[E]SSEX JUNCTION — Nine months after he kicked off his presidential campaign on the shores of Lake Champlain, Bernie Sanders returned home to celebrate an easy Vermont primary victory in front of an adoring crowd on an otherwise tough Super Tuesday election night.
After a frenzied campaign, after tens of thousands of miles in planes, buses and rental cars, a bone-tired but exuberant Sanders told a packed, sometimes deafening crowd of 4,000 that he was happy to be back in the Green Mountain State.
“It is great to come home and see all my friends,” he said, a big smile beaming across his face.
The rowdy crowd cheered and screamed back, letting Sanders know they not only were Feeling the Bern, but embracing the return.
“You have sustained me,” the Vermont senator continued, speaking in an expo hall at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds. There was a distant, sweet smell of manure left over from the fair’s summer farm events that could be detected as Sanders spoke of how “I am so proud to bring Vermont values all across this country.”
The Vermont stampede — Sanders captured more than 85 percent of the vote — headlined a mix of good and bad news on a critical day where voters in 11 states cast ballots for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
Besides Vermont, Sanders won Oklahoma and caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, states he actively competed to win. As expected, Clinton crushed Sanders in the southern states, including Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia and Tennessee, where he did little advertising.
Clinton also squeaked out a win in Sanders’ backyard of Massachusetts, a tough loss since the Vermont senator had campaigned aggressively there in recent weeks.
In Vermont, Clinton failed to meet the 15 percent threshold to earn unpledged delegates so Sanders will pick up all 16. However, roughly half of the state’s 10 super delegates have pledged allegiance to Clinton.
Sanders and his campaign team acknowledged it was a difficult night. Their top strategist said it would be “one of the best nights for Hillary Clinton” but that the Sanders campaign was far from over and that they were looking ahead to delegate-rich states like California and New York.
Also, Sanders noted in his speech he would still pick up “hundreds of delegates’’ because they are allocated based on the percentage of the vote a candidate receives, not a winner-take-all system.
How many delegates exactly? Senior Strategist Tad Devine estimated the campaign would collect more than 300 delegates from Super Tuesday voting.
One senior aide noted that most campaigns die when they run out of cash or supporters lose enthusiasm, and he noted Sanders has been able to generate both. After breaking a single-month fundraising record of $20 million in January, the campaign hauled in more than $40 million in February.
Devine said Tuesday that the Vermont senator would take his candidacy all the way to the Democratic National Convention, scheduled for late July in Philadelphia.
Devine said Sanders has the resources for a drawn-out race. And despite his age and the schedule, a senior aide said Sanders was holding up well and is “running circles around the 20-year-olds. He’s got amazing stamina.”
“I can understand the Clinton campaign wants it to be over, the establishment wants it to be over,” Devine said. “It’s not going to be over until we are done.”
As Sanders noted, 15 states have voted, 35 to go.
Sanders had a relatively restful day back home, venturing out just twice before his rally — for a 3 p.m. visit to his Church Street headquarters and to vote around 7:30 am.
Sanders voted at the Robert Miller Community and Recreation Center in Burlington’s New North End, accompanied by his wife, Jane, according to the pool reporter allowed to join him.
After having his photo taken with a resident, Sanders revealed which candidate received his vote.
“I will tell you after a lot of thought, I voted for me for president,” he said, smiling.
Sanders was clearly happy to be back in Vermont, as were a number of national staffers, even if the visit was going to be brief. Last weekend in South Carolina, some expressed fatigue and an eagerness to return home to Vermont to do laundry, decompress, smell the fresh air and sleep in their own bed.
But the break will be short, with Sanders scheduled to visit Maine and Kansas Wednesday. The campaign says they feel good about chances in those two states, as well as number of others that vote in the coming days, including Illinois, California, New York and Michigan.
The event in Essex Junction was festive and featured a hometown lineup. The crowd was decidedly young, including many small children and infants.
A number of Vermonters spoke early in the evening, including ice cream magnate Jerry Greenfield and Democratic gubernatorial candidates Matt Dunne and Sue Minter.
Musician Ben Folds, at the piano, serenaded the crowd, as did local group Kat Wright and the Indomitable Soul Band.
One Sanders fan in the crowd held a sign critical of the state’s senior senator. It read, “Pat Leahy, why aren’t you here?” Another said “Elect Bernie, Tax Trump.”
Some of Sanders’ supporters from his days as mayor and congressman were in the crowd.
