Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders has spent decades attacking inequality . 
If you attended a Bernie Sanders rally this summer , when his seemingly quixotic Presidential campaign began gathering force , you might have noticed a few surprising things about the crowd . 
Young people who like Bernie Sanders like him because he sounds like an old record . 
In Portland , Maine , on an evening in July , the line to see Sanders looped around the Cross Insurance Arena . 
Sanders 's popularity had clearly been exceeding his own expectations . 
At the Portland rally , I met a group of five friends who were drawn to Sanders because of his commitment to banish money from politics : he has sharply criticized the Supreme Court 's 2010 decision , in Citizens United , to permit unlimited campaign spending by corporations , and has lamented the outsize influence exerted by billionaires . 
Several of the friends praised Sanders 's pledge to raise the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour . 
One member of the group , Erin Kiley , a millennial who owns Portland Flea-for-All , a marketplace of vintage and artisanal goods , said that she developed "a huge political crush on Bernie" in 2010 , after Sanders delivered an eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the Senate floor to protest the extension of tax cuts instituted during the Presidency of George W. Bush . 
Sanders 's gruffness , didacticism , and indifference to appearances -- both he and his wife , Jane , told me how much he loathes shopping -- are central to his appeal . 
All the friends described Sanders as "authentic ," a word that many people would be hesitant to apply to Hillary Clinton . 
Kiley acknowledged that Sanders 's unvarnished qualities might turn off some voters , but noted that in the current election cycle "the whole spectrum of candidates is less schmoozy , polished , and warm ." 
Sanders has been known as a democratic socialist for decades . 
This did n't matter much to Kiley or York , or to most other Sanders supporters I met during the next few weeks ; mainly , they were impressed that he had n't shed the term . 
York thought that , because of Sanders and his "social-media-driven fans ," socialism was "getting a bit of a P.R. makeover ." 
Peter Dreier , a professor of politics at Occidental College , who has written about Sanders , says that younger voters "may not be willing to entertain a whole new system , but they are open to a pretty profound critique of the current one . 
At a recent San Francisco gathering for Sanders , I met Derek Zender , a twenty-three-year-old marketing student . 
He told me that his parents , who live in Orange County , dismissed Sanders as "a decrepit old socialist who means well but does n't understand how the world works ." 
In Portland , Sanders took the stage , a little hunched in a gray suit jacket . 
Sanders signals his moral ferocity by choosing words like "horrific" and "abysmal" and sonically italicizing them , as in "This grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is immoral ." 
In the speeches I heard , Sanders rarely discussed foreign policy , though he spoke with conviction about climate change and the need for the U.S. to set an example for Russia , India , and China by using fewer fossil fuels . 
Huck Gutman , one of Sanders 's close friends , is an English professor at the University of Vermont ; from 2008 to 2012 , he served as Sanders 's chief of staff in the Senate . 
Despite this abiding interest , Sanders does not seem to have immersed himself that deeply in the extensive literature on inequality . 
Sanders was interested less in academic arguments , Gutman said , than in hard numbers that "exemplify the disparities he sees and feels and hears about from people ." -RRB- 
Sanders dutifully mentioned that the economist Stephanie Kelton is an adviser to the Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee , of which he is the ranking member , but he was ardent in his admiration for Pope Francis , who has condemned the "economy of exclusion ." 
Sanders called the Pope "an extraordinary figure ," adding , "My God , he came along right at the time we need him !" 
After speeches , Sanders spars about issues with voters or reporters . 
Garrison Nelson , a political scientist at the University of Vermont , who has known him for decades , says that if Sanders is walking down the street in Burlington "and somebody yells at him Bernie will talk to him -- ` What 's the matter ? 
Sanders does not excel , however , at the middle ground of casual , friendly conversation . 
When talking to voters , Hillary Clinton has perfected the head-cocked semblance of keen interest ; it 's clear when Sanders becomes bored . 
Paula Routly , who is the publisher of Seven Days , a popular weekly in Burlington , told me a story that captured the counterintuitive Sanders charm . 
One evening , Jerry , of Ben & Jerry 's , scooped ice cream ; on another , Senator Sanders stopped by a group dinner . 
Though Sanders is steadfastly earnest , the youthful enthusiasm for him often partakes of irony . 
Whimsical buttons feature the slogan "Feel the Bern ," and Tumblr is full of memes that play up the contrast between Sanders 's age and his popularity with hipsters . 
Sanders 's message is particularly potent for young people who are struggling financially . 
