Some of the people who supported the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 aren’t exactly enthusiastic about a sequel:
Bernie Sanders has a problem as he decides whether to run in 2020: Many of his former staffers are looking elsewhere.
With the Vermont senator kicking off a nine-state tour on Friday with stops in Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and California, a sizable contingent of the people who helped build his insurgent 2016 campaign is ambivalent about a second run, according to interviews with more than a dozen former staffers. Many of them are looking for a different progressive champion to finish what Sanders started.
anders should just declare victory, they said, content in the knowledge that much of his 2016 platform has been adopted by other ambitious Democrats considering White House bids. Plus, he’s a white man who would turn 80 in his first year as president, who’d be trying to lead a diverse party fueled by the energy of young voters, women and people of color.
“I think that if a younger candidate can pick up the mantle and have Bernie’s support, I think that would be a better option for 2020. I feel like 60 to 70 percent of former staffers are looking around for another Bernie-esque candidate this time around, even if it’s not him,” said Daniel Deriso, a field organizer for Sanders’ 2016 campaign who went on to help run a successful insurgent mayoral campaign in Birmingham, Ala., last year. “But if Bernie called me to have me work on the campaign then I’d do it.”
In many ways, Sanders is a victim of his own success. His lightning-in-a-bottle 2016 campaign helped move his ambitious proposals into the mainstream — ideas such as “Medicare for all,” a $15 minimum wage and debt-free college. The reluctance of former aides to embrace another campaign reflects what’s expected to be a sprawling field of Democrats stampeding left — unlike the binary Hillary or Bernie choice during most of the Democratic primary two years ago.
Sanders should just declare victory, they said, content in the knowledge that much of his 2016 platform has been adopted by other ambitious Democrats considering White House bids. Plus, he’s a white man who would turn 80 in his first year as president, who’d be trying to lead a diverse party fueled by the energy of young voters, women and people of color.
“I think that if a younger candidate can pick up the mantle and have Bernie’s support, I think that would be a better option for 2020. I feel like 60 to 70 percent of former staffers are looking around for another Bernie-esque candidate this time around, even if it’s not him,” said Daniel Deriso, a field organizer for Sanders’ 2016 campaign who went on to help run a successful insurgent mayoral campaign in Birmingham, Ala., last year. “But if Bernie called me to have me work on the campaign then I’d do it.”
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Enough fervent supporters — from the 2016 campaign’s top officials to field organizers — are wary of a 2020 run that it could be difficult to reignite the 2016 movement. Jeff Weaver, who managed the 2016 race, has been talking about the idea of a “Draft Bernie PAC” of sorts after the midterms. But many supporters have been noncommittal, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.
Weaver dismissed the notion that enthusiasm for a Sanders sequel has waned.
“I’ve spoken with a number of people who are interested in a draft-Bernie movement,” Weaver said. “My email is full and my voicemail is full of former Bernie staffers who are eager to come back should he run.”
But some people in the highest tiers of the Sanders hierarchy have already signaled they aren’t up for another go-round. His longtime chief of staff, Michaeleen Earle Crowell, who gained some notoriety for playing Hillary Clinton in debate prep during the 2016 primary, left Sanders’ Senate office this past summer to work for a private lobbying firm, a move that caught some people in Sanders’ orbit off guard.
“I hope Bernie does run for president again, and if he does, I plan to be as helpful as possible to him,” she wrote in an email.
Sanders’ omnipresent communications director in 2016, Michael Briggs, said in a text message that it was “unlikely” he’d join a 2020 run.
A common frustration among former staffers is that they feel Sanders and his tight circle of aides have taken their support for granted and failed to keep their 2016 team cohesive, which would have been an inherent advantage in a second run.
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Multiple former staffers said that the Clinton campaign alumni network is far more connected and active than Sanders’.
Other former Sanders campaign workers — the “ride or die” cohort as one former aide dubbed them — say that no other Democrat has emerged who matches Bernie.
“I’ll do whatever I can if he runs as would most people I think who backed Bernie in 2016,” said Claire Sandberg, a senior campaign aide for Sanders in 2016. “I’m sure Elizabeth Warren knows all the people she’d appoint to the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] and the Treasury Department, cbut I want to know what she’s going to do on climate change. We need a candidate who understands that that’s an existential threat, and frankly he’s the only candidate who has shown that level of vision.”
In many respects, of course, Sanders is a victim of his own success. The “progressive” message that he ran on in 2016 has been adopted by a significant number of other Democrats, and several of those Democrats are openly considering running for President themselves in 2020. Among these potential candidates, of course, is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose decision not to run in 2016 likely resulted in many of the people who hoped she would do so turning to Sanders as the next best alternative, and in any case better than Hillary Clinton, who many saw as representative of an “establishment” wing of the party that had failed the rank and file in recent years. If Warren does run in two years, which certainly seems to be a possibility, it’s likely that she will be the most prominent competitor for the votes of the “progressive” wing of the party that Sanders would face in a second bid for the nomination. In addition to Warren, Sanders would likely also face stiff competition from other candidates such as Senators Kamals Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, both of whom utilized the recently concluded fight over the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to boost their national profiles, and both of whom have already spent time in early primary states such as Iowa and South Carolina making appearances on behalf of Democratic candidates while at the same time making connections in two of the most important early primary states.
In addition to the fact that a Sanders campaign in 2020 would end up having to compete for votes, money, and resources with a number of other candidates basically all saying the same thing as Sanders did in 2016, Sanders and any of the other “progressive” candidates would have to deal with the fact that several of the issues that he ran on in 2016 are now at least somewhat part of the Democratic Party’s platform. This includes everything from increases in the minimum wage and the idea of a Medicare-For-All type solution to the healthcare situation to increased protections for workers and a focus on income inequality. While the Democratic Party hasn’t adopted the Sanders agenda lock, stock, and barrel, it is certainly more sympathetic to many of the most popular parts of it to the point where Sanders is arguably no longer the iconoclast he was in 2016. Given that, and taking into account the fact that many of the people who will be running in 2020 will be younger than he is, Senator Sanders may find it hard to capture lightning in a bottle the second time around.
Sanders benefited greatly in 2016 from the fact that he was largely unique among the Democrats running for the nomination, and his grandfatherly and somewhat professorial image served as a good contrast to Hillary Clinton’s more establishment and oftentimes unemotional performance on the campaign trail. That won’t be the case again in 2020, and there are likely to be candidates that better at reaching out not only to the “progressives” that Sanders appeals to but also the more mainstream wing of the party. Because of that, it seems likely that Sanders 2020 won’t be nearly as successful as Sanders 2016 was.
