Bernie Sanders may not be on his way to being the Democratic nominee (say nothing of being President) but he’s certainly keeping the Democrats busy. Bernie has been “sticking it” to the Democratic Party, as Politico put it this week, riling up his supporters, describing how the primary process is rigged against him and just generally failing to fall in line behind Hillary Clinton as the nominee.

That pattern continued during his primary victory speech in California last night. (The victory was in Oregon, not Kentucky.) Sanders was playing the role of the little guy beset by the power brokers of the Illuminati, arguably his best moments on the trail when he wants to fire up his largely young and loud supporters. But during the proceedings, he blamed the failures of the Democratic power structure for allowing evil Republicans to win over the support of working class Americans who – one assumes in his opinion – would otherwise be Sanders voters. (You can watch the video here. It comes in at about an hour in length.) As part of his remarks, he claimed to be one of those hard working folks himself.

We’re allowing a radical right-wing Republican Party to capture the majority of the votes of the working class in this country. I come from the working class of this country.

Really, Bernie? You come from the working class of this country? Remind us again exactly when that was.

There have been plenty of rumors flying around the internet regarding Bernie’s early years in the civilian sector, not all of them true. There was a regularly occurring meme for a while which claimed that Sanders had never held a regular job until he was forty years old and lived off welfare, but that’s not exactly accurate. When he finally finished attending various colleges as a young man, he returned to Brooklyn for a while and admits that he worked at “a variety of jobs, including Head Start teacher, psychiatric aide, and carpenter.” (Though some who knew him at the time claim he admits that he was “a sh***y carpenter.”)

He then moved to Vermont where he claims to have worked as a “filmmaker, and writer who created and sold ‘radical film strips’ and other educational materials to schools.” Clearly he must have been on somebody’s payroll at one point or another because, as the Huffington Post previously reported, he was collecting unemployment benefits during one of his multiple, unsuccessful runs for public office.

Bernie Sanders has already raised millions of dollars for his 2016 presidential campaign. In 1974, he ran for office on unemployment benefits.

A profile of Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) by Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy this week looked at Sanders’ humble beginnings in politics. In 1974, Sanders ran for the U.S. Senate on an antiwar Liberty Union Party ticket — one of his four failed attempts to win elected office before he became the mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

A story in the Bennington Banner that September described Sanders’ “hopeless” campaign:

Captured between those two bits of biographical background material is what seems to be the real story of young Bernie Sanders. He spent a lot of time traveling around to protest the government in various places, worked some odd jobs here and there, but mostly he was running for public office. More than anything else, the man was a professional campaigner up until the point where he finally landed a gig as the Mayor of Burlington at the age of 39 and he’s been receiving a paycheck off the public largess ever since.

So when exactly was Bernie Sanders “from the working class of America” again? Unless he means he took a class about “working” at the University of Chicago this claim seems a bit thin at best. Bernie is good at getting by, obviously, but mostly in government jobs that didn’t exactly involve digging ditches or standing on a manufacturing line. You’d think a socialist would have spent a bit more time out there tilling the fields for the public weal, wouldn’t you?