Article: On "the Preponderance of the Evidence," Bernie Sanders Is a Democrat

Reprinted from The Nation

With a boost from Democratic Party officials, the senator is formally approved for the first primary ballot.

Bernie Sanders
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It's official, Bernie Sanders is sufficiently Democratic to run as a Democrat.

For the purposes of the New Hampshire presidential primary, and presumably for the 2016 primaries and caucuses to follow, the veteran independent from Vermont has been approved to appear on the party ballot.

Sanders has, of course, been campaigning as a Democrat since April. But the validation of his Democratic status by New Hampshire election officials -- though hardly a surprise -- is significant in a country where the arcane rules of different states can sometimes serve as barriers to contenders who seek to enter Democratic or Republican primaries.

N.H. Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley argued for accepting longtime independent Bernie Sanders as a Democrat.

While many of America's most prominent political figures have crossed partisan boundaries -- 2016 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton recalls that she backed Barry Goldwater as a young Republican, and leading 2016 Republican contender Ben Carson was registered as an independent until last year; former Democratic presidential contender Lincoln Chafee served as a Republican US senator and as the independent governor of Rhode Island, while former Republican presidential contender Rick Perry was once a Democratic state legislator -- Sanders entered the 2016 race as "the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history."

Sanders ran and won his races for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for the US House and for the US Senate as an independent. And though he has caucused with Democrats in the House and Senate since arriving in Washington in 1991, he has always identified as an "I" rather than a "D." Even as he began to ponder a president run, the senator weighed whether to campaign as an independent or a Democrat.

Sanders finally decided to enter the competition as a Democrat, after explaining that he would not risk "spoiling" a November race and handing the presidency to a conservative Republican. The decision by the democratic socialist senator from Vermont to enter the 2016 Democratic primaries and caucuses was quickly accepted by the Democratic National Committee, which has featured the senator from Vermont on its website and included him in debates with Clinton and former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley.

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