A progressive gathering in Vermont debated how to take on Trump – and who should be the Democrats’ nominee

Bernie Sanders could not escape the question.

“Bernie 2020!” someone in the audience shouted, interrupting his keynote speech at the start of a three-day conference in the city where he began his political career as mayor.

In between panels, over spoonfuls of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and sips of local craft beers, activists who worked for the Vermont senator in 2016 eagerly discussed the prospect of a second campaign. Jeff Weaver, his campaign manager then, fielded questions about 2020 as he mingled with guests.

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Then Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, raised the stakes considerably.

“Let me convey a message from all of us in Europe,” Varoufakis said to Sanders during a panel discussion. “For all those comrades of yours who are now struggling to reclaim our cities, our world … our environment: we need Bernie Sanders to run for president.”

Surrounded by his most loyal supporters, who rose in roaring applause, Sanders smiled sheepishly.

“And on that note,” he said, it was time to bring the session to a close.

The moment captured the improbable arc of a 40-year career that has brought the independent senator from Vermont to the doorstep of a second run for the White House. When Sanders launched his campaign in May 2015, 76% of Americans had either no opinion of him or had never heard of him. Now, the nation – like the world – is waiting to see what the 77-year-old leader of the American left decides to do next.

Sanders has repeatedly stated that he will run again only if he believes he is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. At the inaugural Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington, he joined prominent leftwing activists, academics and officials to articulate a progressive vision that could counteract Trump’s grievance-based appeal.

“Only all that we love is on the line,” Nina Turner, a Sanders Institute fellow and one of the senator’s most ardent supporters, told an audience on Friday morning.

In sessions on climate change, income inequality and rightwing nationalism, panelists expressed deep-seated fears that US democracy – and the planet – were at risk under Trump.

Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife who founded the institute last year, said the accelerating threat of global warming and Trump’s assault on democratic institutions weigh heavily on her husband’s mind as he consults friends, supporters and other Democrats about whether to seek the presidency again.

“He has no burning desire to be president – he has a burning desire to have his country be better for people of all backgrounds,” she said. “So he has to determine if he is the best person to defeat Donald Trump.”

In 2016, Sanders electrified crowds with fist-thumping speeches against the “billionaire class” and corporate greed. He won 22 state primaries and earned more than 13m votes in what was essentially a two-person race against Hillary Clinton.

The speeches – and the crowds – haven’t changed much. But the path to the nomination has.

The Democratic field promises to be wide and unsettled, like the Republican primary in 2016. As many as three dozen figures have expressed an interest in running, among them former vice-president Joe Biden, businessman Michael Bloomberg and congressman Beto O’Rourke.

Sanders has acknowledged that should he run he could face a number of “good candidates” including “friends, people I have known for a long time”. Among them are several Senate colleagues who could run under the progressive banner: Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Jeff Merkley of Oregon – the last, one of the few members of Congress who endorsed Sanders in 2016.

“This will be a battle royale,” Cenk Uygur, the founder of the Young Turks news network, said between panels on Friday. “I am asking progressives: whatever you do, do not do a circular firing squad.”

He said the number of prospective progressives in the race was a testament to their ascendancy within the party – but he still believed Sanders is the best, most effective messenger for the cause.

“Name recognition is the most underrated factor in American politics and he has it,” Uygur said. “We should not squander that advantage.”

In November, Democrats recaptured the House of Representatives. But many prominent candidates lost after running on a Sanders-style platform. A handful of those candidates, including Ben Jealous of Maryland, Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and Randy Bryce of Wisconsin, joined the conference in Burlington.

Bryce, an ironworker who fell short in the Wisconsin congressional district being vacated by the House speaker, Paul Ryan, rejected the notion his defeat was a repudiation of the progressive movement.

“It’s not just about winning an election, it’s about furthering a movement,” he told an audience on Friday night. He added that the energy generated by his campaign helped Democrats oust Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, in what was viewed as a major victory in a state Trump won in 2016.

Still, the results have set off a debate on the left about how progressives might win outside the country’s most liberal enclaves and whether the movement might be better served by a “fresh face” for 2020.

Weaver, Sanders’ longtime adviser whose memoir of the 2016 campaign ends with the line “Run, Bernie, Run”, rebuffed any suggestion the senator’s best days were behind him.

“What voters want is a candidate with fresh ideas – someone who has the courage of their convictions and who is an authentic messenger of their platform,” he said. “A progressive vision alone is not enough. Democrats need a candidate with a progressive vision who can beat Trump.”

Sanders, Weaver said, is uniquely positioned to be the party’s dragon-slayer. He pointed to his sway in 2016 with young voters and independents and his primary successes in rural and working-class areas.

Though polling at this stage in the 2016 cycle proved an unreliable predictor, Sanders, Biden and Warren sit at the top of early primary tallies. And in hypothetical general election match-ups, Sanders consistently leads Trump.

Republicans have expressed glee at the prospect of running against Sanders, whose association with socialism they believe makes him both an easy target and a weapon to be used against the party’s candidates in moderate and swing districts.

It’s the same logic that unsettles some national Democrats, who concede that Sanders would be a formidable primary challenger.

His supporters roll their eyes. That Sanders is a democratic socialist is well known and yet, his allies note, his favorability ratings remain high. A Gallup poll from September showed 53% of Americans viewed him favorably.

Sanders draws pleasure from reminding audiences that Democrats who once dismissed his ideas as “too radical” and “too expensive” are now supporting them. And it’s not just Democrats, he insists: it’s a majority of the country. The senator frequently cites a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found 70% of Americans support his signature policy proposal, Medicare for All.

Sanders has spent the last year laying the groundwork for a second run. Like his potential rivals, he crossed the country on behalf of Democratic candidates during the 2018 midterms, traveling to battleground states: Michigan and Florida, Nevada and Arizona.

He has sought to address his record on gun rights, which Clinton exploited in 2016, and to strengthen his foreign policy credentials. He has started to talk about his leadership on legislation to end US support for the Saudi-led military effort in Yemen, which cleared a procedural hurdle last week in an unprecedented rebuke of Trump.

He has also spent time trying to improve his outreach to minorities, especially African American voters. But even his supporters concede he still struggles to speak about race with the fluency and clarity with which he addresses issues of class.

Last week, Sanders released a new book, Where We Go From Here: Two Years in the Resistance, a retelling of his legislative and political accomplishments since dropping out of the primary race in June 2016. He highlights record levels of support for House and Senate versions of his Medicare for All healthcare plan and his success pressuring Disney and Amazon to raise minimum wages for hourly workers.

“People do believe in our ideas,” Sanders told supporters in Burlington on Thursday. “So what do we do?”

For those in the room – the foot soldiers of his political revolution – the answer was obvious.

“He re-energized a progressive movement in ways that we have not seen in the 21st century,” said Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who runs Our Revolution, the political group that grew from the 2016 campaign. “He created this momentum and he should be the one running for president.”