Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator from the northeastern state of Vermont, said Monday that he will run for a fourth term.
Sanders said in a video announcement that the upcoming 2024 election may well be the most important election of our lifetime.
“Will the United States continue to even function as a democracy or will we move to an authoritarian form of government?” Sanders asked Monday. He questioned whether the U.S. government will be a system that works for all and not just for wealthy people who contribute to campaigns.
Sanders, who sought the presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, is supporting Joe Biden in his 2024 reelection bid.
The upcoming elections have left some voters with misgivings about the advanced age of key political figures and questions about whether it is time for the emergence of new leaders.
Sanders is 82. Biden, who at 81 is the oldest American president, will likely face off in the presidential election against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Trump is 77.
Sanders, who is an independent, generally supports Democrat Biden’s domestic agenda. However, the senator has at times been very critical about Biden’s response to the growing death toll of Palestinians in Israel’s military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“Israel had the absolute right to defend itself against this terrorist attack, but it did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which is exactly what it is doing,” Sanders, the son of Jewish immigrants, said Monday.
Israel has killed almost 35,000 people in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry reported Monday, the majority of them women and children.
Sanders will almost certainly be returned to the Senate in November by voters in Vermont, where he remains popular. He has served 40 years in the U.S. Congress. He served Vermont as a Democrat in the U.S. House for 16 years, before being elected to the Senate in 2006. He has now labeled himself a democratic socialist, but he continues to caucus with the Democrats.
He is the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “I have been, and will be if reelected, in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times,” Sanders said.
