The other part of his story is religion. The New York Times managed to disparage him with it, headlining: "Bernie Sanders is Jewish but doesn't like to talk about it."
While it is true Sanders doesn't carry his religion on his sleeve nor make a public display of it, he says, when questioned, that his Jewish religion has been a full part of his life and accounts for who he is and what he stands for. Here, explanation may be necessary.
The Five Books of Moses or Torah is the starting point for ritual Jewish practice. It encompasses creation, monotheistic belief, the exodus from Egypt and the laws of Moses. The Talmud, a 60-volume compendium of rabbinic commentary, deals with the quotidian of Jewish daily life.
Rabbi Hillel once summarised Torah in the Silver Rule: "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you."
That's a Kantian categorical imperative which the companion Talmud resummarises thus: "Seek the just answer and act accordingly."
By those lights, Bernie Sanders is a Talmudist Jew. He has been seeking social justice for the past 40 years - it is the driving force of his campaign and that is what is resonating with his supporters.
And while the powerful media and political elites have called his proposals pie in the sky, the people who are voting for him are hearing something they have not heard before from a politician. That justice is possible; that economic inequality is incompatible with the democratic purpose and represents a capitalism gone haywire.
While Sanders has been saying this for a very long time, it took a combination of circumstance and a new generation for him to be heard.
First was the lengthy erosion of the middle class, then the financial disaster of 2007 and its threadbare employment situation trending the future. Despite the dire appearance - or because of it - a new generation is coming into political activity.
The new generation is unlike the older one, described as the "Me Generation" for its emphasis on self-fulfillment and its frank materialism, leaving its members fearful in sustaining an albeit diminished status quo.
This new generation is the "We Generation". They are more tolerant, more inclusive and perhaps more realistically aware of the limits of their dreams. They are less devoted to "things", more to experience and they are able to see that the smallness of the pie demands a fairer sharing or there won't be any pie at all.
Together with the support of this generation, and those oldsters who have joined it, a 74-year-old Talmudist Jew is fashioning a non-violent cultural revolution.
Whether it captures the White House or not, this is a movement which will not rest with this or the next election until it changes the course of America and bends the long arc of history to its purpose of social justice.
-Jay Kuten is a US-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
