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O

n a midwinter Saturday
night in downtown Cedar
Rapids, a small industrial
city on the Iowa plains, more than
3,000 young, boisterous fans filed
into a show at the local arena.
The band was Vampire Week-
end. But it wasn’t the main attrac-
tion.
Instead, the cheering, scream-
ing, stomping crowd was there for
a 78-year-old self-described so-
cialist running for president.
“Bernie Sanders has been fight-
ing for the same issues for such a
long time,” enthused Aaron
Gould, a 20-year-old university
student who had travelled from
Minnesota to see the Vermont
senator. “If you hear him speak
for like 10 minutes, you’re like,
‘this guy has got it figured out.’ ”
The youthful adulation that
treats Mr. Sanders more like an in-
die rock star than a politician has
made him the improbable front-
runner for the Democratic nomi-
nation. He won the most votes in
Iowa and New Hampshire, leads
national polls and could score a
hat trick when Nevada becomes
the third state to vote Saturday.
The senator’s strength is mak-
ing the party establishment apo-
plectic. Moderates fear his ambi-
tious policy prescriptions will ei-
ther hand the election to Presi-
dent Donald Trump or be
impossible to implement. And
the zeal of his most loyal, boister-
ous fans – many of whom say they
will not even vote Democratic in
November if Mr. Sanders is not the
nominee – has led to ugly cam-
paign-trail confrontations.
It has even raised the possibil-
ity of the first brokered conven-

tion in nearly 70 years, where Mr.

Sanders’s rivals would team up to

deny him the nomination even if

he wins the most votes.

But the tenacious septuagenar-

ian is so far defining the race. In an

era of rising income inequality

and persistent economic precari-

ousness, Mr. Sanders has con-

structed a durable coalition of

millennial and working-class vot-

ers with talk of revolution: Medi-

care-for-all single-payer health

care, free university tuition, a

US$15 an hour minimum wage

and fighting climate change.

It has also helped that Mr.

Sanders has largely held the same

political views since the 1960s,

conveying on him that most cov-

eted of rock-star qualities: au-

thenticity.

“The country’s becoming an

oligarchy,” said Randy Henshaw, a

56-year-old retired nurse at a rally

for Mr. Sanders on the University

of Nevada campus. “I would like

to see us transfer back to a democ-

racy.”

While the senator presents

himself as something of an anti-

politician, he is also skilled at do-

ing all the things political consult-

ants advise candidates to do. He

distills complex issues into sim-

ple soundbites. His message is

easy to remember. Every perform-

ance is even, every speech rough-

ly the same. “We are the wealth-

iest country in the history of the

world, yet most of us don’t know

that because almost all new in-

come and wealth goes to the peo-

ple on top,” he declared in Reno

this week. “We have 500,000 peo-

ple today sleeping out on the

streets, and yet we give tax breaks

to billionaires.”

The fractious field has also

worked to his advantage. Joe Bi-

den, Michael Bloomberg, Pete

Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are

all vying to be the moderate alter-

native, while Elizabeth Warren is

running as a less strident leftist.

It has all given Mr. Sanders stay-

ing power as his rivals have ca-

reened up and down in the polls.

He has also consistently collected

more in donations than any other

candidate, despite refusing to do

corporate fundraisers. Even a

heart attack last fall was not

enough to derail his campaign.

Mr. Sanders could build up a

formidable lead in convention

delegates as early as Super Tues-

day on March 3, when major

states such as California and Tex-

as vote.

But if he fails to win an absolute

majority, the other candidates

could deny him the nomination

by combining forces at the Demo-

cratic National Convention in Mil-

waukee, Wis., in July. None of Mr.

Sanders’s opponents would rule

out this possibility at this week’s

debate. If so, it would be the first

brokered convention since 1952.

Such a messy result would only

exacerbate the party’s divides.

Stephen Cardinal, 38, said he

didn’t vote in the 2016 general

election after ostensibly neutral

Democratic National Committee

officials were caught plotting to

help Hillary Clinton’s candidacy

over Mr. Sanders’s in the primar-

ies. Mr. Cardinal said he might do

the same this year if someone oth-

er than Mr. Sanders is nominated.

“There should be a conse-

quence to any action, and the

Democrats needed to understand

that,” said Mr. Cardinal, who runs

a company providing essential

oils in Fairfield, Iowa.

On the campaign trail, Mr.

Sanders’s supporters tend to be

the most aggressive. At one all-

candidates’ forum in New Hamp-

shire, for instance, they roundly

booed Mr. Buttigieg. They were al-

so accused of a campaign of on-

line harassment targeting the

leaders of Nevada’s Culinary

Union after it came out against

Mr. Sanders’s health-care propos-

al. The senator, for his part, in-

spires sometimes livid reactions

from his rivals’ supporters.

“Bernie’s the Left Trump,” said

Roberta Lunnis, a 58-year-old

commercial wallpaper hanger in

Nevada who is voting for Ms. War-

ren. “It’s going to be a riot be-

tween his supporters and

Trump’s supporters. They’re both

very bullyish and I don’t want

that.”

The most frequently cited crit-

icisms are that Mr. Sanders’s agen-

da will alienate moderate voters

or be impossible to get through

Congress. People already happy

with their private health insur-

ance plans, the argument goes,

will turn away from the Demo-

cratic Party if it pledges to replace

those plans with a public system.

Mr. Sanders answers these ar-

guments by contending his plat-

form can motivate the roughly

half of the electorate that doesn’t

vote. And he points to the numer-

ous times he has successfully

amended legislation during his

three decades in Congress as

proof of his ability to get things

done. To Mr. Sanders’s support-

ers, it’s the Democrats’ own cau-

tious centrism that has proved in-

effective in delivering substantial

change.

Ben Calegari, a 28-year-old soft-

ware engineer from New Hamp-

shire, grew up in Democratic cir-

cles as his father worked on a

string of political campaigns. He

has childhood photos with Bill

Clinton and Al Gore. John Kerry

once visited his house. But he be-

came disenchanted with the in-

crementalism such politicians

represented. “I witnessed the in-

sularity of the Democratic Party,”

he said, sitting in a Manchester

coffee shop, a brass pin of Mr.

Sanders’s face on his green bom-

ber jacket. “These people are nev-

er held accountable when they

fail.”

ForSanderssupporters,he’stherealdeal

U.S.presidential

candidatehasformed

acoalitionofmillennial,

working-classvoters

withtalkofrevolution

ADRIANMORROW
CEDARRAPIDS,IOWA
TAMSINMcMAHONLASVEGAS

U.S.DemocraticpresidentialcandidateSenatorBernieSandersgesturesduringaGetOuttheEarlyVote

campaignrallyinSantaAna,Calif.,onFriday.MIKEBLAKE/REUTERS

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