’Summer of Sanders’

Bernie Sanders became impossible to ignore this summer. On July 1, as 10,000 people cheered and chanted his name, the 73-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont summited a stage in a Madison, Wis., arena and took his place behind a wooden podium. He raised his right arm to wave at a sea of supporters and embraced his wife, Jane, with his left. Then, peering up at the distant nosebleed seats, Sanders did something unusual: He grinned. “Whoa,” he said.

Whoa, indeed.

In the 43 years since Sanders first ran for office, skeptics have doubted him at every turn. They never believed he could serve as mayor, defeat an incumbent congressman or chair a senate committee. Well before he entered the presidential race in April, Beltway pundits had long since written him off as an also-ran—a latter-day Dennis Kucinich.

But by the time Sanders arrived in Madison at the start of a three-state, four-day tour of the Midwest, CNN had declared it the “summer of Sanders.”

Read this story in its entirety at Vermont’s Seven Days site, here.