Bernie's a millionaire now. It doesn't matter.

Being rich is not the same as being bought

Bernie Sanders.
(Image credit: Illustrated | bowie15/iStock, Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

After some delays, Bernie Sanders has released 10 years of tax returns. It turns out he is pretty rich. He took in $561,293 in adjusted gross income in 2018 — but over a million dollars in both 2017 and 2016, when he had a ton of book revenue coming in. That makes him the third-highest earning Democratic candidate this year, behind Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren.

Indeed, Sanders is officially in the top 1 percent of income, and this has some wondering if it somehow jams up his political narrative. His "higher income in recent years has created some political awkwardness for the senator, who in his 2016 presidential campaign frequently railed against 'millionaires and billionaires' and their influence over the political process," writes Thomas Kaplan in The New York Times.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.