NYT: Setting Bernie Sanders Apart From the Field: A Palpable Sense of Conviction
NYT: Setting Bernie Sanders Apart From the Field: A Palpable Sense of Conviction
As much as Mr. Sanders has inhabited the role of antiestablishment insurgent in shaking up the 2016 Democratic presidential field, his reputation in Vermont — where left-leaning is a relative term — is anything but. Now, as his legion of newly minted fans and those Democrats who fear a Sanders nomination await his performance in Tuesday’s debate, the question is how his lengthy, fed-up stump speeches will translate to the controlled environment of a CNN set in which he will face deft, accomplished debaters, led by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The answer is probably just fine.
A review of Mr. Sanders’s campaign debates — from his early days as a no-shot radical; through his tenure as a crafty, independent small-city mayor; and as a congressman and then a junior senator from Vermont — shows that his economic inequality message has remained strikingly unchanged. And it reveals a compelling, highly confident debating style in which Mr. Sanders wields his accomplishments and command of policy, but mostly a palpable sense of conviction and outrage, to set him apart on stages where allotted speaking times and parsed positions are the norm.