Twelve million Americans voted for Bernie Sanders. More than 120,000 supporters gave money to his campaign.
Sanders won New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. He won 23 states in all, including Michigan. Sanders drew tens of thousands to rallies throughout the country. More than 20,000 people attended a Sanders rally in Oakland, Calif., on Memorial Day.
His campaign inspired millions in a way no Democratic primary campaign has in decades.
So what did it all mean, after all? How did Sanders change the race? How did he move Hillary Clinton? President Obama? And how could Sanders, and the movement he energized, make a difference in the future?
For one thing, Sanders seems to have pushed both Clinton and Obama to the left on economic issues.
“A year and a half ago,” said Adam Green, founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, “it was almost unimaginable that both major Democratic candidates for president would be talking about jailing Wall Street bankers, expanding — and not cutting — Social Security and debt-free college.”
On June 1, after Sanders had already won more than 20 states, Obama said, “It’s time we finally made Social Security more generous and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned.”
This was a nod to a long-time argument from the Left that Congress should raise Social Security taxes on high earners in order to preserve and expand benefits.
This was also a reversal for Obama. In his first term, and early in his second term, Obama said he was open to reforms that would make Social Security more solvent by trimming benefits in one way or another. During the 2012 election, progressives scolded Obama for partially embracing Mitt Romney’s Social Security reform plan, and saying, “We’ve got a somewhat similar position.”
Progressive groups had fretted about Clinton’s plans for Social Security as recently as February. “What worries advocates,” a Huffington Post story reported Feb. 5, “is that a Democratic president would use Social Security as a chip in a ‘grand bargain.'”
Sanders that day said on the campaign trail, “I ask Secretary Clinton to join me in making it very clear that No. 1, she will not support any cuts to Social Security,” according to a reporter. He continued: “No. 2, she will join me in saying that it is imperative that she increase and expand benefits for senior citizens and disabled.”
Within hours, Clinton made exactly that pledge.
The process of Clinton’s “clarification” and Obama’s conversion were revealing. Progressive groups had been lobbying Clinton for months to pledge not to cut Social Security. They had been working Obama on that question for years. Only when Sanders brought the issue directly to Clinton, in the days before the New Hampshire primary, did she do what the progressive groups were demanding.
Had Clinton cleared the field before the voting began, or had she dominated in Iowa and led in New Hampshire polls, she could have waved away this pressure from progressive groups. She could have quietly tried to reassure them, while singing a Simpson-Bowles tune to her Wall Street donors.
“What Bernie does,” liberal radio host and Bernie backer Sam Seder explained, “is he puts the party on notice.”
Sanders’ win in New Hampshire, and his subsequent strong showing, was “a clear indication” that “a substantial part of the base is here,” Seder said.
Green said Sanders “has moved the Overton window” on many issues. By staking out a hard-left position on Social Security and hammering at it consistently, “Bernie’s campaign brought it far enough that it’s not a radical notion.”
On minimum wage, the party has also moved closer to where the activist Left is, probably thanks to Sanders. In the 2014 election season, the Democratic Party was divided over whether to vote for a $10.10 federal minimum wage. This was far less ambitious than the progressive demands. The Fight For 15 campaign had launched in 2012.
Sanders took up the Fight for 15 flag and carried it into his presidential run. Clinton met him halfway and endorsed a $12 minimum wage. That’s nearly a $5 hike from current law, a far more radical proposal than a Democratic nominee has pushed in recent decades.
You can see Bern marks in other parts of the campaign. “Had Bernie left the race when Lincoln Chafee did,” Seder said, “I think Clinton doesn’t reiterate a buy-in for Medicare at 54.”
Sanders also argued that taxpayers rather than students should cover all tuition at public universities. Clinton met him halfway: “We should have debt-free college. If you go to a public college or university, you should not have to borrow a dime to pay tuition.”
Sanders didn’t start a movement, progressives argue, as much as give it a voice that could no longer be ignored.
“Bernie Sanders has been an important catalyst for the Democratic Party to recognize the rising populist tide,” Green argued.
In short, Sanders was the populist spirit made flesh.
Occupy Wall Street in the autumn of 2011 was the first flare up of the current progressive populist energy. Occupy didn’t produce any electoral change or legislative change. Elizabeth Warren’s election in 2012 was the second big moment. Sanders’ win in New Hampshire, his 45 percent in the primaries and his 23 wins marked new heights.
Sanders didn’t just make Democratic politicians more liberal, he made the Democratic electorate more liberal. Just look at exit polls: In 2008, 41 percent of the voters in Ohio’s Democratic primary identified as liberal. In 2016, liberals made up 59 percent. In New Hampshire, the liberals jumped from 57 percent in 2008 to 68 percent in 2016. Numbers are similar throughout the states.
