Could Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Spawn a Liberal Tea Party?

The candidate has sparked the populist revolution he’s always talking about.

Bernie Sanders greeted his Super Tuesday defeat with trademark defiance. Though he had been clobbered by Hillary Clinton, losing seven of 11 states, the prize had not dimmed. “This campaign is not just about electing a President,” he told a crowd in Essex Junction, Vt. “It is about making a political revolution!” Then he left for his home in Burlington, where he stoked the fire in the wood-burning stove and watched his grandkids play on the couch.

Sanders’ bid for the White House will almost certainly end at the Democratic Convention in July. But it is increasingly apparent that he has, in fact, sparked a populist revolt that will endure well beyond the primaries. There is real anger on the left about income inequality and Wall Street’s influence, and it may cause Democrats the same kind of headaches that the Tea Party gave Republicans. “Party leadership, rather than wringing their hands, needs to start thinking strategically about this,” says Representative Raúl Grijalva of Arizona. “If you eliminate the messenger, it doesn’t eliminate the message.”

Sanders’ allies have closely studied the Tea Party’s rise in 2009 and 2010, when the far right challenged the GOP leadership, put up opponents in primaries and hijacked the party’s agenda. Now progressives say they are planning a similar upset. “One can disdain everything the Tea Party stands for, but you cannot be anything but admiring about what they have accomplished,” says Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party, an activist progressive group that has endorsed Sanders. “They’re incredibly powerful as an organization.”

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