"The Champion of Causes Not Yet Won"

"The SPA ran thousands of candidates for offices both high and low. It even managed to elect a couple of congressmen as well as dozens of mayors in locales as diverse as Milwaukee; Berkeley, California; and the little railroad town of Antlers, Oklahoma. Many of the reforms the party advocated ended up becoming law.

"Beginning in 1900, Eugene Victor Debs ran five times for president, never gaining more than 6 percent of the popular vote. The charismatic former union leader crisscrossed the nation, stretching out his long arms as if to touch the admiring crowds whom he urged to destroy 'the foul and decaying system' and erect a 'cooperative commonwealth' in its place. But Debs' platform also included such 'immediate' demands as women’s suffrage, a progressive income tax, an eight-hour day, a ban on child labor, and a vote for the residents of the District of Columbia that no longer seem radical at all."

Michael Kazin in Slate connects Bernie Sanders to Socialists in twentieth-century American politics.