helped run the pioneering digital operation for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid.

“It is a big number,” Mele said, “but the easiest way to get there is through people who have already invested in you, and for them it is not that much money they are contributing.”

The question hanging over Sanders now is whether his moment has passed. Some of the same activists who helped propel Sanders’ campaign in 2016 have expressed ambivalence this time, as have some of the influential celebrities and politicians who once rallied behind him.

Last month, campaign workers from the 2016 effort spoke out about being sexually harassed and discriminated against by colleagues, and having their complaints ignored. The senator apologized in January, telling reporters he had been unaware of the allegations. But a remark to CNN that he had not been on top of the situation because “I was little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case” to be elected reinforced the perception among Sanders’ critics that the senator is insufficiently serious about issues of harassment and discrimination.

Beyond those issues, the candidate who earlier had the lone voice in the field offering radical change will now be competing with equally high-profile Democrats offering bold policy visions.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was first out of the box with a New Year’s Eve announcement of an exploratory committee, and Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York all hope to compete for the backing of progressive voters. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas has grabbed the fancy of many younger voters.

Although their plans are in part inspired by the momentum Sanders built, they now threaten to overtake him.

Many activists in a party that skews increasingly diverse and younger are wary of nominating a white man who would be 79 by the time he would take office.

Sanders is from a state that is 95% white, and connecting with black voters proved a fatal challenge in his last run. Those voters will likely hold at least as much sway in the current contest; states in which African Americans make up a large share of those voting in the Democratic primary, including South Carolina, Virginia and Louisiana, are expected to be particularly influential in choosing the nominee.

“This is the big problem he still needs to solve,” Trippi said. “Given his policies, he should have had much broader appeal than he did in the minority community. … He just comes across as this angry old guy shouting, ‘Get off my lawn.’”

Yet Sanders is adept at defying the conventional wisdom — and even defying his own reputation. He’s retooled his approach to nonwhite voters, more effectively adopting the language of racial-justice advocates and unflinchingly labeling the president a racist, a declaration from which some other candidates have shied away.

The cantankerous septuagenarian who talks like a Luddite when he describes his own use of technology built one of the most potent online political networks in American history.

The innovation didn’t end on election day. The senator continued to expand his online reach in recent years in ways that sometimes have taken his potential primary rivals by surprise.

The Sanders digital reach eclipses that of other Democrats mulling a run. He has amassed 32.3 million followers on social media, according to rankings compiled by Acronym, a progressive digital advocacy firm. The next closest Democratic hopeful, Warren, does not have even half as many.

Interviews and town halls Sanders broadcasts on his Senate Facebook page routinely attract more than a million viewers. One recent example, a “Solving Our Climate Crisis” forum he held with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, was among the events progressives successfully leveraged to force House Democratic leaders to push climate change to a more prominent place on their agenda.</s>Following a litany reports teased an imminent announcement, only to be denied by his staff, Bernie Sanders has finally officially thrown his hat into the ring, officially acknowledging his plan to seek the 2020 Democratic nomination during an interview Tuesday with Vermont Public Radio.

Unlike his last sparsely-attended campaign announcement in 2015, which attracted a few idle jokes from the Daily Show's John Stewart about Sanders' resemblance to Seinfeld co-creator Larry David...

...Sanders enters the 2020 race as one of the front-runners, placing near the top of most polls along side Vice President Joe Biden. Though he has refused to refused to officially join the Democratic Party, many of the positions that he has advocated - including Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage - have been endorsed by many of his campaign rivals.

Though Sanders has seen his profile rise from relative unknown to one of the leading lights of the party's revitalized "socialist" faction over the past few years, he delivered his announcement during an interview to a local public radio station in Vermont.

"I wanted to let the people of the state of Vermont know about this first," Sanders told VPR's Bob Kinzel. "And what I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — a belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics, in town meetings — that's what I'm going to carry all over this country."

Sanders said he's running because he opposes Donald Trump, whom he called "an embarrassment", a "homophobe" and a "racist."

