It’s almost surreal to go back and watch Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign announcement today.

Last April, with a handful of reporters gathered outside the US Capitol, Sanders strode casually across the grass and unfolded a crinkled sheet of notes. As he spoke — airing his now-familiar grievances with the ever-more-unequal American economy — photographers snapped perfunctory pictures while journalists fiddled with their smartphones. It was all over in about ten minutes.

If little pomp attended Sanders’s announcement, there appeared to be even less circumstance. An obscure Vermont socialist, polling 3 percent nationally, had joined the race against Hillary Clinton? This was practically the textbook definition of a protest candidate. “It’s more important to you to get these ideas out,” one reporter asked Sanders, “than to contest the Democratic nomination?”