Famously thrifty Sen. Bernie Sanders did not spend New Year’s Eve with the millionaires and the billionaires. Instead, he celebrated in just about the most Bernie Sanders way imaginable: Consuming an early-bird meal while surrounded by adoring millennials snapping photos with their cell phones.
According to Vanity Fair, Sanders was spotted with his wife, Jane, at the downtown Manhattan beer hall Clinton Hall, where they dined on chicken wings, coffee and tea around 4:30pm. The tab: $16.
A bodyguard watched over the table, which “became truly communal because supporters kept going up to him,” reports Page Six. “Millennials were snapping away, taking pics while he ate.”
Sanders, a Brooklyn native, was in town for the second inauguration of New York City mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday. Newsweek tweaked him for wearing a $690 Burton parka during the ceremony.
The Vermont senator spent the rest of Dec. 31 watching the ball drop in Times Square. On Monday, he tweeted his hopes for the New Year. “We will not only intensify the struggle against Trumpism, we will increase our efforts to spread the progressive vision in every corner of the land,” he wrote.
According to PredictIt on Dec. 29, Sanders is viewed as the most likely Democratic nominee to oppose President Trump in 2020, with California Sen. Kamala Harris in second place. But the same day that Bernie was chowing down in NYC, former Democratic National Chairman Ed Rendell said that former Vice President Joe Biden would “overwhelmingly” beat Trump. “There’s only one person I can say who will definitely win the election and has a superstar appeal in almost every state in the union, and that’s Vice President Biden,” he said on a radio show. Neither Sanders nor Biden have committed to a run.
