To put this in some perspective, let's take stock of who the players are here. Bernie Sanders is not even a Democrat. He caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but he's actually a self-avowed socialist who wants you to know in no uncertain terms that he is
not a capitalist. He should be every bit the fringe candidate that libertarian Rand Paul is turning out to be on the Republican side. And yet he's not only leading in the first primary state, he's jumped out to a freaking big lead.
And this over the candidate we were told was so powerful and so appealing and so well qualified, her nomination was inevitable.
Now this doesn't mean Hillary can't or won't still win the nomination. She still has the most money and almost all the establishment support. What does doesn't appear to have is any grassroots enthusiasm whatsoever. I'll share my anecdotal experience from social media. I have a lot of liberal friends on Facebook. Probably several hundred. What I observe is very little enthusiasm for Hillary, and what there is comes from either professional campaign consultants (mostly from one I am sure is working on her campaign) and from officeholders or Democratic Party officials.
By contrast, the people I know who just happen to be liberal but are not connected politically are unanimous in their support of Sanders. Unanimous. There is not a single one who posts pro-Hillary comments or links, or who ever talks Hillary up. If they mention her in a positive way at all, it's to say they're not crazy about her but that they guess she'd be better than Trump, Cruz, etc. But just as often, they're ripping her for being inauthentic and untrustworthy.
That's just my one anecdotal experience. Yours could be different, I suppose. But is it?
Or do you see exactly the same thing I see? The Democratic primary electorate does not want Hillary Clinton. At all. She's being shoved down their throats by a party establishment still largely controlled by the Clintons, which made it clear early on that all the money and all the establishment backing would belong to Hillary, so no one else need bother to run. That only left dreamers like Martin O'Malley, unserious people like Lincoln Chafee, a guy trying to make some sort of point like Jim Webb . . . and Bernie Sanders, an unapologetic socialist who has nothing to lose and who, as it turns out, appeals quite nicely to the Democrat base. Because they're socialists too.
If Hillary does win the nomination, it won't be because anyone really wanted her. It will be because they were given no plausible alternative. And as it turns out, they are so disinterested in having Hillary as president, even a socialist doesn't look to them like such an implausible alternative.
The media would have you believe the GOP is completely dysfunctional, but I would take our situation any day over this one.
You can say it's not significant because he's from nearby Vermont, but Bernie Sanders isn't even supposed to be viewed as a serious candidate - let alone one who can lead the inevitable nominee by 14 points in a very important first primary state. Yet that's exactly what he's doing:
