And I am not just saying this because the famously curmudgeonly Matt Taibbi  wrote him a political love letter.

In the US, the lifeblood of politics is money, and the fact that the Sanders for President campaign raised $1.5 million dollars in the first 24 hours after his announcement, and raised $3 million in the first 4 days.

Needless to say, unlike most modern candidates on both sides of the aisle, these were small individual donations, not Wall Street and other big donors.  (About ½ of Obama campaign funds came from big donors in 2008)

I think that it is highly unlikely that he can wing the primary, and if he did, we would see the Blue Dog and New Dem wings of the party surreptitiously campaigning against him, much like Henry “Scoop” Jackson and his ilk did in 1972 to George McGovern.