Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told Yahoo and ABC News that he would have "damn good platform" to run for president in 2016 and criticized the idea of "anoint[ing]" Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. Given Sanders' comments, we decided to re-post our piece from a few months back looking at exactly what kind of campaign the Socialist Senator from Vermont would run.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton or Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz admitted they were seriously considering starting a presidential campaign, it's hard to overstate how much of a media response that would provoke. When Bernie Sanders announces that he's been thinking about 2016, the same hysteria doesn't hold.

The senator from Vermont isn't surprised. Although reporters have always been enamored of his hair -- which starts to resemble Charlton Heston parting a sea when Sanders begins passionately speaking about income inequality or Social Security -- and his gruff unwillingness to tell anecdotes lest you write about his personality rather than his policies, his political ambitions are rarely taken seriously.

With presidential candidates now relying on raising millions from small donors and big donors — besides having one, two or three outside groups raising millions on the side — a candidate who has made fighting big donors and outside groups part of his platform seems to have pre-written his campaign's death knell. Sanders has never accepted corporate PAC money, and the average donation to his campaign during the first quarter of 2014 was $28.95.

That doesn't seem to bother Sanders. He's currently gaming out whether he has enough supporters to field a Dumbledorian grass-roots army big enough to buoy a presidential bid. "In order for someone like me to be a viable candidate," he says, "you need to have a big grass-roots following. A large, large number of people who can knock on doors. That's what I've been doing for a long time. It's worked pretty well for me so far."

Sanders' history is a mathematical proof of how improbable campaigns can blossom into an improbable career with even more improbable longevity. When he ran in the 1981 mayoral election in Burlington, Vt., a fair number of people laughed at the idea of a 39-year-old political novice — who happened to be a self-described Democratic socialist — running against a five-term incumbent who didn't even bother campaigning. Sanders had run a few unsuccessful campaigns in the ’70s: twice for the Senate and twice for governor.

He won the mayoral election by 10 votes. "Not exactly a landslide," as Sanders put it at the time.

The state Democratic chair said after his victory — made possible by organizing a coalition of students, college professors and elderly and low-income residents — ''I think everyone's scared right now." Six months into his term, Sanders received a parking ticket for having his car in the mayor's parking spot. As the 1983 mayoral election approached, many assumed Sanders was on his way out. A city alderman said, ''I don't know what happened to the Democrats in the last election. I can only tell you that it won't happen in the next election.''

Turnout doubled, and Sanders won again. By the time he ran for the U.S. House in 1988, nearly everyone in the state referred to the politician by his first name. As Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) told Mark Leibovich in 2007, "His bumper stickers just say, ‘Bernie.' You have to reach a certain exulted status in politics to be referred to only by your first name.”

He didn't win in 1988, but he came close, and there was no doubt people were paying attention. ''There were 25 debates, and Bernie is the best debater in the state. Bernie makes sense at the top of his lungs, and not many people can do that.'' When he ran for the House again in 1990, he did win, and became the first independent elected to the House in 40 years.

In 2006, he ran for the Senate, and decisively beat a Republican businessman who outspent him by about $1 million. He won reelection in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote.

"If you look at his financial reports, they are very different from just about any Senate candidate," says Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College. "They are mostly in $25, $50, $100 increments. Not many four figure donations." If Sanders decides to run in 2016, Davis says, "I wouldn't be surprised if he raised three times as much. At least $20 million."

And, regardless of the fact that many people in politics and the media don't take his presidential ambitions seriously, he definitely has some people excited. As Wonkblog pointed out Monday, Sanders beats every other politician in Congress when it comes to being talked about on Facebook.

Sanders has improbable victories down to a science. However, the art of electioneering — and, in particular- money raising — has transmogrified since Sanders's early days.

First, Barack Obama decided not to take public financing for the 2008 general presidential election.

Then there were the Citizens United and Speechnow.org v. FEC decisions in 2010. In 2011, the House voted along party lines to abolish the Presidential Election Campaign Fund and the Presidential Primary Matching Payment Account — as well as the Election Assistance Commission — and transfer the money to the U.S. Treasury to decrease the deficit. The Senate has not embraced any similar legislation.

In the 2012 presidential election, neither candidate took public financing. More than $7 billion was spent during the 2012 election cycle. Last month, the Supreme Court decided to relax campaign finance regulations even more in McCutcheon v. FEC.

Organizing a coalition of students, college professors and elderly and low-income residents sure sounds nice, but it doesn't pack quite the same punch as a few million bucks from a super donor, money that Sanders would flinch from like a vampire from garlic if it were ever offered. "Is this grass-roots support there for me?" Sanders says. "That's the question I need to ask myself. I don't know that it is. It's going to be hard."