This is how you profile.
Michael Kruse: One morning last month in Burlington, Vermont, at the law office of John Franco, one of Bernie Sanders’ best friends since the 1970s, Franco talked to me at length about Sanders’ commitment and his consistency and his charisma. Even at the beginning of Sanders’ career, he said, four decades before he started packing arenas in college towns and liberal havens as a renegade 73-year-old self-described socialist taking on Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment, “people didn’t want him to stop talking.” He talked about how Sanders “completely changed the political culture” in Vermont. He talked about how Sanders’ surprising current surge in national polls is “validation.”
“I’m proud of Bernard,” he said.
All of that was interesting. But I wanted to know not just about what Sanders has done. I wanted to know more about who he has been. So I asked what I thought was an innocuous question about Sanders’ son. How did Sanders juggle aspirations as an eager political activist with his role as a divorced young father?
“That’s out of bounds,” Franco said.
Out of bounds?
“It’s none of your f—-ing business,” he said. He smiled, but he wasn’t joking.
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