Sen. Bernie Sanders was once Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s biggest rival. Now, the two are teaming up to topple a greater threat: President Trump.
The socialist senator from Vermont has maintained a foothold on the 2020 campaign trail, though his impact has been padded since he suspended his own White House bid in April.
But with polls tightening at the top of the ticket less than two weeks before Election Day, he’s turned his attention back to Biden after focusing on helping more liberal candidates down-ballot — for now.
Christopher Hahn, the host of the Aggressive Progressive Podcast and a former Democratic strategist, said Sanders had retained his influence from the primary and had mostly successfully diverted his support to the two-term vice president and Delaware’s 36-year senator.
“That said, this election is a referendum on Donald J. Trump. Turnout is way up, and that’s because people are fed up with Trump,” Hahn told the Washington Examiner.
After his endorsement and a handful of virtual events, Sanders made his first in-person appearance for Biden at the start of this month in his Northeast neighboring state of New Hampshire. New Hampshire isn’t a shiny Electoral College prize, yet Trump only lost it by less than a percentage point in 2016.
Sanders then returned to the Midwest, specifically Michigan, a part of the so-called “blue wall” that Trump cracked last cycle. Demonstrating his range of appeal, the senator spoke in Ann Arbor, a college town and liberal bastion, and Macomb County, the state’s famous bellwether home to the “Reagan Democrats.”
And this weekend, Sanders will travel to another “blue wall” state: Pennsylvania. After headlining a virtual Progressives for Biden “unity” town hall on Friday night, the senator will drop into an early-voting and get-out-the-vote event in Pittsburgh before hosting a drive-in rally in Rankin on Saturday.
For an also-ran candidate, Sanders has an outsized role in Democratic politics.
Sanders and his liberal allies were critical to drafting Biden and the national Democratic Party’s platforms before the summer’s convention, though they were blocked from including “Medicare for all,” Sanders’s signature proposal. Biden’s outreach efforts did bridge some of the divides that emerged during the primary. But they opened him up to Republican “Trojan horse” attacks as well, with Trump rebranding the Biden-Sanders joint task force recommendations as a “manifesto.”
In return, Sanders has boosted Biden with and without the nominee’s official campaign infrastructure.
Sanders has delivered blistering speeches against Trump from behind a podium in Washington, D.C., and granted interviews to publications such as Teen Vogue, each with relatively limited reach and affect. And while declining to fundraise for Biden, holding onto his independence, Sanders has blasted the millions who subscribe to his emails on Biden’s behalf.
Sanders aides, too, have organized around Biden to fill an enthusiasm gap, especially with young people.
Jeff Weaver, a longtime senior adviser, for instance, set up an independent expenditure political action committee called Future to Believe In to rally Sanders’s supporters against Trump. And “push elected leaders to embrace policies that benefit working families,” according to Weaver’s press release in April.
Although they notched wins with Biden on wages, labor rights, higher education funding, and healthcare, liberals have vowed to continue applying pressure on Biden from the Left if he’s elected on Nov. 3. And they’ve already weighed in on a potential Biden transition, including rumored chiefs of staff and Cabinet picks.
For California Democrat Rocky Fernandez, an ex-Sanders delegate, the most pressing issue was a single-payer healthcare system, followed by climate change and corporate interests.
“Whatever public option that President Biden puts out there, they’re going to try to water it down,” he said.
Fernandez welcomed speculation that Sanders was being considered for a Biden administration’s labor secretary after being disappointed by some of the people former President Barack Obama chose for his inner circle.
“He’d hopefully push a lot of the things that he’s been talking about on the campaign trail for the last six years,” he said. “We know that, already, Wall Street and the tech barons and the polluters are all trying to line up their people to be in Biden’s Cabinet. That’s why they’re donating all this money.”
He also disagreed with Obama, who last week suggested liberals should agitate for sweeping change, yet shouldn’t be disheartened by inevitable compromise.
“Some of our struggles are deep and dire on climate, on healthcare, on poverty, and just a diminishing safety net,” he said. “There’ll be some disagreements, but that’s part of the process.”