Garrison Nelson describes Sanders as being "more from the nineteen-thirties left than the sixties one ." 
In June , when NPR 's David Greene pressed Sanders on whether he embraced the phrase "Black Lives Matter ," the Senator got irritated . 
Sanders does not argue that greater economic equality would end racism , but for most of his career he has subsumed discussions of race under class . 
On July 18th in Phoenix , Sanders appeared at Netroots Nation , an annual conference of progressive activists . 
After taking the stage , Sanders told the moderator , "Whoa , let me talk about what I want to talk about for a moment !" 
A week later , in his Senate office , Sanders sounded chastened . 
The video showing the arrest of Sandra Bland , the African-American woman who died in a Texas jail , had just been released , and Sanders seemed shaken . 
Sanders , speaking more broadly about police violence directed at black people , said , "I plead guilty -- I should have been more sensitive at the beginning of this campaign to talk about this issue ." 
On July 25th , Sanders addressed the annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , in Baton Rouge . 
One of the convention 's listed sponsors was Koch Industries , and it was the first time I saw Sanders give a speech in which he did not inveigh against the company 's billionaire owners , who lavishly support conservative causes . 
In August , Sanders 's campaign issued a racial-justice platform that recommended police reform , federal funding for police body cameras , a ban on for-profit prisons , and the elimination of mandatory-minimum jail sentences . 
-LRB- Among other things , Sanders proposes making Election Day a federal holiday . -RRB- 
At the same time , the platform reasserted Sanders 's core philosophy : "We must simultaneously address the structural and institutional racism which exists in this country , while at the same time we vigorously attack the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality which is making the very rich much richer while everyone else -- especially those in our minority communities -- are becoming poorer ." 
Van Jones said of Sanders , "He 's shown tremendous character in his willingness to engage and grow and change ." 
But Vermont is ninety-five per cent white , and Sanders needed to establish stronger bonds with black voters . 
Sanders was "a reliable civil-rights vote , but not somebody who has been connected to these communities , to these kids and their neighborhoods . 
Elizabeth Warren , the Massachusetts senator whose critiques of income inequality presaged Sanders 's Presidential campaign , often speaks of her parents ' economic hardship to help explain her values today . 
Sanders 's campaign Web site lists his educational history , says that he is married to Jane Sanders and that they have four children and seven grandchildren , and mentions that he worked as "a carpenter and a documentary filmmaker" before entering politics . 
There 's something admirable about Sanders 's reluctance to attribute his political beliefs to autobiography : he does n't want voters thinking that his commitment to redistributive economics stems from anything other than a deep-seated sense of fairness . 
When I asked Sanders a question about his early years , he sighed with the air of a man who knows he can no longer put off that visit to the periodontist . 
Sanders did say that two aspects of his upbringing had exerted a lasting influence . 
Sanders 's father was a Polish Jew who , at the age of seventeen , came to America shortly after his brother , and struggled through the Depression in Brooklyn . 
By the time Sanders was born , in 1941 , his father was working as a paint salesman . 
Sanders had an older brother , Larry , and their mother stayed home , like most of the women in their lower-middle-class corner of Flatbush . 
"There was tension about money ," Sanders said of his family . 
I spoke with a few of Sanders 's contemporaries who had grown up in the same neighborhood , and their memories were rosier : they recalled kids playing stickball on safe , familiar streets until their parents called them home for dinner . 
But Sanders rarely communicates in the key of nostalgia . 
Sid Ganis , a Hollywood producer who grew up in the same building as Sanders , described their neighborhood as an enclave of "ordinary secular Jews ," adding , "Some of us went to Hebrew school , but mainly it was an identity in that it got us out of school on Jewish holidays ." 
Sanders told me that , in the aftermath of the Second World War , his family "got a call in the middle of the night about some relative of my father 's , who was in a displaced-persons camp in Europe someplace ." 
Sanders learned that many of his father 's other relatives had perished . 
Sanders 's parents had been fundamentally apolitical , but he took away a lesson : "An election in 1932 ended up killing fifty million people around the world ." 
Sanders 's close friend Richard Sugarman , an Orthodox Jew who teaches religious studies at the University of Vermont , said , "He 's not what you would call rule-observant ." 
Sugarman and Sanders were housemates for a while in the seventies , and Sugarman says that his friend would often greet him in the morning by saying , "We 're not crazy , you know ," referring to the anger they felt about social injustices . 
