Hillary starts to ‘feel the Bern’ as anger energises Democrat race
HE is a septuagenarian senator and self-avowed socialist, but Bernie Sanders is on course for a resounding victory over Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary this week — a win that would set up a dogfight for the Democratic nomination that looked unthinkable just a few months ago.
After running Mrs Clinton to a virtual tie in Iowa, the anti-establishment Vermont senator is now 17 points clear of Mrs Clinton in the Granite State.
His anti-capitalist call to arms has inspired millions of young Americans and resonated strongly in the liberal counties of New Hampshire, where Mr Sanders was met with a roar of approval at a rally in Rochester last week.
The boisterous crowd was hopeful, but also angry, and Mr Sanders soon took the stage to promise “a revolution” in US politics and tell them that anger was exactly the right emotion.
Pledging to “take on Wall St, take on the billionaire class”, Mr Sanders insisted that as president he would fundamentally transform America.
It remains unclear whether his message can really propel him all the way to the nomination, but a big loss here would add to the sense that Mrs Clinton’s aura of invincibility is fading fast.
Nationally, Mr Sanders has erased a 30-point margin with the former secretary of state among Democrats in just six weeks, pulling into a statistical tie, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last Friday.
Among young women, once seen as a reliable voting bloc for Mrs Clinton, more than 80 per cent support the Vermont senator.
He even outperforms Mrs Clinton in hypothetical general election matchups with Republicans, and is flush with cash from an unprecedented wave of more than 2.5 million small donations.
As Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, put it “Democrats nationwide are ‘feeling the Bern’. ”
Spurning the advice of some in her party to skip New Hampshire to shore up her leads in South Carolina and Nevada, the next states to vote, Mrs Clinton has taken to the campaign trail with renewed vigour.
Mrs Clinton has countered that Mr Sanders’s political revolution is unrealistic, and pitched herself to voters at a rival event earlier that day as “a progressive that gets things done”.
Most independent analysts still think the nomination is Mrs Clinton’s to lose, but Mr Sanders’s grass roots fundraising, his appeal to idealistic young voters and Mrs Clinton’s lacklustre performances mean the fight could be longer and dirtier than anyone imagined.
“Hillary has been such an underperforming candidate that it gives him an opening,” said Larry Sabato, from the University of Virginia Centre for Politics. “The idea he would be the Democratic nominee is in my mind, laughable. I don’t think the Democrats are this stupid, but I’m starting to wonder.”
But for supporters such as Charles Sawyer, a 74-year-old retired Google software engineer, the Sanders socialist offering is more than just a pipedream in an America where wages are flat and inequality has become an overriding theme. “Bernie’s not appealing to the fear,” he enthused.
“It’s like a constellation in the stars and it comes together to form a picture of what’s wrong with our society.”
Political revolution, as Mr Sanders has reminded voters, begins with victory on Tuesday night; and not just any victory — he needs a big one.