Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumThe Atlantic: There's Something About Bernie
MOLLY BALL
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/theres-something-about-bernie/399740/?utm_source=SFTwitter
Theres no way this man could be president, right? Just look at him: rumpled and scowling, bald pate topped by an entropic nimbus of white hair. Just listen to him: ranting, in his gravelly Brooklyn accent, about socialism. Socialism!
And yet here we are: In the biggest surprise of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, this thoroughly implausible man, Bernie Sanders, is a sensation.
He is drawing enormous crowds11,000 in Phoenix, 8,000 in Dallas, 2,500 in Council Bluffs, Iowathe largest turnout of any candidate from any party in the first-to-vote primary state. He has raised $15 million in mostly small donations, to Hillary Clintons $45 millionand unlike her, he did it without holding a single fundraiser. Shocking the political establishment, it is Sandersnot Martin OMalley, the fresh-faced former two-term governor of Maryland; not Joe Biden, the sitting vice presidentto whom discontented Democratic voters looking for an alternative to Clinton have turned.
Frankly, not even Bernie Sanders thought thisBerniemaniawould happen. No, no, we didnt, he tells me, as I sit facing him in his Washington office, which is decorated with bottles of maple syrup. A plaque features Eugene Debs, five-time Socialist Party candidate for president. The notorious Sanders hair, to be honest, has been greatly exaggerated; it lies placidly, almost respectably across his ruddy scalp. And truthfully, the socialism rap has been blown out of proportion as well: Sanders accepts democratic socialist as an accurate descriptor of his philosophy, but he never sought it as an identity.
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I give him advicenot always advice that he follows, says Tad Devine, the veteran Democratic consultant, a former adviser to Al Gore and John Kerry, who is Sanderss top strategist. He is not interested in the niceties of appearance and hairdo.
peacebird
(14,195 posts)SamKnause
(13,107 posts)What a fine man !!!!
I never thought I would see an honest politician in my life time.
PatrickforO
(14,576 posts)but the message is consistent and rock solid.
Refreshing to have a candidate who is more interested in actual issues than in the niceties of appearance, isn't it?