{"id":14360,"date":"2020-04-19T12:31:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T19:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=14360"},"modified":"2020-04-19T12:32:12","modified_gmt":"2020-04-19T19:32:12","slug":"bernie-sanders-is-staying-on-the-ballot-to-get-more-delegates-but-he-and-his-supporters-arent-investing-much-in-that-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/04\/19\/bernie-sanders-is-staying-on-the-ballot-to-get-more-delegates-but-he-and-his-supporters-arent-investing-much-in-that-effort\/","title":{"rendered":"BERNIE SANDERS IS STAYING ON THE BALLOT TO GET MORE DELEGATES, BUT HE AND HIS SUPPORTERS AREN\u2019T INVESTING MUCH IN THAT EFFORT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Rachel M. Cohen<\/a>
April 17 2020, 3:00\u00a0a.m. (theintercept.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHEN BERNIE SANDERS ended his presidential bid last week, he conceded that he could not feasibly catch up to Joe Biden\u2019s 300-some delegate lead to win the nomination but told supporters that he would stay on the ballot in all the remaining state primaries. \u201cWhile Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention, where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions,\u201d he said in a livestreamed video address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, Sanders had 911 delegates to Biden\u2019s 1,226. Sanders picked up 24 more from Wisconsin\u2019s controversial in-person election \u2014 which was held the day before he dropped out but whose results were announced this week \u2014 with the Vermont senator taking just 31 percent of the vote. He got seven more delegates from Alaska, where he won 45 percent of the vote. Alaska\u2019s vote-by-mail primary was the first contest held after Sanders had dropped out, but only 15 out of the 3,979 total pledged delegates were up for grabs. Roughly 1,600 delegates remain, according to NBC News\u2019s delegate tracker<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The party platform will be decided at the Democratic National Convention, which was postponed from July to August due to the coronavirus pandemic. To have more influence over shaping it, Sanders will need at least 1,200 elected delegates, which will require winning at least 15 percent of the vote in the remaining primaries. Some delegate-rich states are still up for grabs, like Ohio, New York,  Pennsylvania, and Georgia. (Many of the votes in Ohio have already been cast by mail; GOP Gov. Mike DeWine postponed the in-person election that had been scheduled for March 17.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s unclear how hard the Sanders campaign \u2014 or what\u2019s left of it \u2014 will be working to get those delegates. Sanders has already said he would not actively campaign or spend money on advertising in any of the remaining contests, and he has made clear that he will be campaigning for Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sanders campaign, which has laid off the vast majority of its organizing staff, told The Intercept that there\u2019s \u201ca team that works on delegates that is working the strategy\u201d but declined to provide further\u00a0detail, including how many staffers are staying on to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the senator deliberated the future of his campaign in recent weeks, Larry Cohen, chair of Our Revolution, urged Sanders to stay in the race<\/a> all the way to the convention. He warned that if Sanders failed to amass at least 25 percent of the total, then all the democratic reforms his supporters had fought for after 2016, such as reducing the power of superdelegates and making caucuses more transparent, could be lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe reforms were only put in place for one cycle,\u201d Cohen told The Intercept. \u201cIt\u2019s not what we set out to do, but it\u2019s what we could get passed at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Our Revolution, the group that formed from the remnants of Sanders\u2019s 2016 campaign, says it\u2019s prioritizing turning out voters to rack up Sanders\u2019s delegate count, most of the other national groups that backed Sanders\u2019s candidacy aren\u2019t planning to direct much, if any, resources to that effort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Revolution will be doing personal outreach to its most active supporters in the remaining states with requests that they volunteer to send get-out-the-vote texts to other voters. The group is not running any independent expenditures for Sanders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Sanders-supporting groups don\u2019t have plans to get involved or are planning to do just minimal outreach over email and social media. Evan Weber, political director for the Sunrise Movement, which endorsed Sanders in January, told The Intercept that the group hasn\u2019t determined whether it will be phone-banking or doing other kinds of GOTV work for the remaining primaries. \u201cIt\u2019s not in our organizing plans as they are developed thus far,\u201d he said.