"I think the current occupant of the White House is an embarrassment to our country," Sanders said. "I think he is a pathological liar... I also think he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, somebody who is gaining cheap political points by trying to pick on minorities, often undocumented immigrants." Sanders said his campaign hopes to enlist one million people in a "grassroots movement of people prepared to stand up and fight."

 Sanders acknowledged he will encounter a "very different campaign," than in 2016, when he emerged as the sole serious challenger to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and won 23 primaries and caucuses.

He's also announcing as a scandal over allegations of sexism during his 2016 campaign loom over the senator and his presidential ambitions. Now that he has officially announced, Bernie has become the sixth Senator to declare his intention to run.</s>After months of deliberation, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday that he is running for president again in 2020. It will be Sanders’ second consecutive bid for the Democratic nomination after losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Sanders made the announcement in an interview with Vermont Public Radio Tuesday morning.

In the phone interview, Sanders said he “wanted to let the state of Vermont know about this first.”

When asked why he’s running, Sanders took direct aim at President Trump. “I think the current occupant of the White House is an embarrassment to our country,” Sanders said.

“I think he is a pathological liar. I also think he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe — somebody who is gaining cheap political points by trying to pick on minorities, often undocumented immigrants.”

In an official campaign announce video Sanders posted to YouTube at about 7 a.m. Tuesday, the senator invited supporters to join and “unprecedented grassroots campaign of one million active volunteers in every state in our country.”

“Our campaign is not only about defeating Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history,” Sanders said in the campaign video. “Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”

Sanders continued, “Our campaign is about taking on the powerful special interests that dominate our economic and political life. I’m talking about Wall Street, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, and the large multinational corporations that exert such an enormous influence over our lives.”

Buckling down on the social justice angle, Sanders continued by saying, “Our campaign is about redoubling our efforts to end racism, sexism, homophobia, religious bigotry, and all forms of discrimination.”

Sanders also speaks on gun control and foreign policy, among other important campaign issues in the nearly 11-minute video.

The Vermont senator was also on CBS This Morning announcing his second presidential bid Tuesday.

Sanders enters the 2020 race as one of the frontrunners — a remarkable turn for the democratic socialist who, three years ago, was viewed as a protest candidate from the political fringe. Today, Sanders is one of the most popular politicians among Democratic voters and his policy agenda — a suite of progressive proposals to expand health care, broaden the social safety net and make higher education free — has been embraced by many of the Democratic party’s leading figures.

“I can tell you very happily, and I think any objective observer would confirm what I’m saying, is that in the last year and half or so, the Democratic party has moved in a far more progressive direction than they were before I ran for president,” he said in an interview with CNN last year. But in the run-up to his announcement, Sanders and top aides insisted the decision would ultimately turn on a much simpler question: whether he was the best candidate to defeat President Donald Trump next year.

Sanders begins his campaign this time around with a higher profile and better organized base of support, but rather than having a single establishment favorite to fight, perhaps a dozen other candidates with wide and often overlapping appeal are already pursing the nomination. That includes as many as a half-dozen credible progressive hopefuls who, though not social democrats in the Sanders mold, share many of his policy priorities and political style. The primary field will also be more racially diverse and, on average, younger. Less than two months into the year, five of his Senate colleagues are either running or exploring campaigns, including four of the six women in the race.

And though he has joined the race now earlier than he did at this point in 2015, Sanders’ entry comes in the wake of about a dozen others, like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another progressive populist, who announced the formation of an exploratory committee on New Year’s Eve and formally declared her candidacy 10 days ago. She quickly scooped up Sanders’ 2016 Iowa caucus director and has already traveled to six key states and Puerto Rico.

Sanders has spent much of the past few years spreading his message and developing relationships with like-minded officials and activists during exhaustive travels around the country — with a particular eye on states won by Trump in 2016 — and via his unrivaled digital operation. His core of supporters, though their vote share will likely diminish in a crowded field, could be stubborn enough to carry him to victories in some of the key early voting states. His media footprint and ability to raise big numbers of small-dollar donations should allow him to compete in California, which moved up its primary for 2020, creating an expensive new challenge for candidates who have largely forsworn corporate PAC donations and super PAC support.

