Some advice for Sanders supporters [View all]

[struggle4progress]

Last edited Sat May 2, 2015, 10:56 AM - Edit history (1)

Many of us are yellow dog Ds who will cheerfully support whoever rises to the top of the primary heap because, frankly, the Rs nowadays are stark raving nutjobs. Right now, I'm hoping Clinton and Sanders won't be my only choices in next year's primary, but I'll be hitting the streets hard for GOTV no matter who our nominee is.

It is essential to turn out our voters in November 2016 because we need Ds not only in the Oval Office but in the statehouses and Congress as well. This means we really can't afford bloody primary battles: when the primaries are over, we need to be able to coalesce quickly against the bonkers berserkers

It's reasonable to expect Clinton to attract big donors and to run fairly traditional and expensive media-intensive campaigns. Sanders will have much less money and will need to run grassroots campaigns with costs offset by considerable volunteer manpower. No matter how much money you can give Sanders, he will need a lot of volunteers.

Clinton's advisers may aim at the big electoral vote states, since the political establishment seems to have dumped the fifty-state strategy. That may serve Clinton well -- but long-term D wins in the statehouses and Congress may be more likely under a fifty-state strategy. The fifty-state strategy served us rather well while it persisted, and Sanders might build some support by attempting to reinvigorate that strategy. Those supporting Sanders, not because they expect him to win primaries but only because they think he might force issues to the table, should realize that their ability to influence a Clinton administration could depend in part on what they might bring to a Clinton campaign in 2016 -- and therefore such Sanders supporters should think careful about how the primary fights might build D organization in states. Here it might be helpful if Sanders took some stands that effectively supported some existing grassroots movements, such as a $15/hr minimum wage, because that's both right and expedient.

We probably know how the Rs will attack Clinton from the right: she's been a visible target for years, and the Rs have warehouses full of old playbooks which they will dust off and recycle; she's been dealing with that for years, and everybody now has some idea how to handle it.

Sanders has been less of a target because he's been in a safe seat from a small state but the Rs will predictably use the word "socialist" -- which to many Americans is indistinguishable from "totalitarian." Sanders supporters need to think through responses here, and the sooner the better. The unfortunate reality is that only experience can teach what works as a response: to get the needed experience, it's necessary to talk to the public in different places, trying different things until appropriate intuition develops. Perhaps a good place to start would be to think through how to respond to inevitable questions such as, "Is Sanders a socialist?" Since the Senator has called himself a democratic socialist, you aren't allowed to accuse the questioner of red-baiting. A good answer is very short, factual, and informative: it will not be a philosophical diatribe that you yourself find emotionally satisfying but it will relate a concrete and practical aspect about (say) the Senator's stand on a living wage, medical care, or public education. It's impossible to predict in advance what works without some experience with the public -- and that experience will differ from place to place: an answer that works great in Burlington VT (for example) may bomb in Ft Worth TX. The sooner potential Sanders volunteers start learning what sort of conversations work where they are, the better.

Lots of people don't like phone-calling or tabling-on-the-streets or door-knocking -- but one-to-one contact really works, and it works especially well if you know people's names. Boots-on-the-ground is authentic campaign work, and it can occur under-the-radar of the opposition if you're smart about it. Databases are available (at some cost) if you want to try to reach out to likely D voters. It takes surprisingly little in the way of manpower to start reaching out to people, and they'll be especially friendly if you're really offering them information they don't have.