“Bernie has that unique ability to talk about what could be versus what is and connects with people,” said Gary De Carolis, a progressive ally on Burlington’s Board of Aldermen when Sanders was mayor. “He connects with a lot of different groups of people, but one group in particular are people who have felt like no one really, in the end, truly cared about what their issues were. And he rejuvenated their interest in the political system.”

“We pulled off something no one thought we could do,” Sanders said at the time of his unlikely victory. He called it a “mini-revolution.”

“It’ll never happen again,” a Democrat who was a past president of the board vowed. “He’s a one-term mayor.”

Only it did. And he wasn’t.

In 1982, when Sanders wasn’t even on the ballot, he nonetheless knocked on more doors, an effort that helped three progressives running for seats on the board to oust Democrats. It meant there were five progressives on the board, not two, along with five Republicans and now just three Democrats—a fundamental shift of power. There was no way around it anymore. The Democrats had to work with Sanders. This was only solidified when he was reelected in 1983 with 52.8 percent of the vote and turnout was 3,000 votes greater than just two years before. And then Sanders won again in ’85. And again in ’87. The Democrats in Burlington had tried to stop him, and they failed.

It was clear, though, even then, even from the start of his electoral success, that Sanders had his sights set beyond Burlington. He wanted “fundamental changes in the economic structure of this country,” he said in his initial inaugural address. “In the final analysis, the people of America are going to have to say that the wealth, labor and natural resources must be used to benefit all the people, not just a few super-rich.”

It was equally evident that he was ready for a slog. “The concept of burnout is a neurosis of our time,” he told an interviewer, according to a transcript in his papers in the Sanders archives kept at the University of Vermont. “A person works three years on something and says he’s burned out because he didn’t change the world.”

Trying to change the world, Sanders seemed to understand, was going to take a lot longer than that.



On the campaign trail, Sanders’ events often feel different from those of the other candidates. The average age is lower, the identifiable misfits and outcasts more numerous, the work boots more conspicuous—the devotion more pronounced. I’ve attended town halls, meet-and-greets, and news conferences of his that were just as workaday as those of the others. At his best events, though, there is a kind of electric charge.

Late one night late last month, for instance, in Ames, Iowa, in a double-decked auditorium, capacity not quite 900, well more than 1,000 people wedged into every seat and stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the aisles. Hundreds more lined up outside. Inside, up on the stage, the band Portugal. The Man injected into the venue a festive, practically triumphant vibe. It was loud. It was fun. It was body-heat warm. It was a bona fide scene. And when Sanders finally came out to give his speech, he took a look at the crowd and landed a joke. “We won’t tell the fire marshal,” he said to laughs. “Not a word.”

But the event I found myself still thinking about, even in New Hampshire, was one I had gone to the night before Ames, in Iowa City.

Two reasons. The first?