February 26, 2022 – Bernard “Bernie” Sanders, Vermont senator and 2020 Democratic nominee for president, passed away at his lakeside home in North Hero, Vt., today. He was 80.
Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife of 34 years, said her husband fell asleep while reading Untold Stories from East Germany: The Sweet Side of the Stasi and never woke up.
Forty-four miles south of Lake Hero, in Burlington, Vt., dozens gathered outside the Sanders’s primary residence, many of them crying.
On the sidewalk, two young men became engaged in a heated debate.
“The DNC did this!” one screamed. “The DNC murdered him!”
“No!” cried the other. “It was Hillary! She doused him with Chardonnay and lit him up!”
Officer Eli Evans of the Burlington Police Department told a local reporter, “These are the first Bernie Bros I’ve seen in over a year. Most are in “Woke Rehab” or some other halfway house where they can be reintegrated into society.”
A third man, in a “Feel the Bern” t-shirt began shrieking: “F***ing oligarchs! F***ing oligarchs!”
“That’s Brandon,” Evans said. He’s had a rough go. In 2020, he spent 60 days in jail for vandalizing Amy Klobuchar yard signs. He was in and out of anger management – but couldn’t stop typing in ALL CAPS or threatening to kill centrists. Now he thinks oligarchs are stalking him.”
A 62-year-old bakery cashier, Tilda Lawson, said she heard people wailing from her shop four blocks away.
“I rushed down and saw these poor kids whimpering and sobbing,” Lawson said. “I just had to comfort them. I hugged each one, and said, ‘OK, millennial. OK, millennial.’ ”
Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington in 1980, and served in that office until April, 1989. He was elected to the U.S. House in 1990 and the U.S. Senate in 2006.
Sanders’s 2020 general election loss was widely attributed to his inability to answer how he would pay for his $50 trillion in federal programs. To help, his young supporters began a Kickstarter campaign, but by Election Day had only raised $17,384.
Some 15 minutes after the Senator’s death was announced, President Trump addressed reporters in the White House Press Briefing Room.
“I am sad to hear about Crazy Bernie’s death. He helped me win in 2016 by dividing the Democrat Party. And he was so off the rails in 2020, I didn’t even need the Russians!”
The President continued, “My favorite part was our debate preparation. To play Sanders, we had a walrus flown in from SeaWorld. It just honked and honked and flapped its flippers. It was great fun.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sanders was a valued colleague.
“On behalf of all 70 Republican senators, we send our deepest regrets to his family,” McConnell said. “The three bills he passed, including the one designating the facility at 35 Park Street in Danville, Vermont, as the ‘Thaddeus Stevens Post Office’ will never be forgotten.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy thanked Sanders for the 2020 “Red Wave” that flipped the lower chamber.
International tributes came swiftly.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said, “We are saddened to hear of Senator Sanders’s death. He told the world that the Cuban Revolution achieved excellent health care for its people. We would have provided care for tens of thousands more if they hadn’t been shot or imprisoned.”
In Moscow, the hotel room where Jane and Bernie honeymooned and ate Soviet rations of butter and sausages, was designated a historic site.
Contacted by phone, Sanders’s childhood friend, David Greenberg, of Brooklyn, N.Y., said there was “no one like Bernie.”
“We’d be playing on the ball field, having a great time, and Bernie would walk up and tell us that the cups we were wearing caused testicular cancer. He just had this amazing ability to make you feel horrible at any given moment. I’m just sad that he didn’t get the chance, as president, to do that for the whole country.”
Funeral services are pending. However, Jane Sanders said mourners would soon be able to sign books of condolences at all three of the couple’s residences, in North Hero, Burlington, and Washington, D.C.
“Bernie lived his values – and the life of the average American,” she said. “He never wanted four homes. Only three.”
Sanders is survived by his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders; son, Levi; brother, Larry; and pet dog, Trotsky.