Sanders attended Brooklyn College for a year , then transferred to the University of Chicago , where he joined the Young People 's Socialist League and the Congress on Racial Equality . 
Jim Rader , a friend who first met him in Chicago , recalls that Sanders was a "leader of the civil-rights movement on campus ." 
Sanders , who received a political-science degree in 1964 , has said that he was a mediocre student because he found the classroom boring and irrelevant -- and that he learned "infinitely more on the streets and in the community ." 
By the time Sanders graduated , both his parents had died , and his brother had moved to England . 
Sanders got married for the first time , to a woman named Deborah Shiling , just after college , and they took a road trip from New York to Vermont , where Sanders had never been . 
Sanders told me , convincingly , "I was n't a hippie ." 
Sanders and Shiling soon divorced . 
It came as a surprise to reporters who 'd covered Sanders for years in Vermont , but it was n't the sort of revelation likely to scandalize his supporters in 2015 . 
Sanders wore his social conscience on his sleeve , but few people who knew him in the sixties and seventies would have predicted that he would become a leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination . 
It 's safe to say that had Sanders stuck with that career he would not have given Ken Burns a run for his money . 
One filmstrip , a portrait of Sanders 's hero , the socialist Eugene V. Debs , was rendered with static images that remained on the screen for a good long while . 
Sanders himself voiced Debs , an Indiana native , making him sound like a guy from Flatbush . 
-LRB- Another cultural foray of Sanders 's that makes you glad he stuck with politics : a 1987 cassette tape in which he talk-sings folk songs , William Shatner style . 
People who knew Sanders when he was in his thirties tend to share stories about how broke and frugal he was . 
Rader told me that when Sanders first bought land in Vermont , and was still living part time in New York , he sometimes camped out in the new property 's only shelter : a maple-sugar shack . 
In 1971 , Rader invited Sanders to a meeting of Vermont 's left-wing Liberty Union Party , in Plainfield . 
Sanders brought his son along , and there 's a photograph of them at the meeting : Sanders is skinny , serious , with a luxuriant head of curls , uninhibited sideburns , and Buddy Holly glasses ; his towheaded toddler sits in his lap . 
The organizers asked if anyone would run for the Senate , and Sanders , one of the willing few , got the nod . 
In 1980 , Sanders 's friend Richard Sugarman suggested that he try for mayor of Burlington . 
Sanders ran as an Independent , and won by ten votes . 
Even in Vermont , it was unusual to elect a socialist in the time of Ronald Reagan ; Sanders was a thirty-nine-year-old man who did n't own a suit . 
Yet Sanders turned out to be a popular and effective mayor , and more pragmatic than some might have predicted . 
Sanders also resisted a developer 's plan to turn the derelict Lake Champlain waterfront into a cluster of high-rises , promising instead public access and open space . 
Sanders met Jane O'Meara Driscoll , a community organizer nine years his junior and a divorced mother of three young children , when she invited him to a debate during his first mayoral campaign . 
They were married in 1988 , and spent what even Sanders admits was "a strange honeymoon ," in the Soviet Union , finalizing a sister-city relationship with the city of Yaroslavl . 
All four children in the Sanders family are now grown . 
''' She mentioned a Quinnipiac University poll showing that , in a general-election contest against Donald Trump , Sanders would win by eight percentage points . 
When Sanders first ran for the House of Representatives , in 1988 , he lost to a Republican named Peter Smith , the scion of a banking family . 
In 1990 , Sanders ran again , and the N.R.A. went after Smith , sending letters to its Vermont members describing Sanders as the lesser of two evils , since he was n't publicly supporting the ban . 
Sanders won . 
This is the origin of the critique that Sanders has weak gun-control credentials for a progressive . 
In national office , Sanders has not been a vocal proponent of strict gun control . 
Sanders tends to present guns as an urban problem that Vermonters can afford not to worry about , though mass shootings can happen anywhere and suicides by gun are as much a problem in Vermont as they are in other states . 
Sanders 's congressional career did not get off to a promising start . 
Sanders did n't help matters by giving more than one interview denouncing Congress . 
Nelson told me that , when he ran into Sanders in Burlington , he warned him not to keep "pissing in the soup ," adding , "You 're our only representative !" 
According to Nelson , Sanders said , "Gary , you have no idea how totally corrupt it is ." 
In time , Sanders became slightly more discriminating in his criticism , and made some allies . 
