‘Anybody here got any student debt?’ asks Bernie Sanders halfway through his speech at a rally in a small university on Monday. He then starts conducting a fake auction. ‘What are some of the numbers you got? You? 35,000. You? 55,000? Who else? A young lady here… 100,000 dollars. You win! I don’t know what you win, but you win!’ The students all hoot and chant. ‘Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!’ Sanders cracks an avuncular smile, then starts talking again about how rich the rich are.
It’s hard not to like Sanders. It’s hard not to ‘Feel the Bern’, as the mantra goes. He is 74 years old, and angry at the injustice of the world in a lovable old-codger way. The kids like that. The combination of his age and his affability, more than anything else, is the reason he is beating Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic Nomination. It’s why he trounced her in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
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