Here’s something everyone needs to understand as Sanders emerges as the clear Democratic front-runner: His supporters are not all, or even mostly, ideologically on the Left. That’s because voters are not mostly ideological.
This is hard to remember, especially in the policy-heavy, ideologically laden world of Washington. But if we’re to understand Sanders, we need to think outside the paradigm of Left-Center-Right.
Sanders’s appeal is a populist one; much like President Trump’s, that populist appeal is not so much ideological as it is an expression of powerlessness and frustration.