Eventually these starry-eyed bohemians would grow up, start businesses and buy houses. Politics became pragmatic as the Progressive Party replaced New Left radical movements such as the Liberty Union. Sanders’s former comrades in the Liberty Union would go on to disavow him in 1999 as a “bomber”, “imperialist” and “sell-out” over his supposed support of Nato’s intervention in Yugoslavia. At one point, they even occupied his Burlington congressional office. But it wasn’t enough to stop the rise of Vermont’s new Progressive nobility.
From Burlington I head to the small farming town of Hinesburg. When I arrive, Vermont’s Progressive Lieutenant Governor, David Zuckerman, picks me up in a rundown car he uses for