In national matters such as curbing the excesses of the Patriot Act , Sanders found that he could at least try to make incremental changes through the amendment process ; in 2005 , a Rolling Stone profile dubbed him "the amendment king ." 
At home , Sanders became a symbol of Vermont 's cussed uniqueness , as affectionately regarded as a scoop of Chunky Monkey . 
But when Sanders has run for the Vermont governorship he has n't done well . 
But they do n't necessarily want Sanders running the state . 
Since joining the Senate , Sanders has received the most attention for his gestures of defiance -- such as his marathon oration against tax cuts for the wealthiest , which was published in book form as "The Speech : A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class ." 
Yet Sanders has proved himself capable of bipartisan dealmaking . 
Sanders explained to reporters that it was far from the bill he would have devised on his own : "It opens up a fear of privatization , which I strongly , strongly am opposed to ." 
Sanders is proud of a few other Senate deals . 
Sanders helped lead the opposition , and the President recently stopped pushing for the proposal . 
"It was a tough fight ," Sanders said . 
Could Bernie Sanders win the Democratic nomination , let alone the Presidency ? 
Sanders , who refuses to take money from Super PACs , had raised forty-one million dollars , mostly in donations of less than two hundred dollars each . 
It 's impressive , too , that in a recent YouGovCBS News poll Sanders is leading Clinton by twenty-two percentage points in New Hampshire and ten in Iowa . 
But among black Democrats in South Carolina Clinton leads , at fifty-two per cent ; Sanders is at four per cent . 
And though Sanders quickly modified his platform to accommodate Black Lives Matter activists , he still has a long way to go to win over African-American voters . 
A Washington PostABC News poll released in September shows that , if Biden were in the race , he would attract more nonwhite voters than Sanders -LRB- though substantially fewer than Clinton -RRB- . 
Nor is Sanders 's trajectory likely to mirror that of Obama in 2008 . 
Sanders supporters like to point out that , in the summer of 2007 , Obama was polling behind Hillary Clinton among black Democrats . 
But , as Michael Tesler , a political scientist at the University of California , Irvine , recently noted in the Washington Post , Obama enjoyed much higher favorability ratings among black Democrats than Sanders does now . 
Sanders 's commitment to recapturing some of the white working-class males that the Democratic Party lost in the Reagan years wo n't necessarily help his candidacy ; indeed , it could hurt his quest to connect with minority voters . 
Yet Sanders is doing well enough to concern the Clinton team , and that creates its own challenges . 
On the trail , Clinton has avoided mention of him ; Sanders , for his part , emphasizes their policy differences . 
Sanders appears to be sticking with that approach . 
Correct the Record , a Super PAC backing Clinton , recently sent an e-mail to the Huffington Post suggesting that Sanders shared many views with the controversial new British Labour leader , Jeremy Corbyn , then noting that Corbyn had called the death of Osama bin Laden a tragedy . 
Correct the Record has also sent trackers -- operatives who tape rival candidates , looking for gaffes -- to Sanders events . 
Sanders has promised not to run for President as an Independent in the general election , saying that he does n't want to have any role in handing victory to a Republican . 
Sanders often says that he is not that far outside the mainstream -- that a majority of Americans agree with him on many of his tenets . 
In mid-September , Sanders spoke before the weekly convocation attended by the student body at Liberty University , the evangelical school in Lynchburg , Virginia , founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell . 
Unlike many liberal élites , Sanders does not seem to prefer talking to people who share his views ; because he is not an especially convivial person , he does not require conviviality from others . 
Sanders relishes the opportunity to enter enemy territory , where he believes that he can find secret allies . 
He did not make knowing jokes about these differences : as usual , Sanders was dead serious . 
But the occasion also played to the prophetic side of Sanders -- the register in which he can sound like an Old Testament preacher . 
Unlike his slicker rivals , Sanders is most at ease talking about the moral and ethical dimensions of politics .
[TGT] has spent decades attacking inequality . 
If you attended a [TGT] rally this summer , when [TGT] seemingly quixotic Presidential campaign began gathering force , you might have noticed a few surprising things about the crowd . 
Young people who like [TGT] like [TGT] because [TGT] sounds like an old record . 
In Portland , Maine , on an evening in July , the line to see [TGT] looped around the Cross Insurance Arena . 
[TGT] 's popularity had clearly been exceeding [TGT] own expectations . 
At the Portland rally , I met a group of five friends who were drawn to [TGT] because of [TGT] commitment to banish money from politics : [TGT] has sharply criticized the Supreme Court 's 2010 decision , in Citizens United , to permit unlimited campaign spending by corporations , and has lamented the outsize influence exerted by billionaires . 
