24 Time June 17, 2019
major problems facing humanity, and
the TV cameras were literally focused
on Randy’s blisters.” Sanders was 31. He
was, even as a young man, an old man.
Now, nearly a half-century later, he is
an old man who enraptures the young.
The Senator who once rejected gimmicks
and complained “modern American pol-
itics is about image and technique” now
scripts jokes and asks after his Twitter
likes. He is pretty much the same man he
has always been, but he is determined to
take advantage of being one of the more
improbable top-tier presidential contend-
ers in American history.
When Sanders ran for President in
2016, it was because he felt important
ideas were unrepresented. Many of his po-
sitions were dismissed as radical, vague,
wide-eyed. Yet as the 2020 race gathers
intensity, much of the Sanders program
has become de rigueur for progressive and
centrist Democrats alike: single-payer
health care, massively subsidized college
education, a $15 minimum wage, a fed-
eral jobs program. Senator Cory Booker of
New Jersey supports some form of Medi-
care for All. Former Vice President Joe
Biden recently embraced a $15 minimum
wage. The idea of federally provided jobs,
evocative of the New Deal, has gone from
being a far-out Sanders talking point to an
idea that has more moderate adherents
like Senators Kamala Harris of California
and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
During eight days on the campaign trail
with Sanders this spring, I heard one re-
frain as much as any other: a “funny thing
had happened” since 2016, and Sanders’
ideas were no longer “radical.” “Broth-
ers and sisters, we should be enormously
proud that we have come a long way in
transforming politics in America over the
last four years,” he told a crowd one sunny
April afternoon in Warren, Mich.
Sanders has changed the debate in
great measure because he has never re-
ally changed himself. His consistency is
the selling point—his mantras against
billionaires stealing the American
Dream, the system being rigged, work-
ing people needing to form a movement
to take power back. And yet he is now
running against nearly two dozen com-
petitors, many of whom have chipped
away at his distinctiveness by emulating
his stances, and just being Bernie may
not get the job done. Sanders is solidly
I traveled some 6,000 miles with Sand-
ers this spring, by bus, plane and van:
Manhattan; Moline and Davenport and
Muscatine and Burlington and Fairfield
and Oskaloosa, Iowa; Las Vegas; Wash-
ington; Madison, Wis.; Gary, Ind.; Coo-
persville and Warren and Detroit, Mich.;
Lordstown, Ohio; Pittsburgh and Beth-
lehem, Pa. Talk of a rigged system has
hardly vanished, but now Sanders fo-
cuses on the human toll of a rigged sys-
tem, rather than just the profiteering and
exploitation and lobbying and campaign
contributions he is famous for decrying.
As one staffer explained, Sanders is “as-
signing an emotion” to the rigging. He
is, in this and other ways, learning to be
personal.
“From the very beginning, he was al-
ways concerned about policy. Always con-
cerned about making a meaningful differ-
ence. He didn’t have time for the niceties,”
Jane Sanders, the Senator’s wife and clos-
est adviser, told me. “He has, over time,
really become more—he’s still very issue
oriented, but he’s placing focus on the
people and the impact that those policies
have.”
That new focus was evident this spring
in a less familiar event format for Sand-
ers: intimate, almost confessional town
halls. A panel of three or four ordinary cit-
izens would share stories of their hard-
ships, and others in the audience would
share their own tales, and Sanders would
respond with a mix of awkward sympa-
thy, synthesis of their situations and his
stump speech.
In the theater of a Burlington, Iowa,
school one afternoon, three panelists, all
women, sat onstage with Sanders. The
first, Carrie Duncan, spoke of her trou-
ble getting health insurance: not having
coverage when she worked in a school caf-
eteria in a nonunion job, getting coverage
when she landed a union job in an ammu-
nition plant and then losing it again be-
cause of rising costs. “The fat cats con-
tinue to grow richer by drinking from
the big bowls of cream that us little cats
get for them,” she said. “It’s time to make
the fat cats meow!” A nurse practitioner
named Teresa Krueger spoke of living
with Type 1 diabetes and her work car-
ing for patients with that condition, many
of whom cannot afford insulin, which has
surged in price over recent years.
Then came Pati French. “I’ve beenin second place behind Biden in national
and state polls. And while the move-
ment he built in 2016 has proven dura-
ble, there are few signs that it’s growing.
Between March and May, according to a
national survey by Monmouth Univer-
sity, Sanders’ support dropped from 25%
of likely Democratic votes to 15%, as sev-
eral rivals increased their share.
There is a feeling in Sanders’ orbit that
he will, in certain ways, have to evolve
if he wants to do more than change the
conversation. Tell his story more. Navi-
gate the shoals of racial and gender pol-
itics with greater awareness of contem-
porary expectations and his own blind
spots. Overcome his self-image of being
a solitary outsider—alone, unheard,
disrespected— and cultivate allies. “It’s
one thing to talk to your 20% to 25% who
are your core believers, but we’ve got to
work on persuading people into the fold,”
Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager,
told me. “And that’s why it takes, I be-
lieve, a continual evolution of the mes-
sage, freshening up the message and also
sharing more about him.”
Changing the conversation isn’t noth-
ing. William Jennings Bryan (three times
the Democratic Party nominee for Presi-
dent) changed the conversation. Eugene
Debs (five times the Socialist Party nom-
inee) changed the conversation. George
McGovern (who lost 49 states to Rich-
ard Nixon in 1972) changed the conver-
sation. But activists and prophets seldom
earn the chance to end up in command of
the 4th Infantry Division or sit knees-to-
knees with Vladimir Putin.
Yes, Sanders has already changed the
game. A question lingering over him is, To
win that game, can he change?FEEL THE PAIN
if The keyword of Bernie 2016 was
rigged, Bernie 2020 is about pain. It is a
campaign about stress and anxiety, about
tens of millions of people suffering alone,
together.Sanders focuses
on the human
toll of a rigged
system