Bernie Sanders’ campaign was indelicate from its very inception. When rumors of his candidacy began to spread in early 2015, some discussion took place over whether Sanders could even run as a Democrat. As it turned out, there was no rule that required Democratic candidates to be registered with the party. He could run as a Democrat and maintain his affiliation as an Independent at the same time. But it wasn’t the rules that made his decision a curiosity. It was his long and well-documented history of spurning and castigating the Democratic Party. He had run against Democrats in his home state of Vermont and very openly expressed his disgust with the party, going so far as to call it “ideologically bankrupt.” He often affirmed his belief that “you don’t change the system from within the Democratic Party” and, in 1990, even declared that it would be “hypocritical” for him to run as a Democrat based on the things he had said.

Hypocrisy is, for better or worse, unremarkable in politics. That can be overlooked. But this was not an isolated incident for Sanders; in fact, it was pattern of behavior stretching back decades in his political career. From his earliest years as mayor of Burlington, he has been so intensely focused on his ideology — and so utterly convinced of its manifest rightness — that he flouts all other considerations. He has no time nor care for prudence or propriety— except insofar as the consequences of such interfere with his pursuits. To him, the only thing that matters in politics is being right. And he is always right.

Sanders campaigns for congress as an independent in 1988 | Credit: AP Photo

When Sanders first arrived in Washington in January 1991, he didn’t take long to establish a reputation. That same year, Congressman Barney Frank remarked of him: “Bernie alienates his natural allies. His holier-than-thou attitude — saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness.” But to Sanders, insulting a few colleagues was just the cost of doing business. What was clear then — and would become abundantly clear during his campaign for the Democratic nomination — is that he abides by an extreme consequentialist ethic. The end — his democratic socialist utopia — is so plainly desirable that it justifies any and all means.

Running as a Democrat was the first sign of Sanders’ any-means-necessary approach in the presidential contest. No competition in the world has greater stakes than the race for president of the United States. One cannot simply wake up one morning and decide to run. It takes numerous years of preparation, laying groundwork, building infrastructure, forming alliances, and establishing a record. This is precisely why political parties exist — to maintain that groundwork so that it need not be rebuilt from scratch every election cycle. The beneficiary of that extensive work is typically someone who has spent significant time and effort investing in it. This was not the case for Bernie Sanders. He was utilizing the vast resources of party infrastructure with relatively little investment. Again, this may perhaps be considered proper— if a bit presumptuous — as the Democrats allowed him to do it. But that’s not the end of the story.

There’s an old adage that says, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” If Sanders had heard of it, perhaps he interpreted it as an invitation of reverse psychology. Like Goldwater and the other moment candidates, he considered the Establishment to be his enemy — an Establishment in which both major parties were complicit. And he made it a central theme of his campaign to an even greater degree than those who preceded him, painting himself throughout the primary as a victim and a martyr of Democratic establishment conspiracy. He believed he could have it both ways — run with the assistance of the Democratic Party while simultaneously casting it as his mortal foe. And he was right — the party couldn’t flinch, for fear of playing into his hand.

In reality, Sanders was an expert at this cynical game of political opportunism, cozying up to the Democratic Party when it benefited him and villainizing it when it boosted his anti-establishment credibility. His campaign spent the latter half of the year cultivating the persecution narrative, and his supporters lapped it up. The campaign pounced on any opportunity to portray the Democratic Party as out to get them, each time precipitating a fundraising windfall. Perhaps no moment in the primary race more succinctly illustrated this phenomenon than the voter file theft in December.

On Wednesday, December 16, one of the Democratic Party’s outside contractors experienced a momentary lapse of security in their voter file database. The database system, named VoteBuilder, is a service that the national party provides as a complimentary benefit to all Democratic candidates. It facilitates the storage and processing of crucial voter data that is used in fundraising, organizing, communication, canvassing, and get-out-the-vote efforts, encapsulating a major portion of the campaign’s strategy. The system includes a mechanism designed to prevent each candidate’s campaign from accessing the other’s data, but when that mechanism fails, all involved campaigns are expected to do the honorable thing and not exploit the vulnerability. On this day, as you might have already guessed, the Sanders campaign did not do the honorable thing. The logs from the system show that members of the Sanders campaign stole large amounts of proprietary data from the rival Clinton campaign.

The decision to steal data — based on reporting — did not come from the top, but rather from four staffers on Sanders’ data team who decided to download it on their own. Nonetheless, the evidence was absolutely clear: the Sanders campaign was guilty — they had willfully stolen data and committed a major breach of contract and ethics. Yet when news of the theft broke on Friday, they didn’t waste any time denying culpability and depicting themselves as the victim. The campaign claimed that no data “was exported in a way that could be used by anybody.” This was a demonstrable lie, based on existing evidence and later confirmed by independent audit. Also as a result of the breach, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had temporarily revoked the Sanders campaign’s access to the system in the interim as a security measure to prevent further theft. They decried the move as a sinister effort to deliberately sabotage their campaign. And then promptly raised over a million dollars from the persecution story. And then bragged about it.

An abridged email from the Sanders campaign seeking to raise funds off their own misconduct

Just when this episode seemingly couldn’t get any more nauseating, the Sanders campaign decided to sue the DNC for the temporary suspension of access. The analogy practically writes itself: a thief breaks into a house, gets caught red-handed, and then sues the homeowner for throwing him out — a ruse of stupefying hubris. The campaign withdrew the lawsuit months later after it had served its political purpose, while reiterating their refusal to accept responsibility for the theft.

Throughout this time and as 2015 came to close, Sanders’ base of supporters only grew larger and more fervent. Instead of pausing to consider whether the campaign was behaving unethically, they dove hand-in-hand further down the rabbit hole.