Could A Socialist Senator Become A National Brand?
As members of Congress continue hammering out a bill to improve the Veterans Administration's beleaguered health care system, attention has focused on one man leading the charge: Bernie Sanders, Independent senator from Vermont and a self-described Socialist.
Sanders barely got 2 percent of the vote when he first tried breaking into Vermont politics in the 1970s, but now there's buzz that the man known simply as "Bernie" may be a presidential candidate in 2016.
"The cost of war is huge," he said recently during lunch at Henry's Diner in Burlington, Vt., where he rose to become an immensely popular mayor in the 1980s. "It's not just tanks and guns and planes. It's what happens to people's lives."
Sanders' frizzy hair may have gotten whiter since his mayoral days, but it could still use a comb. And when he opens his mouth, you don't hear New England — you hear Brooklyn.
He's also not one for idle chit chat. Even the most casual conversation relentlessly returns to the central idea that animates him: the wide gulf between rich and poor in this country.
