Has Bernie Sanders learned anything over the past 50 years?

Supporters love his consistency. It's also a problem.

Bernie Sanders.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Mark Wilson/Getty Images, Miodrag Kitanovic/iStock)

Bernie Sanders always stays on message. If you've heard one of his speeches, you really have heard them all. It's one jeremiad after another about America's long descent into plutocracy. That's his big idea. The rich getting richer and more powerful at the expense of everyone else. In other words, the kind of thing one would expect from a self described "democratic socialist."

What Sanders means exactly by "socialism," however, has evolved over the decades, even if his broader theme of inequality hasn't. Back in the 1970s, Sanders favored the public ownership of utilities, banks, and major industries. But that's not what Sanders supports today. In a 2015 speech at Georgetown University, he defined his version of socialism as to akin Scandinavian-style economic security. "Remember this," he said, "I do not believe government should take over the grocery store down the street, or own the means of production." And when CNN's Chris Cuomo asked Sanders last April about his previous views, he batted away the question: "I was a mayor of a city for eight years. Did I nationalize any of the industry in the city of Burlington, Vermont? I don't think so."

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.