Bernie Sanders no flip-flopper; his message has remained the same for decades

[n2doc]

Once a democratic socialist, always a democratic socialist. Once a scold of big money in politics, still a scold.

No one can accuse Bernie Sanders of flip-flopping over his four decades in public life. Rock steady, he's inhabited the same ideological corner from which he now takes on Hillary Rodham Clinton in an improbable quest for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

Here he is in 1974, as the 32-year-old candidate for U.S. Senate of a fledgling leftist party in Vermont called Liberty Union: "A handful of banks and billionaires control the economic and political life of America. ... America is becoming less and less of a democracy and more and more of an oligarchy."

And now, in an Associated Press interview: "This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not working for ordinary Americans. ... You know this country just does not belong to a handful of billionaires."

Some see him as a broken record, others as a person who has been telling the truth all along and just waiting for enough people to listen.

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http://www.startribune.com/bernie-sanders-has-had-consistent-message-for-4-decades/303250731/?recirculation=section&section=nation