“He never stopped,” Our Revolution president Nina Turner, a trusted adviser, said in January. “He stays on the mission. People sometimes try to knock him off the path but he’s right there, and he never wavers in that. And that’s a hard thing to do, to be the one who’s pushing the vision even when it’s not popular. It’s easy to come on board when things are popular.”

But Sanders’ increased influence has also invited stricter scrutiny from the political opponents, including a vocal faction inside the Democratic party who blame him for dampening support for Clinton ahead of her loss to Trump, the press and even some of his most dedicated advocates.

In January, he was forced to publicly confront allegations of sexual harassment by staffers on his 2016 campaign. Sanders apologized but, during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, said he was unaware of the misconduct at the time because he “was little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case.” The explanation fell flat and, days later another report emerged accusing an operative on the campaign of forcibly kissing a younger female staffer. When Sanders met with a group of men and women who wrote a letter to his office detailing their experiences in 2016, he was, according one former staffer in attendance, “conciliatory” and opened his remarks with what she described as an “honest apology.”

Both Sanders critics and allies will keep a close eye on the makeup of his early hires, most notably his choice of a campaign manager to replace Jeff Weaver, who ran the show in 2016 and will remain on as a senior adviser. An aide told CNN in January that the process was already underway. There is also the question of whether influential progressives like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who volunteered on Sanders’ 2016 campaign, and traveled with him during the midterms to campaign for progressive hopefuls, will offer their public support. California Rep. Barbara Lee, one of the most respected progressive lawmakers in the country, endorsed Sen. Kamala Harris last week.

From the backbench to the front lines

Sanders’ increased visibility has yielded substantial gains for the Democratic party’s left flank and — through an unlikely alliance with a Republican — helped deliver a historic rebuke to the Trump administration’s policy in the Middle East. Along with GOP Sen. Mike Lee and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, Sanders last year won bipartisan backing for a War Powers resolution calling for an end to military support for the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen. His pressure campaigns on major corporations like Amazon also helped secure a $15 minimum wage for workers there and a pledge from the company to back legislation raising it nationwide.

“He has reached out more to work with colleagues in the last few years to show that effectiveness and that’s his biggest plus point on a substance level,” said Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who led the successful push for a matching resolution this year in the House.

The policy principles behind a second Sanders campaign are expected to be largely the same as in 2015 and 2016. Still, he has over the past few weeks begun to roll out or re-up proposals to combat economic inequality and fortify programs like Social Security. He is also planning to reintroduce his Medicare for all legislation in tandem with Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who has taken over developing and shepherding the accompanying House bill.

Over two weeks in January and February, Sanders unveiled plans to buy more than 50 years of padding for Social Security by raising payroll taxes on income above $250,000 and hike the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans — suggesting a top rate of 77% on billionaire heirs.

“Our bill does what the American people want,” Sanders said in a statement ahead of the rollout, “by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality. From a moral, economic, and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little.”</s>WASHINGTON DC — After months of deliberation, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday that he is running for president again in 2020. It will be Sanders’ second consecutive bid for the Democratic nomination after losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“What I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — our belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics and town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country,” Sanders said in his announcement on Vermont Public Radio Tuesday morning.

Sanders enters the 2020 race as one of the frontrunners — a remarkable turn for the democratic socialist who, three years ago, was viewed as a protest candidate from the political fringe. Today, Sanders is one of the most popular politicians among Democratic voters and his policy agenda — a suite of progressive proposals to expand health care, broaden the social safety net and make higher education free — has been embraced by many of the Democratic party’s leading figures.

“I can tell you very happily, and I think any objective observer would confirm what I’m saying, is that in the last year and half or so, the Democratic party has moved in a far more progressive direction than they were before I ran for president,” he said in an interview with CNN last year. But in the run-up to his announcement, Sanders and top aides insisted the decision would ultimately turn on a much simpler question: whether he was the best candidate to defeat President Donald Trump next year.

