MANCHESTER, N.H. — Bernie Sanders is running a campaign about campaigns.
“If this campaign is about anything,” Sanders said at a rally in Nashua, N.H., this morning, “it is about revitalizing American democracy—making sure that every American knows how powerful he or she is to determine the future of this great country.”
Sanders’ main theme in his stump speech—and an animating issue for his supporters—is not any particular policy, but the process by which policy is made and politics are done. It’s kind of a meta-campaign.
It may seem wonky, and inside baseball, to focus so much on how politics is done, but it animates a decent part of the liberal base, and thus the Democratic primary electorate.
Sanders spent about the first 15 minutes of his Nashua address on campaign finance and politics. Some of it was very specific: he promises as a litmus test for his Supreme Court nominees in which they must pledge to overturn the Citizens United ruling that struck down limits on groups criticizing or praising politicians close to elections.
Sanders also deals in the bigger picture—revitalizing democracy. “Our government belongs to all of us,” he said at a rally in New Hampshire. “Not just the one percent.”
Sanders ties campaign finance into specific policy areas. In Manchester, he said Republicans reject “the reality of climate change” because if they acknowledged climate change “on that day, they would lose their funding from the Koch brothers, from ExxonMobil, from the fossil fuel industry.”
Healthcare, too. “The issue is whether we have the courage to take on the drug companies and take on the insurance companies,” he said in Manchester.
Many supporters agreed.
Katie Ferrara was involved in the Occupy movement 4 years ago. Today, she was at Bernie’s rally, and she tells me she’ll vote for him tomorrow. Her top issue is “money in politics.” She says: “With money in politics, and corporate influence, I don’t feel that the people’s voices are heard.”
This issue is fundamental, Ferrara says. “The entire structure of our political system needs to be revamped.”
Fletcher Lokey was also at the Manchester rally. Campaign finance reform is “absolutely central,” he says. “Top of the list.” Lokey says a constitutional amendment is needed, declaring that—First Amendmet notwithstanding—Congress has the right to regulate campaign finance.
Lokey is there with Susan Dyment, who agrees that campaign finance is “the overarching issue of the time. Everything else flows from it.”
Olivia Galvin will be voting in her first election tomorrow—backing Sanders in the primary. For her, Sanders represents enfranchisement. His message “helps young people feel empowered. That it’s not as corrupt.”
Sanders, and his supporters, will talk about other issues, such as healthcare and gay marriage. But for the candidate (and many of his backers) those come after revamping politics.
This was what I found when I camped out at Occupy Wall Street. There, the activists barely focused on policy matters — I couldn’t find a coherent position on the Volcker Rule, or TARP—but on how politics is done. They dreamed of a politics where everyone had an equal, and powerful voice.
As Sanders would put it, “Our government belongs to all of us. Not just the one percent.”
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
