Who Is Bernie Sanders?

To the outsider the race for the White House can appear a ridiculously long and drawn out process as they have to go through the respective parties nominations and then the whole business of electing one of them as the President.
The two most likely eventual nominees are Clinton and Bush which may lead some of the electorate to enter the voting booth, see the names, think to themselves: "I'm sure i did this already' and leave.
This time around though its Hilary and Jeb although Jeb's name does confuse me because his name is John Ellis Bush so he should be called Je Bush otherwise you are saying John Ellis Bush Bush.
Anyway, the Bush/Clinton showdown is looking in peril because neither are leading the polls of their respective parties with the ridiculous Donald Trump topping the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders the top banana for the Democrats.
Donald Trump is well known, mostly for being an idiot of biblical proportions with a hairstyle to match, but who the hell is Bernie Sanders?  
Wikipedia shows that he is Senator from Vermont and a socialist! A socialist with a particular liking for the European style of Socialism at that!
Of course, for many people, especially us Europeans, there's nothing unusual about a Socialist but in the US, Socialism is viewed the same as Communism with all the hammer, sickles and mustachioed Soviet leaders trying to overthrow Capitalism which is something Sanders agrees with, saying: 'I’ve stayed away from calling myself a socialist because I did not want to spend half my life explaining that I did not believe in the Soviet Union or in concentration camps'.
His other soundbites include such gems as: “What being a socialist means is a vision of society where poverty is unnecessary, where international relations are not based on greed but on cooperation, where human beings can work together rather than having to work as semi-slaves to other people who can hire and fire'.
I imagine as the contest hots up the spotlight on him will grow stronger and the word 'Communist' will be spat at him with more conviction to muddy the waters but it might be worth keeping an eye on him and as America is over $17 trillion in the hole, the pro-Capitalists who they have elected previously obviously haven't been that good.