Sanders begins his campaign this time around with a higher profile and better organized base of support, but rather than having a single establishment favorite to fight, perhaps a dozen other candidates with wide and often overlapping appeal are already pursing the nomination. That includes as many as a half-dozen credible progressive hopefuls who, though not social democrats in the Sanders mold, share many of his policy priorities and political style. The primary field will also be more racially diverse and, on average, younger. Less than two months into the year, five of his Senate colleagues are either running or exploring campaigns, including four of the six women in the race.

And though he has joined the race now earlier than he did at this point in 2015, Sanders’ entry comes in the wake of about a dozen others, like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another progressive populist, who announced the formation of an exploratory committee on New Year’s Eve and formally declared her candidacy 10 days ago. She quickly scooped up Sanders’ 2016 Iowa caucus director and has already traveled to six key states and Puerto Rico.

Sanders has spent much of the past few years spreading his message and developing relationships with like-minded officials and activists during exhaustive travels around the country — with a particular eye on states won by Trump in 2016 — and via his unrivaled digital operation. His core of supporters, though their vote share will likely diminish in a crowded field, could be stubborn enough to carry him to victories in some of the key early voting states. His media footprint and ability to raise big numbers of small-dollar donations should allow him to compete in California, which moved up its primary for 2020, creating an expensive new challenge for candidates who have largely forsworn corporate PAC donations and super PAC support.

“He never stopped,” Our Revolution president Nina Turner, a trusted adviser, said in January. “He stays on the mission. People sometimes try to knock him off the path but he’s right there, and he never wavers in that. And that’s a hard thing to do, to be the one who’s pushing the vision even when it’s not popular. It’s easy to come on board when things are popular.”

But Sanders’ increased influence has also invited stricter scrutiny from the political opponents, including a vocal faction inside the Democratic party who blame him for dampening support for Clinton ahead of her loss to Trump, the press and even some of his most dedicated advocates.

In January, he was forced to publicly confront allegations of sexual harassment by staffers on his 2016 campaign. Sanders apologized but, during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, said he was unaware of the misconduct at the time because he “was little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case.” The explanation fell flat and, days later another report emerged accusing an operative on the campaign of forcibly kissing a younger female staffer. When Sanders met with a group of men and women who wrote a letter to his office detailing their experiences in 2016, he was, according one former staffer in attendance, “conciliatory” and opened his remarks with what she described as an “honest apology.”

Both Sanders critics and allies will keep a close eye on the makeup of his early hires, most notably his choice of a campaign manager to replace Jeff Weaver, who ran the show in 2016 and will remain on as a senior adviser. An aide told CNN in January that the process was already underway. There is also the question of whether influential progressives like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who volunteered on Sanders’ 2016 campaign, and traveled with him during the midterms to campaign for progressive hopefuls, will offer their public support. California Rep. Barbara Lee, one of the most respected progressive lawmakers in the country, endorsed Sen. Kamala Harris last week.

From the backbench to the front lines

Sanders’ increased visibility has yielded substantial gains for the Democratic party’s left flank and — through an unlikely alliance with a Republican — helped deliver a historic rebuke to the Trump administration’s policy in the Middle East. Along with GOP Sen. Mike Lee and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, Sanders last year won bipartisan backing for a War Powers resolution calling for an end to military support for the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen. His pressure campaigns on major corporations like Amazon also helped secure a $15 minimum wage for workers there and a pledge from the company to back legislation raising it nationwide.

“He has reached out more to work with colleagues in the last few years to show that effectiveness and that’s his biggest plus point on a substance level,” said Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who led the successful push for a matching resolution this year in the House.

The policy principles behind a second Sanders campaign are expected to be largely the same as in 2015 and 2016. Still, he has over the past few weeks begun to roll out or re-up proposals to combat economic inequality and fortify programs like Social Security. He is also planning to reintroduce his Medicare for all legislation in tandem with Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who has taken over developing and shepherding the accompanying House bill.

Over two weeks in January and February, Sanders unveiled plans to buy more than 50 years of padding for Social Security by raising payroll taxes on income above $250,000 and hike the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans — suggesting a top rate of 77% on billionaire heirs.

