Found this, recently, from a piece I wrote in the National in 2016. Extract:
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews didn’t even try to conceal his establishment leanings as he berated Mr Sanders in a recent interview, demanding that the socialist senator from Vermont explain how he would persuade the senate to enact his promise of free college tuition. The senate would never do it, Matthews patronisingly explained. Mr Sanders clearly didn’t understand the rules of the game.
Mr Sanders patiently explained that he understood the rules of the game all too well – he was, in fact, running against the game. That has been the whole point of his campaign. His opponent, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, brands him an irresponsible dreamer, promising that she can “get things done”. He counters that the only things she could get done are things acceptable to the Republican-controlled Congress, and the corporate sponsors of both parties. His campaign and – in the unlikely event he’s elected – his presidency are a platform for protest against the political and economic status quo of which Mrs Clinton is an integral part.
Mr Sanders vows to get things done by mobilising millions of people in the streets – which, by the way, is how African Americans and women earned the right to vote and working people earned the right to a 40-hour week.
Justice in America has always been driven from below in often bitter battles before being codified by courts and legislatures. Mr Sanders is running as a radical challenge to the status quo rather than promising, as Mrs Clinton does, to be an agent of continuity and competent management.
And while a press corps finds Mr Sanders’s message incomprehensible, it has resonated with millions of voters whose living standards and economic prospects have steadily declined since 1980, regardless of which party has been in the White House.
The extent to which Mrs Clinton has been forced to echo many of his positions underscores the extent to which Mr Sanders has transformed the conversation. The influence of his ideas will far outlive his campaign.