BURLINGTON, Vt. — Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said he'll decide by March whether to launch a 2016 presidential campaign and, if so, whether he'll seek the Democratic nomination. Either way, Sanders said he wouldn't run just to nudge the debate to the left.
"I don't want to do it unless I can do it well," he said. "I don't want to do it unless we can win this thing."
Sanders, a socialist, said he grew up "solidly lower middle class" in a Jewish family in Brooklyn — his father, an immigrant from Poland, sold paint for a living — and his views about the distribution of wealth were formed early.
"A lack of money in my family was a very significant aspect of my growing up ... kids in my class would have new jackets, new coats, and I would get hand-me-downs," Sanders said.
After his graduation from the University of Chicago, Sanders came to Vermont in the 1960s as part of the counterculture, back-to-the-land movement that turned the state from solid Yankee Republican into one of the bluest in the country.
He won his first election, for Burlington mayor, by 10 votes, and since then has carried a consistent message thought eight terms in the House and now his second term in the Senate: The rich have too much, the poor and working class not enough.