Berniemania! Why Is Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders So Popular?

[Playinghardball]

Brooklyn-born, Vermont-fueled, Bernie Sanders promises a revolution if he's somehow elected president next year. Does Hillary have to watch her back?

Brattleboro, VT.—Of all the people buzzing at the start of the Strolling of the Heifers parade on a recent Saturday morning—the clowns, the teen stilt-walker, the theater kids in witch’s garb—the 73-year-old grandpa in khakis and Adidas sneakers did not seem like the most probable candidate for a selfie.

But even tweens more used to fawning over Ariana Grande can barrel toward Sen. Bernie Sanders to beg for a picture.

“Can we get a selfie?” members of a marching band, holding trumpets and saxophones, squealed.

“I think we can!” the Vermont senator replied.

“Oh my God. You guys. Mr. Sanders, Mr. Sanders…”

A dozen marchers clenched their smartphones. Mr. Sanders grinned. He was running for president and having a pretty good time with it.

Yet Mr. Sanders, with his slight stoop and cloud of white hair flaring off his ruddy scalp, sometimes suffers on the stump. Later that day in a rec hall across the border in Keene, N.H., packed with about 700 people, some wearing homemade T-shirts Magic Markered with “Bernie 2016,” he lamented the plight of a young teacher he had just met. “Obviously in our society we desperately need teachers,” Mr. Sanders said to his audience. “And her crime for wanting to get a master’s degree was that she is now $200,000 in debt and paying interest rates between 6 and 9 percent. … All of this stuff is crazy stuff.” If the country does not reform its environmental policies, he said a grim fate awaits: “more drought, more famine, more rising sea levels, more floods, more ocean acidification, more extreme weather disturbances, more disease and more human suffering.”

This is not morning in America but mourning in America—and the crowd loved it.

Toward the end of the rally, the Brooklyn-born liberal icon leaned into the microphone and quieted his distinctive voice, which sounds like Larry David playing George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld. “Let me tell you a secret,” said Mr. Sanders, who hopes his audience helps him pull off what would be the biggest upset in modern political history.

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Bernie Sanders with human and bovine constituents at the Strolling of the Heifers parade. (Photo courtesy of BenrieSanders.com)

Even Mr. Sanders’ supporters concede that his odds of toppling front-runner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, let alone winning in November 2016, are long. But with a progressive favorite, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, declining to run, a void on the left opened and Mr. Sanders filled it. Taken piece-by-piece, his campaign platform—a higher minimum wage, more vacation days, mandated sick pay, free public colleges—polls well enough to sand some of the radical edge off him, or at least pack more town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire. The magic behind the early Sanders surge is not so mysterious: what he says, invariably, is popular with the Democratic base at a time when many feel fatigued by promises of hope and change.

SEE ALSO: Bernie Sanders Can Win the Iowa Caucus

Mr. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, violates most laws of American politics. He proudly calls himself a socialist, a label vilified by Republicans and avoided by most Democrats. He is not outwardly charming; he rarely glad-hands and his speeches are often mirthless. Like a modern day Jonathan Edwards, who found Eugene V. Debs rather than Jesus Christ, he thunders about the dying middle class and oligarchies eroding democracy. Cross him, like one camera-holding man who yapped at him in Keene to take a position on the Edward Snowden affair, and earn a stern rebuke. Why wouldn’t he answer the man’s question? “Because you’re rude, and you’re shouting out things and I don’t really like that,” Mr. Sanders groused.

Despite a thorny approach to retail campaigning, Mr. Sanders’ quest for the White House is on an upswing. Last week, a Wisconsin Democratic Party straw poll showed Mr. Sanders trailing Ms. Clinton only 49 to 41 percent among delegates. On Observer.com, Brent Budowsky wrote, “There is a very real prospect that Mr. Bernie Sanders wins an outright victory in the Iowa caucus.” Donations are flooding in; he raised $1.5 million in the 24-hour period after he announced his candidacy in early May. He has since raised cash from more than 100,000 individual donors.

"When I was a kid growing up, I think my instincts always were for the underdog.” – Bernie Sanders

Berniemania already seems to be nudging Ms. Clinton to the left: she has toughened her tone toward Wall Street, called for criminal justice reform and avoided taking a stance on a controversial free-trade agreement many liberals abhor.

A strong second-place finish by Mr. Sanders in either early primary state will mean momentum, which will mean money. “His kind of candidacy can live off the land for quite a while,” said Joe Trippi, who ran Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004. “With Bernie, there’s always a core liberal wing, there’s grassroots activists to give him enough money for the next plane ticket.” It’s also not clear how much grassroots love there is for the former first lady, either—a recent CNN poll showed half of voters view her unfavorably, while 46 percent have a favorable view.



Read more at http://observer.com/2015/06/berniemania-why-socialist-bernie-sanders-is-the-sensation-of-the-presidential-race/#ixzz3dRPZ29x2

[SoapBox]

1. So can we expect to see "other" candidates

posing with a cow and having their Helmet-Head-Hair messed up? And laughing too?

I don't think so (unless Trump pays the cow $50).

Feeeeeel the Bern!

[Ed Suspicious]

2. They think the general will be tougher than the primary? I don't. I think if we can get past

Clinton we can get past the entire clown car.

[Nay]

3. That's my thought as well. If he can win the primary, the rest seems like a

piece of cake. In debates he would wipe the floor with anyone in the clown car. I also think Bernie has the edge in getting young people and disaffected people out to vote.