People like Bernie

His constituents like him.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is far and away the most popular senator among his own constituents, a new Morning Consult poll reveals.

The veteran lawmaker, who is also a Democratic candidate for president, scored an 83 percent approval rating among voters in Vermont.

His 13 percent disapproval rating also ranks as the lowest in the country.

So called "small donors" like him.

Sanders is dominating all other candidates among small donors, which could give him a marked advantage as the primary continues. Almost three-quarters of his haul this quarter came from donors giving $200 or less, and the campaign told the Huffington Post that only 270 of his nearly 700,000 donors—less than half of 1 percent—have given the maximum individual contribution of $2,700 for the primary. That means that Sanders can go back to his donor base repeatedly as the race progresses.

Only 17 percent of Clinton’s contributions were from small donors. According to Politico, more than half of her take last quarter was from donors who are now maxed out and can’t give again until the general election gets underway.

Those elusive "millennials" like him. 

They are the country’s gloom-and-doom generation of millennials — and they have found a gloom-and-doom candidate to love in the 2016 presidential election: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the democratic socialist who has attracted a stream of young people to his rallies in numbers unmatched by any other candidate from either party.

The campaign is aiming to match President Obama’s historic performance among this group of voters in 2008. Already, in polls in key nominating states, Sanders is outperforming Hillary Rodham Clinton, in some cases by lopsided margins, among young voters.

(Aside: Magazines should stop writing about generational cohorts as if they think and act with one mind. Just a few years ago, we were told Millennials were the "optimistic generation," supposedly less cynical and misanthropic than their grumpy Gen-X predecessors.  Now they are all about "gloom and doom." Maybe one day we'll figure out what a disservice we do to paint every person in an age range with one brush. But first we'll have to kill all the advertisers.)

Who else likes Bernie? This guy does. 

Rapper Killer Mike delivered an impassioned speech in Atlanta Monday night endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president.

"In my heart of hearts, I truly believe that Sen. Bernie Sanders is the right man to lead this country," the hip hop star, activist and Atlanta native said.

Killer Mike cited Sanders' stance on the Voting Rights Act, health care, education and ending the war on drugs as reasons for backing the Vermont senator's Democratic campaign.

I don't actually know who that guy is. But I'm not a "Millennial" so that's okay.

Oh also these Republicans like Bernie.

“Once you get out of Washington ‘conservative’ can mean all sorts of different things. Voters are often left of center on some issues and right of center on others. So someone like Trump or Sanders who talks about themselves in a way that doesn’t fit into a pre-ordained box could be appealing to a lot of people,” says Chris Ellis, a political science professor at Bucknell University.

In some cases, longtime Republican voters who have decided to support Sanders, like MacMillan, are rethinking their political affiliation entirely. (“I’m inclined to say I might stay with the Democratic Party because the Republican Party has changed and it’s not the way it used to be,” MacMillan says.) Far from claiming to have experienced a political conversion, other Republicans argue that Sanders actually embodies conservative values.

“When I think of true conservative values I think of Teddy Roosevelt who earned a reputation as a trust-buster,” says Jeff DeFelice, a 38-year-old registered Republican voter living in Florida. “Now look at Bernie. He’s the only one willing to stand up to the big banks. The big banks control an obscene amount of wealth in this country and he wants to go after them.” If Sanders looks like “a viable candidate” by the time the primary rolls around, DeFelice says he’ll switch his party affiliation to vote for the senator.

Sanders’s promise to wrest power away from Wall Street and return it to the American middle class taps into the same vein of populist anger that fueled the rise of the Tea Party. It’s also a message that resonates with mainstream Republicans and Democrats. Sixty-two percent of Republicans, for example, believe that large corporations wield too much influence on American politics, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in May.

So Bernie is well liked, is funded by many small donors, and has broad bi-partisan appeal to the very same  anxieties currently dominating the field in the Republican primaries. (The Republicans, unlike the Democrats, have chosen to actually have debates and get attention so they're the default barometer for the national mood.) 

Given all of this, you'd think Bernie has a chance.  But, no, that would not be very "grown up" or "responsible" or whatever. At least according to the perpetually shell-shocked Democrats, anyway.

Fully 83 percent of Democrats have a favorable impression of Clinton, compared with 54 percent for Sanders. And despite Sanders's ability to energize the Democratic base -- as shown by huge crowds turning out to see him -- Clinton's edge is almost as large on intensity; 47 percent see Clinton in a "strongly favorable" light, compared with 22 percent for Sanders. So while more than half of Democrats who like Clinton feel strongly, less than half of those who like Sanders feel that way.

Which is funny because, according to the polling, anyway, Clinton is the Democrat more likely to lose the general election. 

Clinton boasts no advantage over Sanders among the public overall, however. Clinton's ratings with all Americans are underwater, at 46 percent favorable and 51 percent unfavorable, while Sanders's reviews are narrowly positive (40-38 favorable-unfavorable).

Clinton is worse off among political independents. Thirty-nine percent rate her favorably and 57 percent unfavorably, while Sanders again receives a slightly positive favorable-unfavorable split -- 42-38.