So, I’ll preface by saying that I’m quite literally a communist and not particularly a Bernie Sanders supporter. The TL;dr on that, which is not my main point, is that while I support many of the reforms Bernie puts forward, I think that the path to and beyond those reforms is different than what Bernie suggests in his actions and words—for example, I would be in favor of a working class party, like a labor party, in the US, rather than reform of the Democratic Party.

My point in responding to your comment is that I honestly don’t know how you could look at the political situation on the ground in the United States, or globally, and think that Bernie Sanders is a “radical.” In my estimation, there is a pretty significant chunk of people under the age of 30 in the US who are to the left of Bernie Sanders, a European-style social democrat, on questions directly relating to the nature of the economic system. The idea of socialism polls just as favorably, or more favorably, than capitalism among this age group, which reflects the views of millions of people. Labor activity is on the rise, and in the labor movement, lead by the teachers’ strikes, there has been a strike wave on a level not seen in almost 40 years.

Bernie Sanders is, like it or not, a fairly popular politician, and his ideas are perhaps even more popular than Bernie as an individual. This popularity isn’t coming out of thin air, there is a context to the phenomenon, just like there was a material context for Trump being elected. The quality of life for young people in 2020 will be, and is already, worse than their parents had by all indications. There is a looming environmental crisis on the horizon that seems existential in severity. We are in the longest economic boom of US history and still a significant amount of people in the US live paycheck to paycheck. You can’t expect these circumstances not to push people to question the status quo and to look for alternatives, hence the popularity, undeniable, of someone like Bernie Sanders, who at the very least puts forward an alternative.