Time: The Gospel of Bernie

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Time: The Gospel of Bernie

The man who brought fire back to the Democratic Party

Without a single TV ad–or a single congressional endorsement–Sanders has exposed the weakness of the party’s Clintonian establishment while at the same time spotlighting its hunger for an ideological savior. Polls now indicate that if the nominating contests were held tomorrow, Sanders would edge out Clinton in Iowa and beat her in New Hampshire by 10 points. Nationally, he has cut Clinton’s lead from an impregnable 46 points to a crumbling 21 points in just two months.

But even those metrics don’t convey the extent of the Sanders phenomenon. At Clinton events, campaign staffers section off floor space before her speeches to make her crowds look densely packed. Sanders needs no barriers. His audiences are authentically huge–28,000 in Oregon, 11,000 in Arizona, 7,500 in Maine. His volunteer army, meanwhile, though mostly self-organized online, numbers more than 182,000 people spread out from rural Alaska to the Florida Keys, people who have asked the campaign how to improvise events, knock on doors and spread the gospel from campus quad to living room to farmer’s market.

This is not just a campaign, says Sanders. It is a “movement,” a “revolution.” He is not only after delegates; he plans to “raise the political consciousness.” Contrast this with the message Clinton conveyed during a meeting this summer with a group of activists. Consummate political engineer, virtuoso of the knobs and dials of public opinion, Clinton said, “Look, I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.” David Axelrod, the onetime guru to Barack Obama, brutally mocked the plodding story line. “Hillary: Live With It,” tweeted Axelrod, “is no rallying cry.”

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