Several of the friends praised [TGT] 's pledge to raise the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour . 
One member of the group , Erin Kiley , a millennial who owns Portland Flea-for-All , a marketplace of vintage and artisanal goods , said that she developed "a huge political crush on Bernie" in 2010 , after [TGT] delivered an eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the Senate floor to protest the extension of tax cuts instituted during the Presidency of George W. Bush . 
[TGT] 's gruffness , didacticism , and indifference to appearances -- both he and [TGT] wife , Jane , told me how much [TGT] loathes shopping -- are central to [TGT] appeal . 
All the friends described [TGT] as "authentic ," a word that many people would be hesitant to apply to Hillary Clinton . 
Kiley acknowledged that [TGT] 's unvarnished qualities might turn off some voters , but noted that in the current election cycle "the whole spectrum of candidates is less schmoozy , polished , and warm ." 
[TGT] has been known as a democratic socialist for decades . 
This did n't matter much to Kiley or York , or to most other [TGT] supporters I met during the next few weeks ; mainly , they were impressed that [TGT] had n't shed the term . 
York thought that , because of [TGT] and [TGT] "social-media-driven fans ," socialism was "getting a bit of a P.R. makeover ." 
Peter Dreier , a professor of politics at Occidental College , who has written about [TGT] , says that younger voters "may not be willing to entertain a whole new system , but they are open to a pretty profound critique of the current one . 
At a recent San Francisco gathering for [TGT] , I met Derek Zender , a twenty-three-year-old marketing student . 
[TGT] told me that [TGT] parents , who live in Orange County , dismissed [TGT] as "a decrepit old socialist who means well but does n't understand how the world works ." 
In Portland , [TGT] took the stage , a little hunched in a gray suit jacket . 
[TGT] signals [TGT] moral ferocity by choosing words like "horrific" and "abysmal" and sonically italicizing them , as in "This grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is immoral ." 
In the speeches I heard , [TGT] rarely discussed foreign policy , though [TGT] spoke with conviction about climate change and the need for the U.S. to set an example for Russia , India , and China by using fewer fossil fuels . 
Huck Gutman , one of [TGT] 's close friends , is an English professor at the University of Vermont ; from 2008 to 2012 , [TGT] served as [TGT] 's chief of staff in the Senate . 
Despite this abiding interest , [TGT] does not seem to have immersed [TGT] that deeply in the extensive literature on inequality . 
[TGT] was interested less in academic arguments , Gutman said , than in hard numbers that "exemplify the disparities [TGT] sees and feels and hears about from people ." [TGT] dutifully mentioned that the economist Stephanie Kelton is an adviser to the Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee , of which [TGT] is the ranking member , but [TGT] was ardent in [TGT] admiration for Pope Francis , who has condemned the "economy of exclusion ." 
[TGT] called the Pope "an extraordinary figure ," adding , "My God , [TGT] came along right at the time we need [TGT] !" 
After speeches , [TGT] spars about issues with voters or reporters . 
Garrison Nelson , a political scientist at the University of Vermont , who has known him for decades , says that if [TGT] is walking down the street in Burlington "and somebody yells at [TGT] Bernie will talk to [TGT] -- ` What 's the matter ? 
[TGT] does not excel , however , at the middle ground of casual , friendly conversation . 
When talking to voters , Hillary Clinton has perfected the head-cocked semblance of keen interest ; it 's clear when [TGT] becomes bored . 
Paula Routly , who is the publisher of Seven Days , a popular weekly in Burlington , told me a story that captured the counterintuitive [TGT] charm . 
One evening , Jerry , of Ben & Jerry 's , scooped ice cream ; on another , [TGT] stopped by a group dinner . 
Though [TGT] is steadfastly earnest , the youthful enthusiasm for [TGT] often partakes of irony . 
Whimsical buttons feature the slogan "Feel the Bern ," and Tumblr is full of memes that play up the contrast between [TGT] 's age and [TGT] popularity with hipsters . 
[TGT] 's message is particularly potent for young people who are struggling financially . 
Garrison Nelson describes [TGT] as being "more from the nineteen-thirties left than the sixties one ." 
In June , when NPR 's David Greene pressed [TGT] on whether [TGT] embraced the phrase "Black Lives Matter ," [TGT] got irritated . 
