I'm not a Sander's fan and never really looked at him, thinking it very early; but after watching his performance at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, I'm beginning to look more closely and think something important happened there.
I'm familiar a little with the school, and much more with the region. While Liberty was founded probably as a vanity response to Robert's Regent's Un., it is slowly evolving into something else since Jerry is gone and no longer playing hardball with Lynchburg City Council. That's not to say it isn't promoting its stated institutional values, but the community and student body its drawing from is not as homogeneous as it once was. Its student body are like any other group of similarly aged kids, with good, bad and indifferent morals or interests. The potential is there to reach out to them and find common ground on issues they think are important and offer realistic alternative viewpoints on issues to which they have been taught to oppose.
(more)