‘In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people here,’ Bernie Sanders said a bit awed as he took the stage in front of nearly 10,000 in a coliseum here.
Sanders has been attracting outsize crowds wherever he takes his unlikely presidential campaign: Five thousand came out for his kickoff rally in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont. Another 5,000 turned out in Denver, Colorado. In Minneapolis, a thousand listened from outside after the basketball arena where Sanders was speaking filled to capacity.
(MSNBC, July 2, 2015)
Not surprisingly, the media are hailing Bernie Sanders as the second coming of Barack Obama, hoping to scare the bejeezus out of Hillary Clinton.
But oh how soon they forget. After all, here is how these same media cheerleaders were hailing Ron Paul during the last presidential campaign.
Ron Paul: The other politician who can draw crowds…
Their policy stances couldn’t be any more different but there’s something Ron Paul shares in common with President Obama – at least in terms of campaigning – and that’s enthusiastic support from young people.
Paul may not ever supplant Barack Obama as the darling of the young, but you’d be hard pressed to find another Republican candidate who has such ardent young support so early on in the game.
(FOX News, April 18, 2011)
Mind you, I would like nothing more than to see Bernie do to Hillary in 2016 what Barack did to her in 2008.
But I know all too well that the populist Bernie stands even less chance of winning the Democratic nomination in 2016 than the populist Ron Paul did of winning the Republican nomination in 2012.