Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont whose 2016 presidential campaign helped energize the progressive movement and reshaped the Democratic party, has entered the 2020 race for the White House.
Sanders caught the establishment Democratic Party off guard three years ago; few anticipated the strength of his candidacy and message.
Sanders, 77, announced his candidacy in a lengthy early morning email to supporters, pledging to build a vast grassroots movement to confront the special interests that he said dominate government and politics.
“Our campaign is about creating a government and economy that works for the many, not just the few,” Sanders said in the email, asking for 1 million people to sign up to start the effort.
The senator from Vermont launched his insurgent 2016 candidacy against Clinton as a long shot, but ended up capturing 23 state nominating contests and pushing the party to the left, generating tension between its establishment and liberal wings that has not entirely abated.
This time around, Sanders has been among the leaders in opinion polls of prospective 2020 candidates, but he faces a field more heavily populated with other liberal progressives touting many of the same ideas he brought into the party mainstream. That could make it harder to generate the same level of fervent support as four years ago.
Sanders, a self-styled Democratic socialist who spent much of his nearly 30-year congressional career as an outsider on the political fringe, cast his candidacy as way to accomplish the mission he started three years ago when he ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.