Tim Palmer, who ran Vermont CARES, one of the state’s first AIDS-support organizations, said he wasn’t worried about Tuesday results. He said what mattered most was which candidate does well in the swing states.
“The last time I checked, we’re still a republic, we still use the Electoral College. Last time I checked, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Texas have not historically voted for the Democratic candidate for president,” Palmer said, noting Sanders had well in the swing states New Hampshire and Iowa.
“For us as Democrats to permit states that are solidly Republican to have this huge outsized influence on who we select as our candidate is crazy,” he said.
“I’m not worried. I’m concerned. I’m going to work that much harder but for me the real test is who can win the independent voters and who can win in the swing states,” Palmer added.
Dean Corren, a former Progressive state representative who lost the 2014 race for Lieutenant Governor to Phil Scott, came to Essex Junction “just to be with Bernie.”
“Bernie’s back in Vermont and we love it,” said Corren, who worked for Sanders as his outreach coordinator. “It’s been extraordinary. Everybody has been amazed at what Bernie’s been able to do and the American public have risen to the occasion and caring about what’s happening to our future.”
“He’s touched a nerve of Americans throughout the country, not just in Vermont, who are realizing that something is very, very wrong. And you have other candidates who are much closer to the status quo and that just won’t do it,” Corren said.
The Republicans, he said, are “pushing back the limits of good taste, statesmanship and good reason and they’ve thrown it all away,” Corren said.
Whether Sanders can win, he said, is up in the air, but he noted in most states he started as a complete unknown.
“It’s a matter of time and being able to make progress at a rate that so far has exceeded anybody’s wildest dreams,” Corren said. “There’s a real unknown whether it can go to that next step and we’ll just see.”
Ralph Montefusco was part of Alliance at IBM, a pro-union group that tried to organize the computer giant, has known Sanders for more than 30 years.
“I’m surprised,” he said, “but it’s like my dream come true. I never thought he would even do this well and every time he advances more it just makes me smile even more.”
Sanders’ message, Montefusco said, is “resonating with people. They don’t care that he’s ethnically Jewish. They don’t care that he’s Socialist. They hear the message and they’re sitting there with stagnant wages, student debt, whatever it is and this rings true.”
Montefusco said selecting a nominee was a messy process but that Sanders could prevail over the establishment.
“I don’t know that it’s rigged. I think he needs to show who is he is between fundraising and winning delegates. I don’t think it’s over. I don’t think it’s far from over.”
Sanders, he noted, has been able to set fundraising records with small donations.
“The old metrics are dead,” he said.
Peter Lackowski served on the Burlington City Council from 1983 to 1987 while Sanders was mayor. He’s known Sanders since he ran for the U.S. Senate as a Liberty Union candidate in the early 1970’s.
“It’s amazing,” Lackowski said. “We all feel we’re a piece of this. We’ve all put our little bit into it. It’s amazing that we’re all here celebrating this with Bernie.”
Lackowski, 79, said he was impressed how well Sanders was holding up.
“I remember how much energy I had back when I was 74,” he said wistfully.
Lackowski recalled the early days when Sanders was mayor when the city council would block his every move, including his attempt to hire a secretary.
“People say how he could he work with a Congress like this? If he could work with the City Council, the way they were toward him in the early days, totally disrespectful. They were just waiting for him to dry up and blow away,” Lackowski said.
“It’s very intriguing to see how he’s lined things up for himself to be in this position and certainly with a solid base in Vermont. You can see that right now here,” he said.
Bo Muller-Moore, the promoter of “Eat More Kale,” grew up in Alabama and wished he could bus some of his old neighbors in to see how diverse the support for Sanders is.
“I would love my friends from Alabama to be up here and see bikers with leather jackets, hunters with camouflage shirts here. Now we’re obviously in a very white state, so when we look around we see a lot of white people here but that does not make us ignorant. We don’t live in a world with blinders on,” he said.
Covered head-to-toe in green, Muller-Moore “I think being at a rally like this, in which we haven’t had to have a public prayer yet tonight, is a very valuable and worthwhile exercise.”
After his 12-minute speech, a significantly truncated version of his usual talk, Sanders joined a group of musicians on stage to sing old Woody Guthrie favorite, “This Land is Your Land,” a song he famously recorded in the past with a hopeful message for the future contained in the first two lines.
“This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land,
From California to the New York Island…”
