Bernie Sanders in the Senate? Yup, says the latest polls. Vermont remains a perplexing place, to be sure. I lived there for four years while an undergraduate, and while it still retains traces of its former conservative Yankee self, it is now thoroughly dominated by the People's Republic of Burlington.

You have to head off into the woods and fields to find that old Vermont, of guns and pickups, and bumper-stickers that say "Welcome to Vermont -- Now Get Out," and hardscrabble farms, and the smell of cow manure hanging in the morning air, and small towns out of a Currier and Ives print. Nowadays, when people think of Vermont, it is Starbucks and Ben and Jerry's, left-wing used book stores and daily protests over [insert favorite cause here], aging hippies with fat portfolios and waistlines, and New Yorkers who use Chittenden County as their weekend vacation home (the Hamptons are so yesterday, no?).

The Union-Leader says it best: Vermont is where Calvin Coolidge, one of America’s most conservative Presidents, was raised and where he got his values. It used to be a land of common-sense conservatism much like New Hampshire. Now it is run by liberal refugees from New York who have turned the state into a hippie haven. Both Sanders and Dean were born and raised in New York City.

Sending Sanders to the Senate would make Vermont look even kookier than Howard Dean did. And most Vermonters don’t seem to have a problem with that.

They are an odd bunch, take it from me. Pity the real Vermonter, up there in the "Northeast Kingdom." Call it the Tyranny of Burlington, giving the once proud state such a reputation.