[TGT] does not argue that greater economic equality would end racism , but for most of [TGT] career [TGT] has subsumed discussions of race under class . 
On July 18th in Phoenix , [TGT] appeared at Netroots Nation , an annual conference of progressive activists . 
After taking the stage , [TGT] told the moderator , "Whoa , let me talk about what I want to talk about for a moment !" 
A week later , in [TGT] Senate office , [TGT] sounded chastened . 
The video showing the arrest of Sandra Bland , the African-American woman who died in a Texas jail , had just been released , and [TGT] seemed shaken . 
[TGT] , speaking more broadly about police violence directed at black people , said , "I plead guilty -- I should have been more sensitive at the beginning of this campaign to talk about this issue ." 
On July 25th , [TGT] addressed the annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , in Baton Rouge . 
One of the convention 's listed sponsors was Koch Industries , and it was the first time I saw [TGT] give a speech in which [TGT] did not inveigh against the company 's billionaire owners , who lavishly support conservative causes . 
In August , [TGT] 's campaign issued a racial-justice platform that recommended police reform , federal funding for police body cameras , a ban on for-profit prisons , and the elimination of mandatory-minimum jail sentences . 
-LRB- Among other things , [TGT] proposes making Election Day a federal holiday . -RRB- 
At the same time , the platform reasserted [TGT] 's core philosophy : "We must simultaneously address the structural and institutional racism which exists in this country , while at the same time we vigorously attack the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality which is making the very rich much richer while everyone else -- especially those in our minority communities -- are becoming poorer ." 
Van Jones said of [TGT] , "He 's shown tremendous character in his willingness to engage and grow and change ." 
But Vermont is ninety-five per cent white , and [TGT] needed to establish stronger bonds with black voters . 
[TGT] was "a reliable civil-rights vote , but not somebody who has been connected to these communities , to these kids and their neighborhoods . 
Elizabeth Warren , the Massachusetts senator whose critiques of income inequality presaged [TGT] 's Presidential campaign , often speaks of her parents ' economic hardship to help explain her values today . 
[TGT] 's campaign Web site lists [TGT] educational history , says that [TGT] is married to [TGT] and that they have four children and seven grandchildren , and mentions that [TGT] worked as "a carpenter and a documentary filmmaker" before entering politics . 
There 's something admirable about [TGT] 's reluctance to attribute [TGT] political beliefs to autobiography : [TGT] does n't want voters thinking that [TGT] commitment to redistributive economics stems from anything other than a deep-seated sense of fairness . 
When I asked [TGT] a question about [TGT] early years , [TGT] sighed with the air of a man who knows [TGT] can no longer put off that visit to the periodontist . 
[TGT] did say that two aspects of [TGT] upbringing had exerted a lasting influence . 
Sanders 's father was a Polish Jew who , at the age of seventeen , came to America shortly after his brother , and struggled through the Depression in Brooklyn . 
By the time [TGT] was born , in 1941 , [TGT] father was working as a paint salesman . 
[TGT] had an older brother , Larry , and their mother stayed home , like most of the women in their lower-middle-class corner of Flatbush . 
"There was tension about money ," [TGT] said of [TGT] family . 
I spoke with a few of [TGT] 's contemporaries who had grown up in the same neighborhood , and their memories were rosier : they recalled kids playing stickball on safe , familiar streets until their parents called them home for dinner . 
But [TGT] rarely communicates in the key of nostalgia . 
Sid Ganis , a Hollywood producer who grew up in the same building as [TGT] , described their neighborhood as an enclave of "ordinary secular Jews ," adding , "Some of us went to Hebrew school , but mainly it was an identity in that it got us out of school on Jewish holidays .[TGT] told me that , in the aftermath of the Second World War , [TGT] family "got a call in the middle of the night about some relative of my father 's , who was in a displaced-persons camp in Europe someplace .[TGT] learned that many of [TGT] father 's other relatives had perished . 
[TGT] 's parents had been fundamentally apolitical , but [TGT] took away a lesson : "An election in 1932 ended up killing fifty million people around the world ." 
[TGT] 's close friend Richard Sugarman , an Orthodox Jew who teaches religious studies at the University of Vermont , said , "[TGT] 's not what you would call rule-observant ." 
Sugarman and [TGT] were housemates for a while in the seventies , and Sugarman says that his friend would often greet him in the morning by saying , "We 're not crazy , you know ," referring to the anger they felt about social injustices . 
