In 1985, when Bernie Sanders was in his second term as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a writer named Russell Banks published his breakthrough novel, Continental Drift. It would earn Banks the John Dos Passos Prize, and make him a finalist for the Pulitzer for fiction. Sometime after the book came out, Banks accepted an assignment to profile the self-described socialist mayor. He followed Sanders around the city, watched him interact with constituents, and recorded his candid views. He produced a remarkable and compelling portrait of a distinctive politician, but it never found its way into print. Instead, it was filed away for three decades. With Sanders leading in the polls in New Hampshire, though, we now offer it to our readers, as a look at the senator before he became a national figure.

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T. Alan Broughton remembers going along reluctantly with a group of local poets and writers who were giving a reading to raise funds for Sanders’s election. “We read our poems, and it was nice enough, sort of like a coffeehouse event from the Sixties, and then we passed the hat, and then Bernie got up to say a few words, of thanks, we figured. He started talking about how much he liked poetry, how much it had always meant to him, like we all expected him to do, and then, before we knew it, he was reading a couple of his own poems, which weren’t really all that great, but they had a passionate Beat Generation kind of intensity to them, about the poor, of course, and the evils of capitalism. Then, suddenly, there he was reciting from memory “Do Not Go Gentle”, by Dylan Thomas, reciting this rich, rolling Welchman’s poem in a heavy Brooklyn accent. And it was kind of wonderful, you know? He was loving the poem, letting us see him love it, and reading it totally unselfconsciously in this utterly inappropriate accent, and I felt then for the first time how great it would be to have a guy like that as mayor of my city.”

Sanders has this effect on a lot of people. His supporters and the members of his administration are called Sanderistas, originally a pejorative tag that is worn now with good-humored pride, like the T-shirts that have “Welcome to the People’s Republic of Burlington” printed on them, a slogan generated by a remark attributed to Sanders by the cartoonist Gary Trudeau in a “Doonesbury” strip run shortly after Sanders’ first election victory. Trudeau portrays Sanders as a guest on the Tom Snyder’s “Tomorrow” show. Snyder says, “Mr. Mayor, let’s be candid, okay? You’re a socialist. You’re a Jew. You’re from New York. So how the heck’d you get elected?” Sanders answers, “The people of Burlington wanted a change. They decided to send the capitalist system a clear message.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-mayor...