A spokesperson for the Democratic Socialists of America said that since Sanders has left the race, the organization has \u201cshifted our work to focus on down ballot races,\u201d naming a handful of local, state, and congressional candidates it is supporting. RelatedBernie Sanders Ends Presidential Run<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice Democrats will also be focusing on down-ballot primaries, said spokesperson Waleed Shahid, and the Center for Popular Democracy Action is also not investing more in getting out the vote for Sanders. Jennifer Epps-Addison, co-executive director of CPD Action, said its stance is \u201cfolks can choose to vote for Sanders in the remaining primaries, and Biden should see those votes as an endorsement of the progressive agenda he\u2019ll need to make room for to motivate key voting blocs needed to defeat Trump.\u201d The group\u2019s biggest focus now though, she said, is \u201cdefeating Trump and advancing bold progressive ideals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Working Families Party, which originally endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren but then endorsed Sanders several days after she dropped out, will be encouraging members to vote for Sanders through email and social media, but is not planning to run a big persuasion effort. \u201cWe\u2019re going to urge WFP members in the remaining primary states to cast a vote for Sanders, in order to send as many progressive delegates as possible to the convention,\u201d said WFP\u2019s national campaigns director, Joe Dinkin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

THERE IS historical precedent for a losing candidate to focus on influencing their party\u2019s convention<\/a> even when their nomination was out of reach. When Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984 and 1988, he also used his position to push for rules reform in the Democratic nominating process, which he argued had unfairly hurt black candidates and other outsiders running as progressives. Jackson successfully pushed for abolishing the \u201cwinner-take-all\u201d delegate standard, and now delegates are divided up proportionally according to a candidate\u2019s share of the vote. It was these reforms that enabled<\/a> Barack Obama to win his presidential primary in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders reaching the 25 percent threshold is important, said Cohen, because under current Democratic Party rules, if a candidate has at least 25 percent, then those delegates can introduce minority resolutions on the floor \u2014 a sometimes long and dramatic process that convention leaders work very hard to avoid. The goal is always to reach a compromise among committee members beforehand so as to avoid that scenario. Sanders supporters say that having the leverage to bring issues to the floor, even a virtual floor, will be key to winning concessions from the centrist wing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five days after dropping out, Sanders endorsed Biden and has since emphasized that he will work to support the former vice president in the general election. \u201cI will do everything I can to help elect Joe,\u201d Sanders told the Associated Press<\/a> on Tuesday. \u201cWe had a contentious campaign. We disagree on issues. But my job now is to not only rally my supporters, but to do everything I can to bring the party together to see that [Trump] is not elected president.\u201dRelatedA Biden-Sanders Ticket: The Unthinkable May Be the Only Path Forward<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of whether Sanders is able to reach the delegate threshold he seeks, Biden is facing greater pressure to unify the party and court Sanders supporters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. This week the two men announced that they will be forming task forces to work on issues like education, immigration, health care, criminal justice, and climate change. On Tuesday night, during an Instagram Live conversation with rapper Cardi B, Sanders said Biden was \u201cmoving in the right direction\u201d on immigration and criminal justice reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under pressure to unify the party, it\u2019s unlikely that Biden would come out explicitly against the rules reforms the DNC Unity Commission agreed to in 2017<\/a> \u2014 especially as Biden\u2019s campaign manager Jen O\u2019Malley Dillon co-chaired that commission. The Biden campaign did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cohen, though, has his eye not just on maintaining those reforms, but expanding them and pushing the party to adopt more progressive positions. Examples of platform stances he said Sanders delegates could push for include allowing employers to join Medicare, which is how South Korea eventually got to single payer<\/a>, and allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Rachel M. Cohen<\/a> rachel.cohen@theintercept.com<\/a> @rmc031<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rachel M. CohenApril 17 2020, 3:00\u00a0a.m. (theintercept.com) WHEN BERNIE SANDERS ended his presidential bid last week, he conceded that he could not feasibly catch up to Joe Biden\u2019s 300-some delegate lead to win the nomination but told supporters that he would stay on the ballot in all the remaining state primaries…. Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14360"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14363,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14360\/revisions\/14363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}