Bernie Sanders held a rally in Washington, D.C. on June 9. On the same day, Sanders visited the White House for a “friendly conversation” with the president, and President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton shortly thereafter. Tuesday June 7 Sanders lost the California primary, and on Monday the Associated Press announced Clinton had secured the delegates to win the nomination. You wouldn’t know it, though, among the crowds in the Lot 3 skatepark outside the D.C. Armory on Thursday afternoon. (The Armory’s RFK stadium is a venue the size of those Sanders rallies roared through this time last year.) The campaign may have all but ended, but, the Sandernistas will tell you, the movement never dies.
Echoey editorials liken his loyal infrastructure—volunteers dreaming of a three-pronged revolution: fifteen-dollar minimum wage, free college, a ban on fracking—to a Tea Party of the left. And it’s true some of the movement flocked to the candidate from moldy Occupy Wall Street holdouts. For some, the Sanders movement is basically “an institutionalized Occupy Wall Street” or so Sebastian, a rising junior at George Mason University, told me at the rally while we waited for the candidate: “Occupy didn’t really have, like, a head, and so they kind of find a head in Bernie.” Sebastian would have been too young to camp out in Zuccotti Park. Many more than came over from Occupy had never thought twice about progressive activism—or, as first time voters, about any political activity. Voters in their late teens and twenties overwhelmingly choose him over Hillary Clinton.
Rob and Jessica, teenagers from New Jersey, came down for their last chance to hear his stump speech. “I’ve heard it before, but I want to see it live,” Rob said. “It’s the difference between seeing a musician live and listening to their album.” I asked if he thought there’d ever been so successful a presidential candidate legitimately comparable to a rock star—”William Jennings Bryan?” said Rob, who starts at University of Chicago in the fall. “Donald Trump,” he added. He trusts Sanders’ influence will continue on campus, “Young people support Sanders 5 to 1. Like, if you’re on a college campus, it’s young people.”
Alex, who’ll start at Virginia Commonwealth University in August, says the Sanders movement is too big to fail. The campaign, per Alex, represents “something that’s going to transcend this election.” Over the swelling intro to Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” he explained how Bernie’s paved the way—”Maybe in future elections we’ll see a candidate like him, and not someone like Hillary, who’s had to force herself to go to the left to become a viable candidate. Someone who’s like him, who’s been like that from the start, will come along, and then it will be real change.” Someone like you, kid? “Maybe in, like, 18 years, you know.” In 18 years, Alex will be 36.
And 18 years leaves plenty of time for a good kid to dive into the Kool-Aid. William and Mary College Socialists Nico and Adam, for example, understand the movement’s inevitable trajectory. “We just hope it becomes more of an anti-capitalist movement,” Nico said. Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialism has been a bit of drag on their organization in roughly the same way the age of Sanders is hard on the far left’s intellectual purity. While, as the young comrades explained, calling yourself a socialist means you agree with Karl Marx, “There were some Marxist-Leninists who left because they didn’t like the group. We need to work on PR.”
The early crowd at Thursday’s rally skewed millennial, but closer to six, nine-to-fivers trickling in upped the median age. Joe, an engineer in his mid-thirties, was the only man at the rally wearing a suit. He can’t forgive Obama’s Clinton endorsement, but it’s not surprising what with “corporate-interest oligarchy” puppeteering the former rivals. Still, Joe thinks Bernie Sanders is a capitalist deep down: “Capitalism in this country is obviously a good thing.” Joe quoted Sanders’ favorite figures on the sliver of the one-percent that decides our collective fate but brushed aside the candidate’s radical messaging—”He’s not trying to have a completely, like, socialist country. I think he agrees with capitalism.”
Giving the same old stump after such a dampening day, Sanders targeted the more starry-eyed younger end of his following. He gurgle-yelled, “…and an end to college debt!” to close out a crescendoing list of promises. And the crowd went wild! He thanked the passion of the young people and played to their preference for call and response. Sanders is accustomed to the rock star reception. He seemed unperturbed by an overzealous shouter in a man bun and jorts with a penchant for four-letter words but hipness nevertheless to the candidate’s rhythm—”That’s f***ing right, Bernie!” His bellowing filled every pause. Feeling the vulgar dude bro’s groove, the excited crowd briefly overpowered the candidate, chanting, “Stay in the race! Stay in the race!” Hey, if it’s what the people want…
An earlier version misstated Alex’s future age, which has been corrected.
