Bernie Sanders didn’t declare victory in Iowa until days after the caucus ended, but something much more important happened: His movement was vindicated.
Much has been written about how the Republican Party didn’t take Donald Trump seriously enough during the 2016 primary until it was too late. By the time he had demonstrated that his candidacy was a serious threat to the party apparatus, most members of the GOP establishment either gave in or rushed to the press and gave background quotes about how unacceptable the prospect of his nomination seemed. You know the rest of the story.
The dynamic that exists with Sanders is similar in the fact that the Democratic establishment, a polite way to describe wealthy donors and senior party officials with cushy jobs, finds itself horrified with the prospect of his presidency. It is, however, also enveloped in a deep psychiatric recovery from the 2016 election. Sanders, now the 2020 front-runner, is perfectly happy to make everyone relive much of that trauma. As the opening week of the Democratic contests has shown, Sanders has good reason for doing that.
Sanders and his movement seemingly won’t be satisfied until the Democratic Party is destroyed. You can hear it in his speeches, which feature diatribes against party officials. You can hear it in the language of his aides, who, in private staff meetings, speak of a conspiracy to stop the transformation of the American economy and political system. You can hear it in the cries of his supporters, who blame the Democratic establishment for stopping Sanders in 2016 and handing a win to Trump.
As the Iowa disaster was underway, the feeling at Sanders’s headquarters was noticeably different than the palpable hysteria at the conference rooms rented out by Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg. Rather than express concern, Sanders’s campaign and supporters felt deja vu. You could hear being whispered in the Des Moines Holiday Inn lobby that “they” were trying to take it from Bernie once again.
But this time, the Sanders campaign came prepared. After complaints in 2016 that the Iowa Democratic Party wouldn’t release raw vote totals from the caucus, the Sanders campaign accumulated its own data from each caucus precinct. The campaign also proved to have the most sophisticated Iowa operation. Beyond ginning up youth turnout through concerts performed by Bon Iver and Vampire Weekend, the Sanders team was the only one that focused on winning satellite caucuses held in mosques and others for Spanish speakers. Despite the party rhetoric about the constant threat faced by minorities in the Trump era, only Sanders bothered to go out and actually win their vote.
By midnight, the press had begun receiving emails from the Sanders campaign showing it with a decisive lead. Aides for Warren began complaining about potential misinformation pushed from their rivals. The message from Team Sanders, however, was clear: We’re the only adults in the room. After all, are you really going to trust that guy from South Bend, Indiana, who just flimsily declared himself the winner?
For reporters in Iowa who were being jerked around with vague statements about “irregularities” and “more information soon” from the Iowa Democratic Party, it certainly felt that Sanders wasn’t simply taking advantage of the chaos, but taking control of the situation while the rest of the party floundered. Behind the scenes, the Sanders campaign blasted party officials. Senior Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver declared the entire system a “fraud” on a secret late-night conference call with Iowa Democrats and other campaigns.
The Democratic Party was revealed, once again, to be a defunct apparatus operated by incompetents. It proved itself incapable of overseeing the most important nominating contest. Why, Sanders’s team asked itself, echoing the demands of its supporters, shouldn’t it be destroyed?
On his flight to New Hampshire the next day, Sanders subtly reminded voters what his campaign was really about. The surreal, anti-climactic feeling shared by the electorate on the night of the caucuses was indicative of the same hopelessness that Sanders was running a campaign to reverse. “If I’m a first-time voter and I came out and voted — and the results are not coming in for 16 hours? You know, that’s a little disconcerting,” Sanders said.
As much as promises of universal healthcare and free college attracted thousands to his rallies, the message that resonated the most was something bigger. Sanders promised millions that they could trust the system again. That feeling of unease on caucus day symbolized something much more.
A party that decried threats to election integrity for four years couldn’t see the biggest danger was coming from inside the house. Somehow, these same people were expected to build an organization to defeat Trump in November. Somehow, voters were supposed to trust establishment favorites such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Buttigieg that they had the more realistic vision of America and could navigate the country’s institutions in a way that Sanders couldn’t.
Suddenly, the “Bernie beats Trump” bumper stickers and pins handed out at Sanders rallies took on a new meaning. It’s not just that Sanders’s pro-union bonafides and socialist sincerity could win back the white working class, but that only an outside campaign such as his was capable of ripping out the rot that had infiltrated not just the mainstream Democratic policy platform, but simple things such as running a primary.
All of that meant a lot more than a handful of delegates.
Joseph Simonson is a political reporter for the Washington Examiner.
