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Sen. Bernie Sanders’ opponents are taking aim at his role in the Democratic Party, but for two very different reasons.

Reid Kane, a socialist, said Sanders is an independent in name only. Kane believes Sanders’ socialist views were not radical enough and that his political positions amounted to “a plan to preserve the power of the Democratic Party.”

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Kane’s rebuke carried some irony. He is running under the banner of Sanders’ original political party, the Liberty Union Party of Vermont.

Kane, 32, who lives in White River Junction, is a member of the Socialist Party USA and the Liberty Union Party of Vermont. He announced his candidacy Wednesday.

“I am running for Senate to offer an alternative. True independence of the ruling parties requires building a new party to oppose them. For Sanders, socialism means begging the Democrats to do more. I am a socialist because I want to replace the rule of professional politicians with the rule of the people,” Kane said in a statement.

In an interview with VTDigger, Kane said since Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, the senator’s political goal has been to reform the Democratic Party instead of using the excitement he generated to create a new and distinct party that breaks from the two-party system.

“His presidential campaign created a lot of enthusiasm, but he has been very explicit what his goal has been — mainly his goal is to rejuvenate the Democratic Party and lead young people into the Democratic Party,” Kane said. “That’s a wasted opportunity that could create a new political project that breaks from the Democratic Party.”

Jon Svitavsky, a 60-year-old who lives in Bridport and has been a social worker for 40 years, said the reason he’s running for Senate is because Sanders denigrates the Democratic Party and has failed to be a good senator for Vermonters.

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“He’s not a liberal Democrat, He’s never been a liberal Democrat and he’s not what he represents himself to be. He is willing to speak truth to power, but the fact is he’s almost accomplished nothing in 20 years as a career politician,” Svitavksy said. “And he continues to be out there bashing Democrats and in essence being helpful to Republicans.”

Svitavsky said he also blames Sanders for the 2016 presidential outcome and that it was Sanders’ “ego” that allowed President Donald Trump to win.

“One key thing with Sanders is he’s hostile to Democrats, he’s hostile to progressives.

He did everything he could to really attack Clinton, and he split the vote, and I feel like his ego was very central to electing Trump as president,” Svitavsky said.

While Svitavsky is running on a platform on “everything from economic opportunity to the environment,” Kane is running on a pro-workers’ rights platform, which includes policy initiatives that resemble ones also supported by Sanders. For instance Kane on his campaign website proposes a $25 per hour minimum wage. Sanders has introduced legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.

Sanders left the Liberty Union Party in 1977 after six years in which he helped to shape its platform and ran for public office unsuccessfully four times.

Kane said he understands why Sanders moved away from the Liberty Union Party.

“Bernie got his career started in this party, but you need other people involved and in politics there isn’t really a way to stand alone and I think he got frustrated with the Liberty Union Party,” Kane said.

Peter Diamondstone, the co-founder of the Liberty Union Party who died last year, said about Sanders in a 2015 interview with Seven Days that “there’s no ‘friends’ there for me. There’s nothing, from my point of view. He went in a certain direction, and that was the opposite of mine. Sanders and I suffered a hostile divorce. He was moving to the right, and I was moving to the left.”

In the same interview Diamondstone said that Sanders had changed politically a great deal over the years.

“He’s a different political person than he was in the good old days,” Diamondstone said. “It’s changed, big time. It’s two different people,” he said.

Sanders’ spokespersons declined to comment.

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