[TGT] attended Brooklyn College for a year , then transferred to the University of Chicago , where [TGT] joined the Young People 's Socialist League and the Congress on Racial Equality . 
Jim Rader , a friend who first met [TGT] in Chicago , recalls that [TGT] was a "leader of the civil-rights movement on campus ." 
Sanders , who received a political-science degree in 1964 , has said that he was a mediocre student because he found the classroom boring and irrelevant -- and that he learned "infinitely more on the streets and in the community ." 
By the time [TGT] graduated , both [TGT] parents had died , and [TGT] brother had moved to England . 
[TGT] got married for the first time , to a woman named Deborah Shiling , just after college , and they took a road trip from New York to Vermont , where [TGT] had never been . 
[TGT] told me , convincingly , "I was n't a hippie ." 
[TGT] and Shiling soon divorced . 
It came as a surprise to reporters who 'd covered [TGT] for years in Vermont , but it was n't the sort of revelation likely to scandalize [TGT] supporters in 2015 . 
[TGT] wore [TGT] social conscience on [TGT] sleeve , but few people who knew [TGT] in the sixties and seventies would have predicted that [TGT] would become a leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination . 
It 's safe to say that had [TGT] stuck with that career [TGT] would not have given Ken Burns a run for his money . 
One filmstrip , a portrait of [TGT] 's hero , the socialist Eugene V. Debs , was rendered with static images that remained on the screen for a good long while . 
[TGT] voiced Debs , an Indiana native , making [TGT] sound like a guy from Flatbush . 
-LRB- Another cultural foray of [TGT] 's that makes you glad [TGT] stuck with politics : a 1987 cassette tape in which [TGT] talk-sings folk songs , William Shatner style . 
People who knew [TGT] when [TGT] was in [TGT] thirties tend to share stories about how broke and frugal [TGT] was . 
[TGT] told me that when [TGT] first bought land in Vermont , and was still living part time in New York , [TGT] sometimes camped out in the new property 's only shelter : a maple-sugar shack . 
In 1971 , [TGT] invited [TGT] to a meeting of Vermont 's left-wing Liberty Union Party , in Plainfield . 
[TGT] brought [TGT] son along , and there 's a photograph of them at the meeting : [TGT] is skinny , serious , with a luxuriant head of curls , uninhibited sideburns , and Buddy Holly glasses ; [TGT] towheaded toddler sits in [TGT] lap . 
The organizers asked if anyone would run for the Senate , and [TGT] , one of the willing few , got the nod . 
In 1980 , [TGT] 's friend Richard Sugarman suggested that he try for mayor of Burlington . 
[TGT] ran as an Independent , and won by ten votes . 
Even in Vermont , it was unusual to elect a socialist in the time of Ronald Reagan ; [TGT] was a thirty-nine-year-old man who did n't own a suit . 
Yet [TGT] turned out to be a popular and effective mayor , and more pragmatic than some might have predicted . 
[TGT] also resisted a developer 's plan to turn the derelict Lake Champlain waterfront into a cluster of high-rises , promising instead public access and open space . 
[TGT] met Jane O'Meara Driscoll , a community organizer nine years [TGT] junior and a divorced mother of three young children , when she invited [TGT] to a debate during [TGT] first mayoral campaign . 
They were married in 1988 , and spent what [TGT] admits was "a strange honeymoon ," in the Soviet Union , finalizing a sister-city relationship with the city of Yaroslavl . 
All four children in the Sanders family are now grown . 
''' She mentioned a Quinnipiac University poll showing that , in a general-election contest against Donald Trump , [TGT] would win by eight percentage points . 
When [TGT] first ran for the House of Representatives , in 1988 , [TGT] lost to a Republican named Peter Smith , the scion of a banking family . 
In 1990 , [TGT] ran again , and the N.R.A. went after Smith , sending letters to its Vermont members describing [TGT] as the lesser of two evils , since [TGT] was n't publicly supporting the ban . 
[TGT] won . 
This is the origin of the critique that [TGT] has weak gun-control credentials for a progressive . 
In national office , [TGT] has not been a vocal proponent of strict gun control . 
[TGT] tends to present guns as an urban problem that Vermonters can afford not to worry about , though mass shootings can happen anywhere and suicides by gun are as much a problem in Vermont as they are in other states . 
[TGT] 's congressional career did not get off to a promising start . 
[TGT] did n't help matters by giving more than one interview denouncing Congress . 
