Some Suggestions for the Sanders Campaign

Want a lesson in how to be a populist while not alienating potential supporters? Look no further than FDR.

Liz Warren was my favorite of the Democratic presidential candidates by far. Bernie was number two (and the only other one I feel genuine excitement for), so I have decided to back him against Biden. I live in New Jersey, so my vote might not even matter come June, but in the meantime I would like to do my bit to support him.

If I can't vote yet, I would like to offer some advice. The first would be to learn from the results on Super Tuesday. I was honestly shocked at how well Biden did, considering how tepid his campaign had been to this point, and how little he campaigned in places where he won. As the saying goes, "the party decides," and folks from Klobuchar to Clyburne decided to back the only established moderate candidate capable of uniting most of the party. (Warren was too progressive for them, but at least it wasn't Bloomberg.) With the nationalization of politics, retail politics (where Sanders has an advantage) are less important these days as well.

Something I learned from doing competitive debate in high school and college was that the worst thing you could do after a loss was to blame it on the judges or your opponents not playing fair. That might make you feel better, but it would not help you win the next time out. Unfortunately, the Bernie movement has a tendency to only find fault in others, and lacks the self-reflection needed to win this fight. That's why I think it's crucial that those of us coming to Bernie now offer our perspective, since we have a better understanding of how to preach to the unconverted.

In the first place, Super Tuesday was proof that trying to get new voters to the polls simply won't work. It could be that Sanders fails to inspire new voters, or that primary voting is such a specialized and rare thing that it's hard to get ANYONE to do it. In any case, to win he needs to get the votes of regular Democrats. This is going to be a problem, because a lot of Sanders supporters spend their time attacking Democratic politicians. Most voters, however, are not ideologically rigid. They tend to vote for who they like or who appeals to them for a variety of reasons. I know people who vote enthusiastically for candidates of wildly varying political ideologies because of this. If you tell someone that voting for Bernie means disdaining Obama, for example, you will lose. Obama is by far the most popular politician of my lifetime, especially in the Democratic Party. If Bernie wants the votes of African Americans in particular, he needs to claim the Obama legacy, not run against it as he often has done.

Another issue is in terms of branding. Sanders called himself a "democratic socialist," but his policies are really in line with the New Deal social democracy that the Democrats embraced before Jimmy Carter and the "Watergate babies." He could get a lot of mileage by showing himself to be in the party lineage, and not by using a label that's not only alienating to people in the middle, but also not even accurate to who he actually is.

Sanders also needs to use his anti-establishment rhetoric more selectively. It often takes on an "it's us against the world" mentality that understandably alienates the people on the outside looking in. It makes them feel as if they are not wanted in the "us." Compare this to how Barack Obama was able to bring people in. What seems to be getting lost these days is that Obama managed to win an insurgent campaign and go on to be the most popular president of my lifetime. Despite this, no one seems to be learning any lessons from him. (I am not saying he was flawless, only that he was good at getting elected president!) When the "establishment" stuff is aimed at other Democrats that a lot of progressive Democrats like, they are not going to warm to you.

There's also a problem that when every setback in the campaign is blamed on the media or party establishment, it makes Bernie sound like a loser. If you spend all your time complaining about process, guess what, you just lost. (Just look at Democrats in Congress failing to make Trump accountable for his crimes!)  In public it's better to project confidence about the next battle ahead, not complaining about how you were robbed in the last one. That plays well to the base, but as we've seen, that base is simply not enough to get him over the top.

Related to that, Sanders has to stop denying that the culture around his campaign is a liability, especially in attracting women. A minority of his online supporters seem more interested in proclaiming their moral superiority than in actually winning, and are huge assholes about it. The same people will then deny there's a problem. While every candidate has dickish supporters, the Sanders campaign seems to have a culture that cultivates behavior alienating to others. Part of the reason I am even writing this is to add an alternative voice to the mix. I am going for Bernie, but I personally know multiple Warren supporters (all women) who have basically said that the behavior of Sanders supporters has made it so that they simply don't want to be on the same team as them. Even if some folks feel this is merely a matter of perception, that perception has to be fixed.

Above all, I would urge the Sanders campaign to lean on positivity and on the promise of his program. The attraction of social democracy is that it promises a better world where all people can have dignity and protection. Isn't that a great thing? Don't we want a world where we are getting quality health care and able to go to college or have children without going bankrupt? (On a related note, he needs to stress child care as much or more than he is stressing college tuition.) Calling out "the banks" might help a little, but most people are less eaten up by anger than we have been led to believe.

Biden's biggest weakness is that he is trying to maintain a failed status quo. Bernie's greatest attraction is that he is offering something better. That message alone won't bring in voters unless they feel like they are welcome in the tent in tangible, not rhetorical ways. There's still time for Sanders to turn his campaign around, but when I see the dead-end nature of his supporters' resentment, I doubt it can happen. I hope I'm wrong.