"The candidate who best fortified his position as the public face of the Democratic Party is unquestionably Sen. Bernie Sanders. How much more airtime does he get than everyone else in pack? Consider this stat: Bernie was a guest on the Sunday morning talk shows for a whopping 21 out of 52 weeks this year. No other potential candidate appeared more than four times. Sanders also was the star of four prime-time CNN town halls, three since September. But Bernie was not just showboating for the cameras in 2017. He leveraged his out-sized media platform and fervent grass-roots base to exert influence over the party. He single-handedly got nearly the entire prospective presidential field to embrace single-payer health insurance. He prompted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to propose an anti-monopoly economic reform package. And he is on track to make the Democratic National Committee reduce the number of superdelegates for the 2020 convention."