i don't care about Bernie now that he has dropped out. i liked him because he was the first Leftist candidate I remember seeing that made it this far. And he was able to do that by packaging his more radical ideas as populist 99% percent rhetoric. That is not the same thing as me believing he actually has universal or 99% populist support. Just that he explicitly frames his message to have populist appeal.

And no, I do not think Progressives or Liberals are the same as Leftists. I also think Leftists are FAR from having significant support from Americans. In fact, I've always assumed they are hated by most Americans. Leftists are essentially "mask on" socialists and "mask off" Marxists. The kind of people who think work is a form of "wage slavery" and that landlords are scum. I am under no assumption that this is something most Americans would agree with or is even what most Americans think of as progressive.

Before Sanders went into politics he existed on the fringes. Like the kinda of person who would rather have odd jobs, be mostly unemployed, and contribute to Leftist publications that no one reads, then take advantage of the fact that he graduated from the University of Chicago and could have got a real job. Most Americans would think he was a straight-up freak if they knew what he was like before going into civil service.

I really don't know what Socialists in America look like, because my introduction to it was through academia--which reads esoteric texts on "critical theory" and are very much cultural snobs. These guys are also a lot more niche than the white millennial college students and recent grads who make up the memebers of local chapters of the DSA. But aside from those two groups, I think you are overlooking a lot of poorer white guys who work blue collar jobs and make up "the scum bag Left" (like the people who listen to the Chapotraphouse podcast). It's usually these guys who typify what people think of as ardent Bernie Bros.