Bernie Turns His Back on Tulsi
The one-time firebrand has become just another time-serving partisan.
Bernie Sanders shuffled across the Senate floor, rubbed his nose, and turned his thumb downward. The 83-year-old firebrand was a “no” vote on confirming Tulsi Gabbard as the next U.S. Director of National Intelligence.
Just a few years ago, Sanders had hailed Gabbard, then a Democratic congresswoman, as “one of the important voices of a new generation of leaders.” But when the moment came for Sanders to stand by his principles, the Vermont senator—who has long cultivated an image as a fierce independent within the political establishment—retreated to the safety of partisan conformity.
Sanders’s vote against Gabbard’s confirmation revealed the aging progressive as the very type of meek party man he has spent decades railing against. Once celebrated as a devout man of the people, Sanders now finds himself squarely a business-like attachment to the very political machine that sank his aspirations to forcefully change a corrupted and out-of-touch bureaucracy.
When leaders within the Democrat Party actively worked to submarine the Sanders campaign in 2016, it was Gabbard who rose to the moment. The former lieutenant colonel resigned her post as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee so she could throw her full support behind Sanders and in doing so greatly relinquished her own rising political trajectory among the Democrats.
“As the vice chair of the DNC, I’m required to stay neutral in Democratic primaries,” Gabbard explained in a video announcing her resignation. The Hawaiian-born stateswoman praised Sanders’ antiwar stance as a defining feature of his candidacy. “He will not waste precious lives and money on interventionist wars or regime change,” she said. “Such counterproductive wars undermine our national security and economic prosperity.”
Gabbard, who could’ve easily maintained her well-heeled position among the Democrat elite by simply joining forces with the Clinton campaign, stood by her beliefs and became the highest-ranking Democrat in the country to endorse Sanders at a time when the Democratic establishment was seeking any way to scuttle the Sanders campaign.
In Sanders, Gabbard saw a rare politician—one who stood apart from the bipartisan warmongers who had dominated American politics for decades. “As a veteran and as a soldier, I’ve seen firsthand the true cost of war,” Gabbard said in her endorsement of the septuagenarian. She believed Sanders would address the failures of the intelligence community, which she viewed as responsible for needless global bloodshed.
Nearly a decade later, Gabbard’s reward for risking her career to support Sanders was a swift “no” from the man who once praised her. What has changed? Not Gabbard. She remains the same antiwar, pro-transparency politician she was in 2016—a stance that earned her the trust of President Trump, who nominated her for a role historically dominated by hawks and intelligence insiders.
If anyone has changed, it’s Sanders. In recent years, the senator has repeatedly endorsed arms shipments and funding packages to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. His lone veto of aid to Ukraine was not motivated by opposition to the conflict but by the aid’s connection to funding for the Netanyahu government. During a time when many of his constituents are struggling to make ends meet as rent prices skyrocket amid hyperinflation, Sanders chose to prop up the Zelensky pipe dream and attack Gabbard for her realistic instincts in the region.
So much of the rift between Sanders and Gabbard involves the Russia-Ukraine conflict and what Sanders views as Gabbard’s soft line on the Russians. Sanders and other Democrats have accused Gabbard of being Vladimir Putin’s puppet and for playing ball with then-Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2017. As Gabbard attempted to find harmony within the growing disharmony of Russia and the Middle East, the Democrats doubled down on a cold-shoulder foreign policy strategy that undoubtedly helped spark the escalating conflict in Ukraine. The more Gabbard and anti-war Republicans attempted to find common ground, the more the Democrats amped up a war-like rhetoric that left no room for debate.
“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if the Biden Administration and NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” Gabbard wrote on 𝕏 in 2022—a sentiment echoed by Trump. For Sanders and the Democrats, such a view challenges their belief in America’s role as the global police force. The presence of bio-labs, the G8 debacle, and NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe have all contributed to the current crisis. Yet, for stating these uncomfortable truths, Gabbard has been ostracized by Sanders and his allies, who made their distrust clear through their unanimous “no” votes on her confirmation.
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The role of Director of National Intelligence, carved out of the post-9/11 chaos, has for its entire history been a safe outpost for neoconservatives and globalists. Gabbard’s ascendency points to a turning of the page, summarized clearly by the only “no” vote she received from the Republican caucus — that of Sen. Mitch McConnell. Despite their differences on Russia, there was still room for Sanders to find his own voice and pull the hammer for Gabbard. After all, the pair remain vocal proponents of pardoning former NSA intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden who remains a fugitive for the crime of exposing the sordid doings of the American intelligence community. If for no other reason than that, Sanders could’ve found it within him to speak up for Gabbard in her time. But the courage Gabbard found in spades during Sanders’ campaign for president in 2016 was sorely lacking from Sanders when push came to shove in Senate chambers on Wednesday.
In a twist of irony, shortly after Gabbard’s confirmation, Sanders announced a barnstorming tour of Iowa and Nebraska to combat what he calls “the oligarchy.” His new enemy, it seems, is the enemy within: figures such as Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have broken ranks with the left to forge alliances with the right on antiwar and pro-health policies.
Sanders’s transformation from anti-establishment rebel to partisan loyalist underscores the complexities of political evolution. But for Gabbard, his betrayal serves as a stark reminder of the cost of principles in a system that often rewards conformity.
