In Search of the End of Bernie’s Campaign

In Search of the End of Bernie’s Campaign

I went to Indiana to experience the last gasp of the Sanders run. I found something else.

By Seth Stevenson

Three Sundays ago, just before the New York primary, I went to the enormous Bernie Sanders rally in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to observe 28,000 Bernistas basking in afternoon sun and each other’s wokeness. Art-mope rockers Grizzly Bear played a three-song set. Actor Justin Long gave an intro speech during which he apologized for being rich. And then, at last, greeted by Beatlemania-level cheers, Bernie emerged to yell about fat-cat billionaires and imminent revolution.

Bernie had just won seven primaries in a row and gone hard after Hillary Clinton in their debate at the nearby Navy Yard. Everybody in the park seemed jazzed. Confident in their cause. Buoyed by the swell of their numbers.

You know what happened next: Hillary crushed him in New York. She crushed him again the next week in a flurry of “Acela primaries.” The delegate dorks were calling time of death on Bernie’s nomination run—practically backhoe-ing dirt over his campaign. Still, he didn’t drop out. Many assumed he’d now tone things down, stop criticizing Hillary, and play nice until he disappeared. So I flew to Indiana, the next state on the primary roster, to catalog a campaign on its last legs.

When I got there, it appeared no one had told the Hoosiers to give up the fight. At a Bernie rally in Bloomington, corn-fed college kids packed an Indiana University theater to capacity, leaping to their feet for standing O’s each time Bernie lifted his voice a notch or two above his usual bellow. A few days later, their compatriots in South Bend stuffed a convention hall to the gills, queuing up for blocks just to catch a glimpse of the sparse snowdrifts cresting Bernie’s dome.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/bernie_sanders_and_his_supporters_march_on.html