Bernie Sanders Launches His Vermonster Campaign
Russell Berman 3:34 PM ET
Bernie Sanders is an unconventional candidate, and he’s launching his presidential campaign in a typically unorthodox fashion. Sanders is holding his “kickoff” event Tuesday in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont. It’ll be a rally, but it sounds more like a festival, complete with free ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s and a performance by “Mango Jam”—a Vermont-based, six-piece dance band that plays a combination of Zydeco, Cajun, and Caribbean music.
The lure of live music, Phish Food, and a beautiful setting on the banks of Lake Champlain should draw plenty of fans, but there is a larger point to this political theater. Like other underdogs before him, Sanders is trying to demonstrate he can mount a plausible campaign for the presidency without wooing the billionaires upon which most of the leading contenders will be dependent. He’s not bringing in Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield only to serve their iconic ice cream—the two have long advocated on behalf of liberal causes, including campaign-finance reform (or as they call it, “Get the Dough Out of Politics!”). Sanders needs to motivate activists and small-dollar donors, and he’s hoping this kind of alternative kickoff can set the tone.
This is really his second shot at making a first impression, since Sanders actually entered the White House race a month ago, somewhat more awkwardly and with less fanfare. The would-be political outsider held a 10-minute press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol, during which he dodged questions about Hillary Clinton and somehow neglected to utter the magic words, “I’m running for president.” Sanders has been making noise about a 2016 campaign since last year, but until recently it was hard to tell whether he’d be an all-talk tease like John Bolton and Donald Trump, a slightly-more-youthful version of the liberal rock-thrower Mike Gravel, or something more serious.
To his credit, Sanders has made the most of his turn as the only declared Clinton challenger. He’s (apparently) raised a bit of money, and he’s stayed on his preferred message of critiquing income inequality without directly attacking Hillary. He may not command the same devotion among liberals as Elizabeth Warren, but he has proved to be popular on social media and comes across, like Ron Paul before him, as an older-guy-who-gets-the-Internet. If nothing else, Sanders has emerged as the most interesting Democratic alternative to Clinton, at least as compared to Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, or Lincoln Chafee.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/bernie-sanders-launches-his-run-for-president-in-2016/394118/
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