Vermont Conversation: How Sen. Bernie Sanders went from 'political loser' to progressive trailblazer [View all]

In a new book, author Dan Chiasson traces Sanders’ political roots across the East Coast. “Moving to Vermont was a way of thinking, could we start society over?”

Dan Chiasson’s new book is “Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician” (Penguin 2026). Cover art by Alison Bechdel. Photo by Lisa Abitbol

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Chiasson traces Sanders’ politics to his experience growing up poor in Brooklyn “in an economy that was designed to kill” him and his family. “His mother died in her 40s of a congenital heart condition.”

Sanders attended the University of Chicago where he participated in civil rights protests. “He thought that things like racial and other kinds of traumas in our country stemmed directly from economics,” said Chiasson. “Moving to Vermont was a way of thinking, could we start society over?”

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Asked what he thought the legacy of Sanders would be, Chiasson said, “Just the tenacity, the temerity, the moral vision that Sanders laid out.” He quoted former Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle, who described Sanders as “a moral visionary.”

“Somebody with Bernie’s fight in him and with his sense that there are right and wrong sides of the question morally when we engage with politics, that makes me feel pretty hopeful.”

https://vtdigger.org/2026/02/04/vermont-conversation-how-sen-bernie-sanders-went-from-political-fringe-to-progressive-trailblazer/