Via The Hill:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won’t officially join the Democratic Party even though he was appointed to a leadership position within the Senate Democratic Conference this week.
“I was elected as an Independent and I will finish this term as an Independent,” Sanders said at a breakfast Thursday morning hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Sanders has long caucused with Democrats as an independent. That has annoyed some Democrats as Sanders’s star has risen on the left. They are frustrated by his influence within a party that he refuses to embrace.
Sanders on Wednesday was named chairman of outreach, a newly created leadership post designed to leverage his reach and popularity to engage working class and young voters in the political process.
Sanders has acknowledged that he is still foggy on what the new role will entail but sketched out his early thoughts on how he might handle it.