In the 2016 presidential campaign, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders sought the Democratic Party's nomination in a field of six major candidates and was the runner up with 46% of the pledged delegates behind former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton, who won the contest with 54%. Sanders, the junior United States senator and former Representative from Vermont, began with an informal announcement on April 30, 2015, and a formal announcement that he planned to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States on May 26, 2015, in Burlington, Vermont. Sanders had been considered a potential candidate for president since at least September 2014. Though he had previously run as an independent, he routinely caucused with the Democratic Party, as many of his views align with Democrats. Running as a Democrat made it easier to participate in debates and get his name on state ballots.
Sanders's chief competitor for the nomination was Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, First Lady, and Senator from New York. Sanders drew large crowds to his speaking events, and his populist and progressive politics won him particular support among Americans under 40. He performed strongly with white voters, but consistently trailed Clinton by 30 or more percentage points among black voters; polls showed a close race among Hispanic voters.
Sanders focused on income and wealth inequality, which he argued is eroding the American middle class, and on campaign finance reform. Unlike most other major presidential candidates, Sanders eschewed an unlimited super PAC, instead choosing to receive most of his funding from direct individual campaign donations. In September 2015, The New York Times reported that the campaign had received one million individual donations, becoming the first in 2015 to reach that threshold. Sanders raised $20,000,000 in the month of January 2016, $5,000,000 more than Clinton during the same time period, with an average donation of $27. Sanders frequently mentioned this $27 figure on the campaign trail as proof of his grassroots support.
Following the final primary election (the District of Columbia's, on June 14), Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Sanders did then endorse Clinton, and said he would work with her to defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump. On June 16, Sanders gave a live online speech to his supporters, saying, "The political revolution continues". On July 12, Sanders officially endorsed Clinton at a unity rally with her in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
On July 22, 2016, various emails stolen by one or more hackers operating under the pseudonym "Guccifer 2.0" from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the governing body of the Democratic Party, were leaked and published, revealing bias against the Sanders campaign on the part of the committee and its chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Schultz subsequently resigned as DNC chair and was replaced by Donna Brazile, who was also implicated in the leaks and apologized to Sanders and his supporters. In the Democratic National Convention roll-call vote on July 26, 2016, Sanders received 1,865 votes (39% of the vote), which consisted of 1,848 pledged delegates won in primary and caucus contests (46% of the total) and 17 superdelegates (4%). After the roll call, Sanders put forward a motion to formally nominate Clinton, which passed by voice vote. Although Sanders lost, he and the political movement his campaign created succeeded in moving the Democratic Party platform as a whole to the left, including support for a $15 minimum wage, marijuana legalization, the abolition of capital punishment, and criminal justice reform.
Background
Sanders's previous political successes were in Vermont. He has been politically active nearly his entire adult life. While in college, Sanders protested against police brutality, led a weeks-long sit-in against housing segregation, and worked as an organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality. In 1963, he travelled to Washington D.C. to attend the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As mayor of Burlington, Sanders played a prominent role in building support in Vermont for Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988.
In a November 2013 interview, Sanders laid out several reasons for mounting his own presidential run, including global warming (current climate change), economic inequality, frustration with the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and the importance of maintaining public programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
In a March 6, 2014, interview with The Nation, Sanders stated that he was "prepared to run for President of the United States" in 2016, but did not officially announce a campaign. When pressed on the issue, Sanders said he was discussing the possibility with people around the country, but felt that it was premature to make an announcement. After the 2014 congressional elections, Sanders continued to discuss running for president.Hafner, Josh (February 21, 2015) "Sanders rails on billionaire donors, mulls '16 campaign", The Des Moines Register. Retrieved March 11, 2015
On April 28, 2015, Vermont Public Radio reported that Sanders would announce his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on April 30. In an interview with USA Today on April 29, Sanders stated that he was "running in this election to win," and launched a campaign website, effectively beginning his run. Sanders said he was motivated to enter the race by what he termed "obscene levels" of income disparity, and the campaign finance system.
On May 26, 2015, Sanders officially announced his candidacy at Burlington's Waterfront Park.
