WASHINGTON — Bernard Sanders has spent a lifetime calling himself a socialist and calling capitalism a danger to the working class. The market paid him anyway. That is not a smear. It is the disclosure.
He was Brooklyn-born, a mayor of Burlington, a congressman, then the longest-serving independent in the Senate. He voted no on NAFTA, PNTR with China, CAFTA, Colombia, TPP, and USMCA. He helped pull Democratic Socialists of America from a campus club into a national brand. He still talks oligarchy. He still talks Medicare for All. He still talks the millionaire and the billionaire as if they were a distant species.
Then the species looked in the mirror. After the 2016 campaign, Penguin and the rest cut checks. Our Revolution and the books that followed put more than a million dollars of royalties through the house in a few years. Senate salary is $174,000. Latest public filings still show six-figure book income. Net-worth estimates sit in the $2 million to $3 million range — not a robber baron, not a pauper. Burlington house paid off early with book money. Lake Champlain summer place bought in cash after the campaign that denounced the rich. The D.C. row house was sold in 2021. The “three houses” line is half-stale and still does the work because the summer camp is real.
Sanders’ answer is always the same: I wrote a bestseller; you can too. That is the tell. The system he calls a danger is the only reason the lecture tours. Capitalism printed the book, shipped the book, paid the royalty, and bought the shore. Socialism is the sermon. The advance is the faith.
A man may hate a casino and still cash a chip. What he may not do is pretend the chip is a moral exemption. The working class he names does not get a Penguin contract when the speech ends. He does. That is the history. The rest is branding.
— Josiah Hale, WAA1776
References
