Not Him, Them
Bernie Sanders will never be president. He won’t be Joe Biden’s pick for vice president. He’s not joining the Cabinet. He’s run his last race—he’ll be 82 when his current Senate term is up in 2024, and people close to him feel sure that will be it for him.
Who will be on the ballot in 2024, trying to continue the movement he sparked? Who will take Sanders’s place in progressives’ hearts and on their T-shirts? Who could connect as viscerally, as widely, with such a force of personality? Look at the people who supported Sanders’s campaign. Could anyone else in American politics have been embraced by Evo Morales and Jack Nicholson; Jesse Jackson and the 37-year-old mayor of Jackson, Mississippi; hipster progressives and blue-collar workers; Ben & Jerry and Cardi B?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman and political sensation, gets named the most. Other members of “the squad”—Representatives Ilhan
