Four months after losing a bitter Democratic primary, and with less than a week before the presidential election, Bernie Sanders is doing much more than simply endorsing Hillary Clinton and serving as her surrogate. He’s crisscrossing the country, sometimes giving multiple speeches a day, whipping up crowds for his former rival and down-ballot Democrats alike. On Wednesday, demonstrating his willingness to make the case anywhere, his tour takes him to a city whose name is cultural shorthand for far-flung locales: Kalamazoo, Michigan.



Bernie's political operation says he'll campaign in NH ME MI WI OH NC IA NE CO AZ NV CA b/w now and Election Day. Quite a closing sprint. — Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) October 31, 2016

It’s somewhat remarkable for the iconoclastic Vermont senator. Despite retaining his socialist ideals and opting again to return to Congress as a political independent, he is, at least for now, a partisan warrior.

“Bernie has demonstrated that he understands the stakes of this election,” Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant who was the senior strategist for Sanders’s presidential run, told The New Republic. He described his old boss campaigning for Clinton, which began in the summer, as “incredibly valuable” and “an enormous benefit for her” that “will have impact on Election Day.”

Sanders has never been a Democrat at heart. Back in February, PolitiFact delved into his career as a “40-year-outsider,” a rabble-rousing lefty who first ran for office with his state’s socialist Liberty Union Party, served as Burlington mayor as an independent and self-described socialist, and went to Congress, famously, with that same designation. Prior to 1990, he was actively hostile to Democrats, disparaging them in the press and running against them even when they warned he might play spoiler and help elect a Republican. (Madeleine May Kunin, the Democrat who was Vermont’s first female governor, says Sanders dismissed this concern before challenging her re-election in 1986; he called the two major parties “Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”)

Sanders did establish detente with the party after arriving on Capitol Hill—moving legislation, winning committee assignments, and even earning endorsements for re-election as the years progressed—but he never injected himself meaningfully into presidential politics. He attended his first Democratic National Convention eight years ago, backing Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. But top Obama aides told BuzzFeed he didn’t lift a finger when it really mattered. In fact, he used to attack Obama from the left.