From Vermont to Nevada, Sanders’ radical agenda is reaching across the country

Editorial: The senator has shown that he can reach across age, race and ideology – and also, crucially, across the nation

Sanders and his wife Jane celebrate as he is declared winner of the Nevada Caucus (Reuters)

Bernie Sanders’ advance to the Democratic nomination may now be unstoppable. His win in Nevada shows that he can reach across age, race and ideology and also, crucially, across the nation.

In just about every way, Nevada is at the other end of the country from Vermont – yet the Vermont senator nailed it. We are just over a week from Super Tuesday, so still in the early stages of the race, but with this momentum, it will be very hard from the other runners to catch him. Anything is possible in American politics, and we have enough experience of seismic upsets to sound a note of caution – but this is big.

Why? Rationally, it might be hard to see why a 78-year-old politician from the union’s second-smallest state by population should gather such support, particularly among the young. But actually, it is not so odd. He hits all the right notes with a jaded generation of young people who want radical change.

His rise is also mirrored elsewhere, particularly in Europe, where the youth are pushing against centrist leaders. In Ireland, the two parties that have shared power for the near-century the republic has existed, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, are now challenged by Sinn Fein, the dominant party of the under-thirties. In Germany there has been a similar rejection of the major parties, with the Greens expected to make big gains in the elections held yesterday in Hamburg. In France, meanwhile, President Macron has become almost a pariah, with protests continuing almost every weekend.

It might appear to detract from Bernie Sanders’ singular appeal to note that his support fits in with a European trend. It is not as though young people in America look across the Atlantic – though Sanders’ plans for universal healthcare certainly do. But young Americans face similar difficulties to young Europeans, including young Britons.

Top of the list is affordable housing. The US is great at creating jobs, and jobs for the young. But the price of homes in job hotspots such as San Francisco and New York City means that people cannot afford to bring up families in decent accommodation. The cost of university education – increasingly an essential ticket to well-paid employment – has increased faster than salaries and the cost of living more generally. Michael Bloomberg, the struggling candidate for the nomination, who did not run in Nevada, is well aware of this issue. He proposes radical changes to the present system, which would cut the burden for the poorest students. Whether the young are prepared to swing their votes to a New York billionaire is another matter, particularly after his lacklustre performance in the recent TV debate.

But this is not just about affordable housing, student debt or the other financial and economic concerns of young people. Sanders’ message is far bigger than that. The reason he inspires – in a way that the other candidates seem unable to do – is that he is saying something profound: that America’s problems can be fixed, and with radical solutions.