So what will come of this? Obama has declared his support for populist policies, Clinton has made her campaign promises, and young progressives everywhere have had their mega rallies in Brooklyn, Madison, Oakland and around the country.
But will the Sanders moment change politics concretely?
Sure the fame, the energy and the hope are nice. But if the Bernie Sanders campaign leaves a lasting impression, it will be due to more banal realities, such as money and email lists.
“This is not just an electoral force,” Seder said. “This is a fundraising force.”
Sanders’ campaign raised more than $200 million from more than 120,000 donors. The campaign therefore has a list of 120,000 dedicated progressives. Can this list, and Sanders’ fundraising ability, be tapped for other purposes?
Not every successful candidate can turn his campaign into a lasting political force. The Obama campaign in 2008, for instance, became Organizing for America, and later Organizing for Action. Neither group had success advancing legislation. Obama was never successful in helping other candidates win (see the 2010 and 2014 elections, for instance), except by being at the top of the ballot himself.
Sanders’ post-campaign campaign could be a lot more successful because his campaign was at its heart different from Obama’s. Obama’s appeal involved rhetoric, hope and the shattering of color barriers. In short, Obama’s campaign was about Obama. Also, Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 were largely negative — running against George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.
Sanders’ enemies are more durable foes, such as Wall Street, corporate lobbyists and their defenders in Washington. His campaign is only a tiny bit about the likable grouchy grandfather on the ballot. It’s mostly about empowering the disempowered, and also about Sanders’ Democratic socialist ideology. A campaign about something bigger than the candidate can carry its strength beyond the candidate.
Sanders has already raised money for down-ballot progressives such as congressional candidates Zephyr Teachout in New York, Lucy Flores in Nevada and Pramila Jayapal in Washington State.
After the presidential race, Sanders’ campaign can do even more, especially in House and Senate primaries, to back candidates singing his song of populist revolution. If Obama provides a poor role model for building a lasting political force, the Tea Party may provide the true blueprint.
A Tea Party on the Left?
Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign became the Campaign for Liberty. Former Sen. Jim DeMint’s leadership PAC became an organ feared and hated by the GOP establishment. The Heritage Foundation has levered its supporter base to become a lobbying power that rivals K Street.
Sanders may be able to pull this off on the Left.
After the voting was done in the 2008 GOP primary, top officials from Ron Paul’s campaign launched the Campaign for Liberty. Their first move was organizing a counter-convention of sort — the Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis contemporaneous to the Republican National Convention, also held in the Twin Cities.
Paul headed C4L, and his campaign staff mostly migrated to the committee. After Paul retired from Congress, C4L picked up some of his House staff.
Campaign for Liberty is a non-profit 501(c)(4), and so it doesn’t play directly in federal races. It instead tries to organize and deploy its followers to apply pressure to lawmakers.
In the following months, some conservative groups became the backbone of the Tea Party, through different but similar paths.
DeMint after the 2008 election launched a “leadership PAC” called the Senate Conservatives Fund. On paper it was just like the leadership PACs dozens of other lawmakers use to raise money for party-mates.
DeMint, however, explicitly raised money from conservative donors who were averse to donating to official party organs, such as the RNC and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, because they didn’t want to fund sellouts.
In 2010, SCF went to war against K Street and the NRSC and repeatedly won, delivering Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Mike Lee to the Senate over their establishment-endorsed opponents. In 2012, the SCF beat the party establishment again, helping Ted Cruz win a tough GOP primary.
After the 2012 election, DeMint formally separated himself from SCF, allowing it to become an independent, multi-candidate PAC so it could also form a super PAC to raise soft money to do more to help candidates. DeMint could still raise money for SCF, but he no longer had control over the PAC’s decisions.
Heritage Action For America has built a list of local activists whom organization heads deploy during tough votes. These local conservative busybodies apply pressure to lawmakers and push wobbly members to the right.
The Left hasn’t had its Tea Party. The Democratic establishment still firmly calls the shots. That means corporate interests still have a chokehold on Democratic policymaking. Champions of the Left “don’t have as many corporate friends as say, Steny Hoyer does,” Seder said.
Sanders could change the power dynamic. He could launch a Senate Populists Fund of sorts to help the likes of Teachout win primaries. He could launch a liberal grassroots lobby group analogous to Heritage Action. His goodwill and his email lists would make these groups instant powerhouses.
When the Democratic delegates crown Clinton as their nominee in Philadelphia, it may appear on the surface that nothing changed. But beneath the surface, the Sanders movement could become a powerful force, making uneasy the head that wears the crown.
