Bernie Sanders’s delegates are being asked not to attack Democrats publicly on social media or to speak to members of the press without approval.
The Vermont senator’s campaign has shared a tentative agreement with some but not all of the supporters who will represent him at the Democratic National Convention, set to take place at the moment from Aug. 17-20 in Milwaukee.
“Refrain from making negative statements about other candidates, party leaders, Campaigns, Campaign staffers, supporters, news organizations or journalists,” the nondisparagement arrangement reads, according to the Washington Post.
The document adds, “This Campaign is about the issues and finding solutions to America’s problems. Our job is to differentiate the senator from his opponents on the issues — not through personal attacks.”
The framework, which would allow for delegates to be stripped of their duties for rules violations, has not been finalized as Sanders’s team adjusts the terms of the social media policy, nondisclosure agreement, and delegate code of conduct form to satisfy rankled delegates. The social media policy is particularly important given the convention is likely to unfold, at least partially, online amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“When delegates attend the Democratic convention, they will be representing Sen. Sanders, the ideas he ran on and the millions of working people who supported his campaign,” Sanders spokesman Mike Casca told the Washington Post. “That is a serious responsibility, and we’re asking them to follow a basic code of conduct while carrying out that duty.”
A Sanders spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
The arrangement, which wasn’t a demand of presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, is an attempt to avoid the display of disunity in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was the party’s standard-bearer. Sanders backers have continued to support their candidate aggressively this cycle, sometimes to the chagrin of the socialist, who dropped out of White House contention in April.
While Biden and Sanders are closer than the Vermont senator was with Clinton and the two-term vice president has adopted some of his former rival’s ideas, forming policy task forces, concerns persist regarding holdouts in Sanders’s base.
Sanders told MSNBC this week that Biden “is gonna have to reach out to working-class people and young people in a way that he has not done up to now.”