Democratic Party presidential debates
The 2016 Democratic Party presidential debates occurred among candidates in the campaign for the party's nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 presidential election. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced in May 2015 that there would be six debates. In February 2016, Clinton's and Sanders's campaigns agreed in principle to holding four more, for a total of ten. Critics alleged that the small number of debates and the schedule, with four of the ten on Saturday or Sunday nights, were part of the DNC's deliberate attempt to protect the front-runner, Hillary Clinton. Clinton dropped out of the tenth debate, scheduled to take place just prior to the California elections, citing a need to devote her time making direct contact with voters in California. A spokesperson from Fox News, the television network that was to air the debate, said, "Naturally, Fox News is disappointed that Secretary Clinton has declined our debate invitation, especially given that the race is still contested and she had previously agreed to a final debate before the California primary." Sanders responded, "I am disappointed but not surprised by Secretary Clinton's unwillingness to debate before the largest and most important primary in the presidential nominating process."
Campaign
In a preview of his campaign, Sanders told the Associated Press on April 29, 2015, that he would release "very specific proposals" to increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations, offer free higher education at public universities, and pass a single‑payer Medicare-for-All healthcare system. He also noted his support for substantial regulation of Wall Street and his opposition to the NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements and to the Keystone XL pipeline.
He made the cornerstone of his campaign the reversal of what he calls the "obscene levels" of income and wealth inequality that have eroded the middle class over the last 40 years.
On November 1, 2015, Sanders released his first campaign ad.
Sanders said his campaign would focus on what he considered "real family values". "The right has claimed the mantle of 'family values' for far too long. When my Republican colleagues use the term they're usually talking about things like opposition to contraception, denying a woman's right to choose, opposition to gay rights, and support for abstinence-only education," Sanders said. His "real family values" included paid sick time, paid vacations, and access to paid family leave. On abortion rights, he remarked that " are saying to every woman in America, that she cannot control her own bod. I disagree. Let's say it loud and clear: Women control their bodies—not the government".
Sanders stated that he would run a positive campaign with "serious debates on serious issues" and that he had "never run a negative political ad in life".
Sanders said that if he were elected president, his cabinet "would not be dominated by representatives of Wall Street". He cited Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert Reich as potential cabinet members.
In December 2015, the Democratic National Committee suspended the Sanders campaign's access to its voter data after a staffer viewed data from Hillary Clinton's campaign during a firewall failure. The staffer denied accessing the data but the DNC confirmed it and Sanders apologized. The Sanders campaign criticized the DNC's reaction as excessive and threatened possible legal action unless the Committee restored its access. The campaign claimed it had warned the DNC about glitches in the voter file program months before. On December 18, 2015, the campaign filed a lawsuit, stating the committee had unfairly suspended its access. The DNC and the Sanders campaign struck a deal the same day that restored the campaign's access to voter data.
Addressing the platform of the front-running Republican candidate Donald Trump in an appearance on Face the Nation on December 27, Sanders said that "any of Trump's supporters are working-class people and they're angry, and they're angry because they're working longer hours for lower wages, they're angry because their jobs have left this country and gone to China or other low-wage countries, they're angry because they can't afford to send their kids to college so they can't retire with dignity". Sanders said that while he believed these are legitimate fears, Trump had "converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims" rather than facing the real issue the American people need to confront, "the greed of corporate America".
Sanders was frequently questioned on the controversy over Hillary Clinton's use of an unauthorized and unsecured private e-mail server for her correspondence as Secretary of State, and he consistently refused to use the allegations of wrongdoing in his campaign message. In late May, when it was reported that a State Department inspector general contradicted Clinton's claims of no wrongdoing, Sanders was asked about it by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. He replied, "Well, again, you know, these are areas that I have stayed away from. There is a process, people will draw their conclusions from the inspector general report." Sanders went on to say, "I want to break up the Wall Street banks. She doesn't. I want to raise the minimum wage to fifteen bucks an hour. She wants $12 an hour. I voted against the War in Iraq. She voted for the War in Iraq. I believe we should ban fracking. She does not. I believe we should have a tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position. Those are some of the issues that I am campaigning on."
Fundraising
Unlike the majority of other presidential candidates, Sanders did not pursue funding through a Super PAC, instead focusing on small, individual donations.