Backed by Army of Small-Dollar Donors, Sanders Camp Forges Ahead
Published on
Thursday, April 21, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Backed by Army of Small-Dollar Donors, Sanders Camp Forges Ahead
With another record-breaking fundraising effort in March, Sanders supporters
give campaign financial muscle to take political revolution all the way to
the convention in June
by
Deirdre Fulton, staff writer
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking with supporters at the Agriculture Center
at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo: Gage
Skidmore/flickr/cc)
After his loss to Hillary Clinton in New York's Democratic presidential
primary on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders is facing a lot of questions-warranted or
not-about what comes next for his campaign.
One thing he doesn't have to worry about: running out of cash.
The Sanders campaign late on Wednesday filed a report with the Federal
Election Commission showing it raised nearly $46 million in March-its third
straight month of beating rival Clinton in the money race. The record haul
shows his campaign has the financial ability to do what Sanders has vowed to
do since Super Tuesday: take his political revolution all the way to the
Democratic National Convention in June.
But the best approach for doing so is still very much up in the air.
Sanders went home to Vermont on Tuesday night, wanting what advisor Tad
Devine called "an opportunity to think."
"It's affording him an opportunity to think about where we are in the
campaign, what he wants to say in the weeks ahead," Devine told NBC News.
The campaign is now looking toward April 26 primaries in Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware, followed by Indiana,
which holds its primary on May 3. Top advisors also spoke Wednesday about
how Sanders and his surrogates will seek support from so-called
superdelegates as the convention gets closer.
As the race marches on, Sanders "could maintain, or even escalate, his
criticism of Clinton on issues such as her speeches to Wall Street," The
Hill wrote on Thursday. "Or he could seek to dial down the tensions in the
race, which could help unify the party heading into the Democratic National
Convention this summer."
According to the New York Times, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "the
campaign planned to continue to ask questions about Mrs. Clinton's ties to
Wall Street, her speeches at commercial banks, and her changing stances on
policy issues. He also shot back sarcastically when asked whether Mr.
Sanders might change the tone of the campaign that in recent weeks has
become more contentious."
"I've seen their, I'm sure, heartfelt concerns about the tone of the
campaign," Briggs told the Times of the Clinton campaign. "All I would ask
them to do is look in the mirror."
Writing at The Nation on Wednesday, D.D. Guttenplan said internal
soul-searching was in order for both Sanders and his supporters:
Does the New York result mean Sanders should pack up and quit? Of course
not. The spark that caught fire with his campaign will burn all the way to
California-to the convention, the election, and beyond. But he-and those of
us who allowed ourselves to hope he might really be president-need to start
asking some questions. If Sanders isn't running for president, what is he
running for? How will he-and we-sustain the political revolution past
November? Is the goal to occupy the Democratic Party-and go into the
convention seeking real influence over the platform? Is it more important to
get Sanders supporters into positions of power within the party? Or are both
of those approaches distractions from the long-term goal of building
institutional power independent of a party that has always been quick to
co-opt movements but deeply reluctant to deliver radical change?
In the short term, Sanders needs to keep setting out what he's fighting for:
not just the policies he will probably never be in a position to implement,
but the politics he's already done so much to transform. And though it might
seem like a restriction to lay off the personal attacks, and to rein in
those of his supporters who see Hillary Clinton as the incarnation of evil,
it could also be a liberation. As he rightly reminds us, when Sanders began
he was barely a blip in the national polls. It was his vision of what this
country could become if we freed our politics from the shackles of corporate
money and our policies from the straitjacket of neoliberal orthodoxy that
brought him so many victories. If he spends the next three months talking
more about that vision, and less about his opponent, will that really be
such a great loss?
For Sanders backers like Burke Stansbury, a community organizer who lives in
Seattle, the key reason to prolong Sanders' presidential campaign isn't
necessarily to beat Hillary Clinton, but to deepen and sustain the momentum
behind a burgeoning political revolution.
"Even after Clinton's victory in New York on Tuesday, it seems likely that
Sanders will take his candidacy right up to the Democratic convention,"
wrote Stansbury in an op-ed for the Guardian. "I, for one, am glad to see a
tight race. The longer it goes, the more chance there is for a deepening
political conversation about economic and racial justice, and the more
people will become politically engaged through the process."
He concluded, "If we put too much faith in elected officials then we sell
ourselves short. The real work is continuing to build grassroots movements
that can hold whoever is elected accountable, and push for radical change."
Still, Kevin Gosztola argued in an op-ed Thursday, it's "premature to
grapple with how the movement around the campaign can continue after the
campaign is over when it frankly is not over yet."
