Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been stealing headlines recently as he gets his progressive message out and whips his fervent supporters into a frenzy over his 2016 presidential campaign. Left-wingers, hungry for an alternative to odds-on favorite Hillary Clinton, have embraced the self-described democratic socialist as he spreads his message of increased regulation for Wall Street and enhancement of the welfare state nationwide.
Sanders’ grassroots swell has not gone unnoticed in Georgia. On Sunday nearly 150 supporters of the Vermont Senator met at political hotspot Manuel’s Tavern in Decatur, eager to help progress the progressive movement. Said liberal activist Milt Tambor, who attended the event, “On all of the issues, he’s the most progressive candidate in the Democratic Party that we’ve had in decades. You want to talk about student debt, fixing infrastructure. You want to talk about reform, taxing corporations. Any of the issues, he’s ahead of everybody else.”
In New Hampshire, recent polls have shown Sanders creeping up to within a dozen points of Clinton in the Democratic primary. His fortunes appear significantly dimmer in all-important Iowa, though, where the former First Lady maintains a 42 point lead.
Expect those Iowa numbers to resemble more closely what we may see in Georgia, where Sanders supporters, (so far anyway) are uniformly comprised of the East-Atlanta-white-progressive crowd, a fragment of an already fragmented Georgia Democratic party that has trouble putting candidates into the state house, much less the White House.
Hardcore left-wing activists aren’t the only ones rooting for a Sanders upset though. Many in the GOP would be thrilled to see him topple Hillary, paving the way for what would instantly become a highly winnable general election in 2016. Clinton, for all her liberal leanings, is a downright centrist compared to Sanders and his heavily pro-union sensibilities. If Sanders can’t win, (and barring some sort of major unforeseen incident out of the Clinton camp, he can’t) he could at least push Hillary further to the left. This too would be a victory, albeit more minor, for Republicans, who would love to see the Democrats’ anointed candidate face at least a little tribulation during the primary process.
