BERNIE SANDERS PRAISED GEORGE WALLACE AS ‘SENSITIVE’ IN 1972:
Seven years after Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to George Wallace as “perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today,” a young Bernie Sanders praised the segregationist Alabama governor.
In an interview with the Brattleboro Reformer in 1972, Sanders, then 31, said Wallace “advocates some outrageous approaches to our problems, but at least he is sensitive to what people feel they need.”
Sanders, now a Vermont senator and 2020 Democrat, said, “What we need are more active politicians working for the people.”
The 1972 remarks surprised the interviewer at the time, who wrote that “even though [Sanders] has been labeled a ‘leftist radical’ by some persons, Sanders had some praise for [Wallace].”
To be fair, describing Wallace as “sensitive to what people feel they need” wasn’t the craziest thing that Sanders believed in 1972. And yet, as this Boston Globe headline from late last year notes, “Bernie Sanders hasn’t changed — and his supporters love that.”