"The Sanders campaign," he said, "is in the midst of a war for a nomination
that will give voters a viable alternative to two oligarchs in November, and
it is not about to quit now."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
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Backed by Army of Small-Dollar Donors, Sanders Camp Forges Ahead
Published on
Thursday, April 21, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Backed by Army of Small-Dollar Donors, Sanders Camp Forges Ahead
With another record-breaking fundraising effort in March, Sanders supporters
give campaign financial muscle to take political revolution all the way to
the convention in June
by
Deirdre Fulton, staff writer
. 74 Comments
.
. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking with supporters at the Agriculture
Center at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo: Gage
Skidmore/flickr/cc)
. After his loss to Hillary Clinton in New York's Democratic
presidential primary on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders is facing a lot of
questions-warranted or not-about what comes next for his campaign.
. One thing he doesn't have to worry about: running out of cash.
. The Sanders campaign late on Wednesday filed a report with the
Federal Election Commission showing it raised nearly $46 million in
March-its third straight month of beating rival Clinton in the money race.
The record haul shows his campaign has the financial ability to do what
Sanders has vowed to do since Super Tuesday: take his political revolution
all the way to the Democratic National Convention in June.
. But the best approach for doing so is still very much up in the air.
Sanders went home to Vermont on Tuesday night, wanting what advisor Tad
Devine called "an opportunity to think."
"It's affording him an opportunity to think about where we are in the
campaign, what he wants to say in the weeks ahead," Devine told NBC News.
The campaign is now looking toward April 26 primaries in Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware, followed by Indiana,
which holds its primary on May 3. Top advisors also spoke Wednesday about
how Sanders and his surrogates will seek support from so-called
superdelegates as the convention gets closer.
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/cdspring16-articlehttps://secure.
actblue.com/contribute/page/cdspring16-article
As the race marches on, Sanders "could maintain, or even escalate, his
criticism of Clinton on issues such as her speeches to Wall Street," The
Hill wrote on Thursday. "Or he could seek to dial down the tensions in the
race, which could help unify the party heading into the Democratic National
Convention this summer."
According to the New York Times, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "the
campaign planned to continue to ask questions about Mrs. Clinton's ties to
Wall Street, her speeches at commercial banks, and her changing stances on
policy issues. He also shot back sarcastically when asked whether Mr.
Sanders might change the tone of the campaign that in recent weeks has
become more contentious."
"I've seen their, I'm sure, heartfelt concerns about the tone of the
campaign," Briggs told the Times of the Clinton campaign. "All I would ask
them to do is look in the mirror."
Writing at The Nation on Wednesday, D.D. Guttenplan said internal
soul-searching was in order for both Sanders and his supporters:
Does the New York result mean Sanders should pack up and quit? Of course
not. The spark that caught fire with his campaign will burn all the way to
California-to the convention, the election, and beyond. But he-and those of
us who allowed ourselves to hope he might really be president-need to start
asking some questions. If Sanders isn't running for president, what is he
running for? How will he-and we-sustain the political revolution past
November? Is the goal to occupy the Democratic Party-and go into the
convention seeking real influence over the platform? Is it more important to
get Sanders supporters into positions of power within the party? Or are both
of those approaches distractions from the long-term goal of building
institutional power independent of a party that has always been quick to
co-opt movements but deeply reluctant to deliver radical change?
In the short term, Sanders needs to keep setting out what he's fighting for:
not just the policies he will probably never be in a position to implement,
but the politics he's already done so much to transform. And though it might
seem like a restriction to lay off the personal attacks, and to rein in
those of his supporters who see Hillary Clinton as the incarnation of evil,
it could also be a liberation. As he rightly reminds us, when Sanders began
he was barely a blip in the national polls. It was his vision of what this
country could become if we freed our politics from the shackles of corporate
money and our policies from the straitjacket of neoliberal orthodoxy that
brought him so many victories. If he spends the next three months talking
more about that vision, and less about his opponent, will that really be
such a great loss?
For Sanders backers like Burke Stansbury, a community organizer who lives in
Seattle, the key reason to prolong Sanders' presidential campaign isn't
necessarily to beat Hillary Clinton, but to deepen and sustain the momentum
behind a burgeoning political revolution.
"Even after Clinton's victory in New York on Tuesday, it seems likely that
Sanders will take his candidacy right up to the Democratic convention,"
wrote Stansbury in an op-ed for the Guardian. "I, for one, am glad to see a
tight race. The longer it goes, the more chance there is for a deepening
political conversation about economic and racial justice, and the more
people will become politically engaged through the process."
He concluded, "If we put too much faith in elected officials then we sell
ourselves short. The real work is continuing to build grassroots movements
that can hold whoever is elected accountable, and push for radical change."
Still, Kevin Gosztola argued in an op-ed Thursday, it's "premature to
grapple with how the movement around the campaign can continue after the
campaign is over when it frankly is not over yet."
"The Sanders campaign," he said, "is in the midst of a war for a nomination
that will give voters a viable alternative to two oligarchs in November, and
it is not about to quit now."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
