What it feels like in those huge crowds for Bernie Sanders - Bloomberg News

[Trajan]

1. ...

It's good to be the insurgent candidate. On Saturday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders made just one public campaign stop in New Hampshire, in the city of Keene. His campaign clocked more than 750 people in the crowd; the local Keene Sentinel saw 1,000; the candidate gave the newsy promise that he would "win New Hampshire."

Within 24 hours, boosted by supporters in Progressive Democrats of America, Sanders took 41 percent of the vote at the Wisconsin Democrats' straw poll, a feature of their state convention that had heretofore received little media coverage. That news has led the Nation's website since last night, and inspired reporters to reconstruct how it happened.

That has given the Sanders rallies something familiar to insurgent campaigns—a sense that people need to be there lest the media move on. In Keene, a random sample of voters in the audience found plenty of visitors from Vermont who just wanted to see their local hero and be part of a movement. They packed a rec center to the doors, and out, past the tables where attendees were asked to sign their names and e-mail addresses. Some grabbed Sanders 2016 merchandise, such as a bumper sticker reading "Bernie 2016: You Know You Wanna!" Even with the doors open, the heat steadily rose inside the room, with at most two or three people leaving before the end of Sanders's 53-minute speech.