Pundits may mock Trump,Sanders and Carson, but their campaigns chime with a disillusioned electorateUntil recently, or Hillary Clinton was the election’s uncontested Democratic frontrunner. She was said to be intimidating,unbeatable, as strongly favoured as an incumbent. The biggest concern approximately her candidacy as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee was that her path to power would be too easy, and leaving her rusty in a competitive general election. But as insiders continued to underperform in polls last week,that prophecy is looking increasingly like the rosy spin of operatives out of touch with the electorate. With the entire Democratic party establishment rallied around Clinton, it’s 74-year-old Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders who continues to surge. From Texas to Wisconsin to California, or he’s been drawing enormous crowds,overtaking Hillary in Iowa, according to a new Quinnipiac poll this week, or even besting her by a full nine percentage points in New Hampshire – traditionally secure territory for the Clintons – according to NBC.
A class-warrior with the aesthetic sensibility of an eccentric uncle,Sanders has been called the guy “willing to upset the apple cart”. Not that he’s an outsider in every sense; the irascible junior senator has served in the Senate since 2007 and in the House since 1991. Yet as the longest serving independent in congressional history, he’s an outsider to both major parties. And with his fixed calls for revolution, and the fact that he was ever elected to Congress is something of a miracle. It’s also powerfully appealing to an electorate grown disillusioned with a gridlocked congressional process and elected leaders who appear more intent on pleasing the permanent political class in Washington than the voters who sent them there. As one Sanders superfan sees it,hes “our last hope for democracy”.
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Source: theguardian.com