Washington - Bernie Sanders, the rumpled American rebel running for president, has been greeted by swelling numbers of supporters at campaign stops, a development which has stunned observers, especially Sanders himself.
The two-term Senator from rural Vermont hits the stump Saturday in swing-state Colorado, where more than 5,000 people -- believed to be the largest campaign trail crowd for any candidate in 2015 -- have registered to attend, aides said.
"I really was surprised. We've had very, very large and enthusiastic crowds," Sanders told AFP in a brief interview as he emerged from the US Capitol between campaign trips.
"I think we're touching a nerve."
Sanders, an independent seeking the Democratic nomination, has called for a political revolution, warning of America's creep towards oligarchy where candidates are "beholden to the billionaire class."
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has the name recognition and the infrastructure. Republican Jeb Bush is winning the money war.
But "Bernie-mentum" has seen unprecedented numbers of voters lining up to hear the mantra from Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist who in the 1980s served as mayor of Burlington, where he nurtured a progressive environment that lives to this day.
He is capitalizing on disillusionment with America's weak economic recovery and an ever-widening rich-poor gap.
More than 800 people turned out for him at a university in Iowa, the state that votes first in the 2016 nominating process.
In Minnesota some 4,000 people heard Sanders rail against income inequality, a message the 73-year-old has been promoting for decades.
"I think the American people are sick and tired of an economics in which 99 percent of all the money is going to the top one percent," he said in the interview.
"They want fundamental change in the way we do economics in this country and they want fundamental change in a political system which allows billionaires to buy elections," he added.
"So I think the message that we're bringing forth is resonating."
Polls suggest he may be on to something.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party convention's straw poll last week put Sanders at 41 percent support, eight points behind Clinton, the candidate long seen as immune to challenges from a thin Democratic field.
In a Suffolk University poll of Democratic New Hampshire voters, Sanders drew 31 percent to Clinton's 41.
"I'm not surprised" about Sanders's rise, Senator Patrick Leahy, a fellow Vermonter, told AFP. "He speaks out to issues."
AFP
