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Bernie Sanders, an Outlier? The Senator Begs to Differ
Senator Bernie Sanders in his office on Capitol Hill last week. The "Excalibur" sword hanging on the wall was, he said, a gift from Ross Perot
WASHINGTON — One recent afternoon, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont gave another of the populist speeches that have drawn the largest crowds of the 2016 campaign to his rallies around the country and made him the unexpected rival to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The role of “super PACs” is “corrupt and amounts to legalized bribery,” he bellowed. Waving his arms at his sides, he quoted Abraham Lincoln and shared his own “vision for the future of this country.”
On the campaign trail, the speech would have elicited wild enthusiasm from his liberal supporters. But this was the Senate, which was virtually empty except for Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who was busy editing her own speech, and Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who was texting.
These days, Mr. Sanders does not feel rejected by his colleagues so much as baffled by a clubby institution that does not seem to understand the deep resentment about economic inequality that the professed socialist’s campaign has clearly tapped. “When I’m outside of here,” he said, “the ideas and the points that we are making are reverberating very strongly with the American people.
For all his newfound success on the campaign trail, Mr. Sanders is still regarded by his Senate colleagues as a peripheral figure whose surging presidential campaign is more of an endearing curio than a cause for reassessment.
Senators “are kind of surprised at the phenomenon,” said Vermont’s senior senator, Patrick J. Leahy, who, like many other Democrats, is backing Mrs. Clinton. “But nobody is trash-talking Bernie.”
That is because many senators respect Mr. Sanders’s consistency and fealty to his principles, his policy fluency and his ability to work with Republicans when he was chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs to pass legislation that overhauled the veterans’ health care system.
Others, however, consider such legislation a notable exception for a compromise-allergic ideologue who has over time managed to infuriate some moderate Democratic lawmakers resentful of his self-assigned role as the Senate’s liberal conscience.
Mr. Sanders is also not much of a favorite of Capitol Hill reporters who have grown used to his grumbling expressions of displeasure at the political nature of their questions. Asked about a gleaming “Excalibur” sword on the wall of his office, Mr. Sanders made it clear he knows his reputation.
“That is from Ross Perot,” Mr. Sanders said. “He said: ‘When media gives you a problem, take it out! Threaten them!’” (It was actually a gift for his work on the veterans bill.)
More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/15/us/politics/bernie-sanders-an-outlier-the-senator-begs-to-differ.html?_r=0
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