-I think because Vermont
is so small,
it takes a different kind
of candidate to do well here.
You really need to go out there
and meet a lot of the people
who are going to vote
for or against you.
We tend to produce candidates
who may be a little bit
rough around the edges
but have that personal touch.
-Bernie Sanders seemed to come
out of nowhere in 2015.
He was an obscure senator
from a small state.
And he shouted a lot.
-You want to share it
with the American people!
-But people were listening.
-Bernie Sanders is the person
I've
been looking for all my life.
-I just like how he doesn't lie.
He tells the truth,
and he's just about the issues.
He's not playing
a political game.
-People were making fun of me
last summer,
"He's not gonna make it."
Look, here we are now,
this summer.
We're going.
-For David Zuckerman,
it brought back old memories.
-Bernie first inspired me
as a cynical college student
back in the early '90s.
I thought that the
corporate money in politics,
that the two parties
and the power structure
was something I didn't want
to get involved in.
-But thanks to Sanders,
Zuckerman did get involved.
He's now Vermont's
lieutenant governor.
-I was incredibly impressed
with what he did a few years ago
where basically that inspiration
for me I saw happen
with millions of people
all across the country.
-For many Americans,
it felt like Sanders
had a fresh and urgent message.
But it was the same message he'd
been running on for 40 years.
-What we talk about is the fact
that in our society,
theoretically
a democratic society,
you have a handful of people
who control our economy.
In the United States today,
we have the most unequal
distribution of income
and wealth
of any major country on earth.
-When Sanders was elected mayor
of Burlington in 1981,
it got national attention.
-Face it, you don't find
too many socialists
in elective office
in this country,
and one is elected mayor of a
sizable city, well, that's news.
-You try to make the story,
you know, Communist takeover.
I said, "No, no, not at all."
-Garrison Nelson has known
Sanders
since his earliest days
in politics.
He says Sanders may have
talked like a radical,
but he didn't govern like one.
-There's no five-year plan.
There's no collectivize
agriculture.
There's no nationalizing,
you know, of industry.
Every rich person
in Burlington remained rich.
You know, no, they weren't
driven out of the city
by the lefty mayor.
-Already gone through
and been approved.
-No, Senate's not in.
-Bob Kinzel is one of Vermont's
most well-known journalists.
He's covered Sanders
for decades.
-Bernie's got a lot
of philosophical ideas
that are quite broad
and wide-ranging.
And people say,
"Can he compromise?
Can he work with people?
Can he work with
the business community?"
And as mayor,
he showed he could.
-What is the history
of this problem?
How long has this problem
gone on?
Is it worse today than it was
20 years ago or what?
-Well, the problem
has almost gone on forever.
As long as Burlington has had
a sewer system,
which probably dates from
about the middle of the 1800s,
we've been dumping it
in the lake.
-Now, if you look
at the old waterfront,
you had these big oil tanks
out in the water,
and the place was just a mess.
And he worked with
the business community to say,
"Let's make the waterfront sort
of the jewel of Burlington."
-Sanders also increased funding
for the arts
during his four terms as mayor.
-So you had this sort of synergy
of lefty politics
and then, you know,
artists and musicians,
and the city just became
just vibrant,
sort of mini mecca here
in the woods of New England.
-Bernie Sanders.
It's time for change.
-In 1990, Sanders ran
for the House of Representatives
as a member of the independent
party, and he won.
In 2006, Vermonters
made him a senator.
He spent much of his time
in Washington as an outsider,
a third-party politician
in a two-party town
and a champion of progressive
policies at a time
when Democrats
were moving to the center.
-As an independent,
I have problems
with the Democrats' bill.
It does not go anywhere
near far enough.
Let me describe very briefly
how, with a single-payer system,
we can provide
quality healthcare
to every man, woman,
and child in this country.
We should be clear that a war
and a long-term
American occupation of Iraq
could be extremely expensive.
Does anybody in America
really think that the problem
in this institution now
is that working people and
poor people have too much power?
-If you keep pushing further
and further to the left,
you start to drag the middle
in that direction,
and I think that's been his way
of operating throughout
his legislative career.
-Sanders has sponsored
more than 400 bills
during his nearly 30 years
in Congress.
But only seven of those bills
were passed into law.
One protected a Vermont
mountain range.
Another codified
a water-sharing agreement
with neighboring
New Hampshire.
Two of the bills expanded
government support for veterans,
while two others simply
renamed Vermont post offices.
-He hasn't done squat
for anybody.
-Rob Roper leads a free-market
think tank in Vermont.
-Are there more jobs in Vermont?
Are there higher-paying jobs
in Vermont
as the result of him
having been in office?
-Sanders may have little to show
for his decades in Congress,
but he has remained Vermont's
most popular politician.
-Bernie Sanders is a bulldog
for what he believes in.
-What's fascinating
about Bernie is that,
yes, he has progressive voters,
yes, he has liberal voters,
but he also has some very
conservative Republican voters.
He can go up to
the Northeast Kingdom,
the most rural part of Vermont,
and people will go,
"Give 'em hell, Bernie."
-Chris Pearson saw it firsthand
as a campaign volunteer
in the '90s.
-Aye.
-Now he's a state senator.
-I had only actually been
with Bernie
a few times at this point,
and I'll never forget this.
This guy walks up,
kind of working-class guy, says,
"Bernie, I disagree with you on
just about everything,
and I vote for you every time."
And I'm looking at Bernie like,
"Wow, how's he gonna
answer this?"
And Bernie says very frankly,
says, "Why?"
And the guy says, "I know right
where you stand.
These other guys,
I don't have a clue."
-Consistency may be a strength
for Sanders, but he may need
more than that to stand out
in a crowded Democratic field.
-Given that there are
so many choices,
it's been more challenging
for him
to not only grow
his pool of support,
but to expand it, as well.
-We need a lot of buses
to get to Washington.
-And though he can certainly
electrify a crowd,
he often struggles to connect
with people one-on-one.
-When it comes to him
on the campaign trail,
he does not tend to interact
on a one-on-one level
with a lot of voters the way
that some other candidates do.
-Hi, Senator.
-Hey, Nick.
-How are you?
-Good.
-Some Democrats I've talked
to say, "Look, Democrats
want to know
their candidates.
They want to see them.
They want to talk
to them up close."
So that could be one of the
challenges that he faces
as he tries to grow support.
-Communities devastated,
the jobs moved overseas.
-The Sanders campaign
is different this time around.
-Real change never takes place
from the top on down.
-More professional and better
organized than it was in 2016.
But the man at the center
is likely to keep doing
what he's always done.
-So much of the money
is going into the war effort
and into the military
that we don't have enough money
to build all the housing
that we want built.
-When you hear him speak,
you are really getting
Sanders himself.
He's famous for scrawling
out his speeches
on his yellow notepad.
He's been doing that
for decades.
And, you know,
you can have consultants
and you can have pollsters
telling him what to do,
but he's probably
not gonna listen.
-Oh, who said they like coke?
-Me.
-You tell me about that.
-I like Coca-Cola.
-Oh, Coca-Cola.
Alright, but who knows
about cocaine?
Anyone ever seen cocaine?
-Yes.
No.
-Yes.
-Alright.
Hold it.
One at a time.
What about cocaine?
Good thing, bad thing, what?
-Bad.
-Bad.
-Why is it bad?
-Because it has a bad effect
on the body.
-That's right.
Do you know people
who take drugs?
-No.
-You don't have to tell me who,
but I bet you do.