Nelson told me that , when he ran into [TGT] in Burlington , he warned him not to keep "pissing in the soup ," adding , "You 're our only representative !" 
According to Nelson , [TGT] said , "Gary , you have no idea how totally corrupt it is ." 
In time , [TGT] became slightly more discriminating in [TGT] criticism , and made some allies . 
In national matters such as curbing the excesses of the Patriot Act , [TGT] found that [TGT] could at least try to make incremental changes through the amendment process ; in 2005 , a Rolling Stone profile dubbed [TGT] "the amendment king ." 
At home , [TGT] became a symbol of Vermont 's cussed uniqueness , as affectionately regarded as a scoop of Chunky Monkey . 
But when [TGT] has run for the Vermont governorship [TGT] has n't done well . 
But they do n't necessarily want [TGT] running the state . 
Since joining the Senate , [TGT] has received the most attention for [TGT] gestures of defiance -- such as [TGT] marathon oration against tax cuts for the wealthiest , which was published in book form as "The Speech : A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class ." 
Yet [TGT] has proved [TGT] capable of bipartisan dealmaking . 
[TGT] explained to reporters that it was far from the bill [TGT] would have devised on [TGT] own : "It opens up a fear of privatization , which I strongly , strongly am opposed to .[TGT] is proud of a few other Senate deals . 
[TGT] helped lead the opposition , and the President recently stopped pushing for the proposal . 
"It was a tough fight ," [TGT] said . 
[TGT] win the Democratic nomination , let alone the Presidency ? 
Sanders , who refuses to take money from Super PACs , had raised forty-one million dollars , mostly in donations of less than two hundred dollars each . 
It 's impressive , too , that in a recent YouGovCBS News poll [TGT] is leading Clinton by twenty-two percentage points in New Hampshire and ten in Iowa . 
But among black Democrats in South Carolina Clinton leads , at fifty-two per cent ; [TGT] is at four per cent . 
And though [TGT] quickly modified [TGT] platform to accommodate Black Lives Matter activists , [TGT] still has a long way to go to win over African-American voters . 
A Washington PostABC News poll released in September shows that , if Biden were in the race , he would attract more nonwhite voters than [TGT] -LRB- though substantially fewer than Clinton -RRB- . 
Nor is [TGT] 's trajectory likely to mirror that of Obama in 2008 . 
Sanders supporters like to point out that , in the summer of 2007 , Obama was polling behind Hillary Clinton among black Democrats . 
But , as Michael Tesler , a political scientist at the University of California , Irvine , recently noted in the Washington Post , Obama enjoyed much higher favorability ratings among black Democrats than [TGT] does now . 
[TGT] 's commitment to recapturing some of the white working-class males that the Democratic Party lost in the Reagan years wo n't necessarily help [TGT] candidacy ; indeed , it could hurt [TGT] quest to connect with minority voters . 
Yet [TGT] is doing well enough to concern the Clinton team , and that creates its own challenges . 
On the trail , Clinton has avoided mention of him ; [TGT] , for his part , emphasizes their policy differences . 
[TGT] appears to be sticking with that approach . 
Correct the Record , a Super PAC backing Clinton , recently sent an e-mail to the Huffington Post suggesting that [TGT] shared many views with the controversial new British Labour leader , Jeremy Corbyn , then noting that Corbyn had called the death of Osama bin Laden a tragedy . 
Correct the Record has also sent trackers -- operatives who tape rival candidates , looking for gaffes -- to [TGT] events . 
[TGT] has promised not to run for President as an Independent in the general election , saying that [TGT] does n't want to have any role in handing victory to a Republican . 
[TGT] often says that [TGT] is not that far outside the mainstream -- that a majority of Americans agree with [TGT] on many of [TGT] tenets . 
In mid-September , [TGT] spoke before the weekly convocation attended by the student body at Liberty University , the evangelical school in Lynchburg , Virginia , founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell . 
Unlike many liberal élites , [TGT] does not seem to prefer talking to people who share [TGT] views ; because [TGT] is not an especially convivial person , [TGT] does not require conviviality from others . 
[TGT] relishes the opportunity to enter enemy territory , where [TGT] believes that [TGT] can find secret allies . 
[TGT] did not make knowing jokes about these differences : as usual , [TGT] was dead serious . 
But the occasion also played to the prophetic side of [TGT] -- the register in which [TGT] can sound like an Old Testament preacher . 
Unlike [TGT] slicker rivals , [TGT] is most at ease talking about the moral and ethical dimensions of politics .