At NYT, "Young Democrats Flock to Bernie Sanders, Spurning Hillary Clinton’s Polish and Poise":
Is youth in rebellion against Hillary Clinton? @Yamiche and I report: https://t.co/7VR5Bdywor
— Amy Chozick (@amychozick) February 4, 2016
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Bernie Sanders is 74. He grew up playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn and watching a black-and-white television.Look, eight years with a stealth socialist candidate who's been stymied in realizing the revolution, youth voters want to complete it with a candidate who loudly proclaims his collective agenda, and tries to sugar coat it by calling it " democratic socialism."
Yet this child of the 1940s, who says Franklin D. Roosevelt is his favorite president, has inspired a potent political movement among young people today. College students wear shaggy white “Bernie” wigs on campus, carry iPhones with his image as their screen saver, and flock to his events by the thousands.
And armies of young voters are turning what seemed like a long-shot presidential candidacy into a surprisingly competitive campaign.
“He may seem like some old geezer who doesn’t care about stuff,” said Caroline Buddin, 24, a sales associate in Charleston, S.C. “But if you actually give him the time of day, and listen to what he has to say, he has a lot of good ideas.”
In interviews, young supporters of the Vermont senator’s presidential bid almost all offer some version of the same response when asked why they like him: He seems sincere.
For the generation that researchers say has been the most bombarded with marketing slogans and advertising pitches, Mr. Sanders, the former mayor of Burlington, Vt., has a certain unpolished appeal.
The first group of students working to elect Bernie Sanders president sprang up at Middlebury College in Vermont. There are now similar chapters at over 220 campuses across the country, with the biggest one at the University of California at Berkeley.
The movement, at least initially, was not so much the result of an organized effort by the Sanders campaign, but more of a visceral response to the candidate.
“It seems like he is at the point in his life when he is really saying what he is thinking,” said Olivia Sauer, 18, a college freshman who returned to her hometown, Ames, Iowa, to caucus for Mr. Sanders.
Young voters’ support for Mr. Sanders has created a quandary in Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, where millennial staff members have tried to persuade their peers to back the former first lady, using social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. On Monday in Iowa, Mr. Sanders defeated Mrs. Clinton among voters ages 17 to 29 by 70 percentage points, greater than the 43-percentage-point margin Barack Obama won in the same age group in Iowa in 2008.
That is true among both men and women, and even Mrs. Clinton called the gap “amazing” during an appearance on CNN on Wednesday...
Heh, Bernie honeymooned in Soviet Russia. We're in for one snooker of ride.
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