Joe, you are the all-but-presumptive Democratic candidate. Officials from the Bernie Sanders campaign on Wednesday told reporters he would talk to supporters and consider the future of his campaign. He cancelled his Facebook ads and made no ask for campaign donations in an email to supporters.
But Joe, you also have serious decisions to make about the future of your campaign.
First, you need Sanders’ support and that of twice-disappointed Berners. You need them to do more than just vote for you in the fall. You need them to campaign for you between whenever Sanders drops out and November.
D.G. Martin, a moderate North Carolina opinion writer, once ran for Senate and lost in the primary to John Edwards. Martin gets it:
For all his recent successes, Biden has not shown he can inspire the youthful voters he will need to win in the fall. While Sanders did not get enough help from his young supporters to win, he did a whole lot better with that group than Biden.
In the fall, Biden needs a lot of help.
He needs the young Sanders voters and more. He needs Sanders to help
Fear of another Trump term won’t motivate them. Berners can’t be lectured or guilt-tripped into helping. That’s the thing about volunteers. They have to want to do it. You must give them a reason to. That isn’t a concession. It’s smart politics. The reason had best not come thinly wrapped in condescension from party regulars. That’s even smarter politics.
My sense of a candidate’s viability during the primaries has been this: Would you knock doors for them in the heat of August? Forgetting COVID-19 for the moment, my answer to the Biden campaign would be no. You need to get to yes with me. More importantly, you need to get to yes with the Berners who filled arenas for the senator from Vermont.
How? Carrots, not sticks.
People need a dream of a better future, especially now. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren gave supporters that. The Biden campaign promises a return to normal. But these times demand bold actions, not simply a return to normal. Anyway, normal isn’t returning anytime soon after the pandemic. You may not be able to give progressives everything on their wish lists but must recognize you need their engagement to win and win decisively. You need to engage their dreams.
Maybe rethink your position on health care.
The earth has moved since Super Tuesday. COVID-19 is making Sanders’ case for a single-payer health care system in a way no debate or budget analysis could. When you (and Pete Buttigieg) promised that if people — union members, for example — like their private insurance they could keep it, Nevada’s largest union backed Sanders’ vision instead. If you like your deductibles and co-pays, you can keep them (what I hear) is a tone-deaf argument from another era (three weeks ago).
“Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it,” Anat Shenker-Osorio wrote in The Hill three years ago. That is, Republicans shape opinion; Democrats chase it. But the latter is pandering, not leadership.
A big stumbling block for moderate Democrats has been voters’ risk aversion. That made it hard for black voters to believe Sanders’ “socialist” revolution could win against Republicans this fall.
But like a post hypnotic suggestion, one pandemic triggered Republicans to adopt a massive relief program with little memory of their hatred of government spending on ordinary people. They’ve proposed spending in excess of Obama’s 2009 Recovery Act stimulus … as a down payment on more to come. This includes direct checks to individuals, what Republicans typically call handouts, charity, “the dole” (as my Depression-era grandmother called it), or socialism. What a difference a deadly virus makes.
Oh, Republicans will snap out of it. But socialized safety nets they worked decades to sabotage are for now de rigueur. Should you be the Democrats’ nominee, you might seize the moment, inspire progressives, and offer to take Americans to a place beyond the pandemic. You could adopt (or adapt) some of your former rivals’ initiatives and give Sanders’ and Warren’s supporters a positive reason to knock those doors for you this season (either literally or virtually).
One reason you swept South Carolina is that older black voters know and trust you. You already have their confidence. Amidst the pandemic and the Trump administration’s manifold failures, you might leverage that trust to sell improvements to peoples’ lives in a way Warren and Sanders could not. That is, if you can bring not just competence to the office, but vision. It’s not enough to vote against Trump. In this bleak hour, Democrats must represent a better future.
Joe, people wearing surgical masks to the grocery store are not in the mood to be told we can’t have nice things (like a few more months of life) because they cost too much.
Leadership is not about meeting people where they are. Where we are right now sucks. Leadership is about taking us to a better place.
Second, you need to pick a running mate that will energize the Democrats in ways a 77-year-old white man cannot. That too could shift opinions and win support from Sanders and his fans. And you should not be deterred from selecting a woman whose celebrity might at times eclipse yours. We have enough ego in the Oval Office as is. What we need are leaders with vision to fill the vacuum and restore our faith in the future.
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