“Our bill does what the American people want,” Sanders said in a statement ahead of the rollout, “by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality. From a moral, economic, and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little.”</s>Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced on Tuesday that he will be entering the 2020 race to run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2020.

“We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign, and now it’s time to move that revolution forward,” Sanders told Vermont Public Radio in an interview airing Tuesday morning.

“I think the current occupant of the White House is an embarrassment to our country,” he continued. “I think he is a pathological liar … I also think he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, somebody who is gaining cheap political points by trying to pick on minorities, often undocumented immigrants.”

Sanders revealed in November 2018 he will “probably” launch a bid for the presidency if another candidate does not emerge who is more likely to beat President Donald Trump in 2020.

“If there’s somebody else who appears who can, for whatever reason, do a better job than me, I’ll work my ass off to elect him or her,” Sanders said at the time. “If it turns out that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run.”

The progressive senator unsuccessfully ran a 2016 presidential campaign as a Democrat. Although his run was initially considered a long-shot bid, Sanders won 23 primaries and caucuses. He also won more than 45 percent of pledged delegates, compared to challenger Hillary Clinton’s 54 percent.

“I wanted to let the people of the state of Vermont know about this first,” Sanders told VPR’s Bob Kinzel Tuesday. “And what I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — a belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics, in town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country.”

Sanders and his advisers gathered for a weekend in Vermont in December to discuss his prospective run and started laying the foundation in preparation for an even more expansive campaign than he had during his first presidential run.

“This time, he starts off as a front-runner, or one of the front-runners,” Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s 2016 campaign manager, said during the retreat. “It’ll be a much bigger campaign if he runs again, in terms of the size of the operation.”</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive populist who mounted a fierce challenge to front-runner Hillary Clinton in the 2016 White House campaign, said on Tuesday he will again seek the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2020.

Sanders, 77, a self-described democratic socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, joins an already-crowded Democratic race that includes fellow Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

The Brooklyn native announced his candidacy in an email to supporters, pledging to build a vast grassroots movement to confront the special interests that he said dominate government and politics.

Sanders said he would push for many of the same issues that powered his 2016 bid and resonated with younger voters, including universal healthcare, raising the hourly minimum wage to $15, and free public college tuition.

"Our campaign is about creating a government and economy that works for the many, not just the few," Sanders said, asking for 1 million people to sign up to kick off his bid.

In an interview with Vermont Public Radio, the Vermont senator promised a "very different campaign" in an effort to unseat Republican President Donald Trump.

Trump's campaign weighed in on Sanders' run in a statement.

"Bernie Sanders has already won the debate in the (Democratic) primary, because every candidate is embracing his brand of socialism," Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said.

Sanders' insurgent 2016 candidacy against Clinton was a long shot, but he ended up capturing 23 state nominating contests and pushing the party to the left, generating tension between its establishment and liberal wings that has not entirely abated.

This time around, Sanders has been among the leaders in opinion polls of prospective 2020 candidates, but he faces other liberal progressives touting many of the same ideas he brought into the party mainstream.

That could make it harder for him to generate the same level of fervent support he did four years ago.

Sanders is also likely to face questions about his age and relevance in a party that is increasingly advancing more diverse and fresh voices, including those of women and minorities - groups that Sanders struggled to win over in 2016.

A former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders won a U.S. House of Representatives seat in 1990, making him the first independent elected to the House in 40 years. In 2006, he won a U.S. Senate seat and in 2018 was voted in for a third six-year term.

His push against Clinton, a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, was notable because few Democrats seemed inclined to challenge her claim on the nomination. Sanders' candidacy swiftly became a phenomenon, as he spoke to swelling crowds and garnered passionate support on social media.

Unlike Clinton, he refused to take money from corporate political action committees, or PACs, relying on a flood of small-dollar donations.

When he ultimately conceded and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in support of Clinton, he was jeered by some of his supporters. At the time, Sanders said his populist platform would endure.

The primaries and caucuses that determine the party's nominee will begin in February 2020 in Iowa, and the Democratic winner is likely to face Trump in the general election in November.
Vermont Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announces on Vermont Public Radio that he is running for President of the United States as a Democrat in 2020.