No one is dismissing Bernie Sanders now.
MARK KAUZLARICH/REUTERS
The more Sanders railed on the campaign trail against Wall Street and our “billionaire class” and our nation’s obscene wealth inequality, the bigger his rallies grew.
Even Hillary Clinton suddenly wants more debates with the rumpled firebrand senator from Vermont, this 74-year-old underdog who fought her to a virtual tie Monday in Iowa and who is ahead in the polls for New Hampshire’s vote next week.
So much of the media coverage for months was about Donald Trump and the dogfight among all the Republican candidates seeking to grab the spotlight away from Donald and his hateful barbs.
Scant attention went to Bernie, the Senate’s only socialist, who everyone said didn’t have a chance against Hillary and her well-oiled machine.
But something strange happened on the way to the coronation.
The more Sanders railed on the campaign trail against Wall Street and our “billionaire class” and our nation’s obscene wealth inequality, the bigger his rallies grew. Legions of young people flocked to volunteer for him and small donations from ordinary Americans poured in like a river run wild.
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Then this week, the Democratic Party establishment agreed to add four more televised debates between Clinton and Sanders, beginning with the one in New Hampshire on Thursday night.
They did so even though the party’s veteran leaders keep saying that Sanders can’t possibly keep his momentum in the primaries to come.
Iowa and New Hampshire, they remind us, are rural states with largely white and highly educated populations. In big cities in Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York and California, and in the South and Southwest, Democrats are largely black or Hispanic and Clinton has always been popular among those minority groups.
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This won’t be a repeat of 2008, the experts say, when another underdog, Barack Obama, wrested many of those minority voters away from Clinton.