The following is excerpted from a Rutland Herald, Vermont editorial.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is asking his supporters to contribute money to his campaign for re-election in 2018, but he and his staff refuse to say whether he is running for re-election.

Sanders has become one of the nation’s leading political figures, heading out on a national tour with the new chairman of the party, Tom Perez, to promote the Democratic agenda. It comes at a time when Republicans are reeling from the dysfunction of the Trump administration.

That Sanders plans to run for re-election next year comes as no surprise. That he refuses to say so publicly also comes as no surprise. It is a form of anti-gamesmanship gamesmanship that he has perfected, posing as a politician who is above the grubby realities of running for office and focusing instead on the business of the people, who, he says, are not interested in petty questions about who is running in the next election.

Except the people are interested. Why else would the Sanders campaign send out an email appeal seeking contributions of $27 for his 2018 campaign? He wants to tap into voter interest in the next election to help pay for his trip around the country with Perez.

Sanders is famously scornful of the emphasis placed by the media on what has been called the horse-race side of politics: Who’s running? Who’s ahead? Who’s behind? Who’s raising the most money? He genuinely cares about the issues related to economic inequality and has little patience for the political games that the media tend to focus on.

Yet Sanders, too, is playing the political game, but he is playing it more effectively than most. He is helping to shape a Democratic program that could address the disaffection and frustration that fueled his campaign in 2016 and became diverted toward the Trump campaign in the general election.

Sanders is perfectly positioned to address the voters’ mounting concerns ... not only in Vermont, but in Texas, Kansas and all those other states where patriotic Americans are beginning to realize that their hopes for change under the Republicans are coming to naught. It would be shocking if Sanders were to undercut his own influential position by taking himself out of the running in 2018. That’s why he is appealing to his supporters for campaign money.

He is still in the race.