Well, you know We all want to change the world
by Tom Sullivan
Local organizers held Bernie Bash 2015 Sunday afternoon. Some music, some food, and some Bernie Sanders swag. Lots of enthusiasm. (Some of the Bernie swag was homemade.) Whether any of it will translate into convention votes is another matter.
Anis Shivani at Salon believes Sanders’ next moves must include:
a) dramatic emphasis on minority outreach; b) expansion of his economic message to one of social harmony; and c) delegitimization of the negative populism pervasive in the Republican primary.
All good. But feeling the Bern won’t get supporters like those I met into the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. That will take credentials. Getting credentials will take Sanders winning delegates in the Super Tuesday primaries and his supporters getting elected as Sanders delegates per their state party’s procedures. Sanders supporters new to or ideologically opposed to participating in what some may consider a tainted, insiders’ game will be playing catch-up. Or else they won’t. Hillary Clinton’s supporters will know the process inside out. Vox provides an update on where that stands:
Hillary Clinton picked up the endorsement of New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan Friday, adding the state’s top Democrat to a list of backers that also includes Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the state chapter of the National Education Association, and a small army of current and former government and party officials.
She’s also getting campaign-trail help from two top Democrats that come from rival Bernie Sanders’s neighboring home state of Vermont — Gov. Peter Shumlin and former Gov. Howard Dean.
Jonathan Allen argues why endorsements matter:
1. Members of Congress, governors, and certain other party officials are “superdelegates” to the Democratic National Convention next year, meaning they have a vote in the tally that decides the nomination and that they aren’t pledged to vote for a candidate chosen by the voters of their state or district.
2. Elected officials often — though not always — have pretty significant political organizations and fundraising networks. They can help a presidential candidate put together a ground game on their home turf and squeeze every last dollar out of of every last donor. This is particularly true of top statewide elected officials such as governors and US senators.
3. The policy differences between candidates in a party primary can be pretty small, and some voters may take cues from their favorite local pols to pick a candidate for the nomination. The endorsement of a popular official confers a certain credibility on a candidate.
That seems about right. Clinton’s people know the inside game in a way Bernie supporters of the righteously independent, self-organizing sort will not. Clinton has been courting superdelegates for some time, as a friend in the DNC told a room full of activists on Saturday. He got home later to find a letter from Clinton and a copy
David Brock’s newest effort. I presume he’ll let me know when he hears from Bernie Sanders. Or Joe Biden.
“It will take a revolution” to change the system, one supporter told me at the “Bash” Sunday afternoon. At least they have numbers that suggest they might eventually form one. That hope seems not to have been seasoned by disappointment with Obama’s tenure.
But earlier Sunday, I took a call from a man from south of here who was looking for information on how to find the “Bernie Bash.” He had changed his registration a couple of months ago, he said. He’d been a registered Republican (in a very Republican county) all his life. His thick accent attested to the “all his life” part, and the tenor of his voice supported his claim to being the same age as Bernie Sanders. He went on at length about how if the crooked banks were too big to fail, they were too big to exist. Sanders wants to break them up, and he was all for that. That is why he was behind Bernie. (He liked Elizabeth Warren too, for the same reason, only she isn’t running.) I don’t remember him even mentioning Hillary Clinton. Or Donald Trump.
Makes you wonder how many more there are out there like him.