Bernie

...he is an entrenched political brand — “Bernie” — and voters will forgive a little blowhardedness (if not demagoguery) from someone they basically agree with and who has grown utterly familiar to their landscape, like cows.

The above is from a great profile of Bernie Sanders from this week's New York Times Sunday magazine. He is also described as striding head down through the streets of Burlington, responding thusly to people trying to tell them how much they like him: Sanders dispatches these glad-handing chores with the visible joy of someone cleaning a litter box.

I used to pass Bernie by walking for his bagel while I was on my way to work at the alternative newspaper that was my first "real" job out of college. That was 11 years ago and I have to say the reporter captured exactly how he appeared to me, head down, with his crazy hair and his grumbly wumbly face, making his way through the streets of the first city I ever lived in.