Bernie Launches Our Revolution

Bernie Sanders is launching a new organisation, Our Revolution, to take over where his failed presidential bid left off. 
 
 Sanders supporters gathered at over 2600 house parties across the United States on Wednesday night to hear a live cast from the Senator on his new plans. The die-hard Berners were joined by 200,000 viewers on Facebook and a TV audience of millions. 
 
 Before looking forward, Sanders championed his campaign’s record of success in changing the terms of American political debate. Where two or three years ago his plan for free college tuition was dismissed as crazy, the Senator pointed out, Hillary Clinton has now adopted it as policy for families earning under $125000. Not only have progressive Democrats fought back against attacks on social security, the debate is now about how much it should be expanded. States and cities around the country have enacted legislation creating a $15 an hour minimum wage, over double the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

The message was clear. Change is possible. And Bernie 2016 showed how to make it happen. 
 
 The question is whether the momentum can continue now the primary is over and Bernie has endorsed his opponent. Sanders’ first strategy is to back progressive candidates across the country. Our Revolution will support over one hundred progressive candidates running for political office in November, from school boards to state legislatures, all the way to Congress. 
 
 That support will draw on the same technology that powered Sanders’ grassroots insurgency in the presidential primary. Using the Bernie Dialer, Sanders supporters were able to make calls for the presidential candidate from their own homes. Just as easily, they could sign up online to attend a phone bank at a neighbour’s house — or host their own. It’s an incredibly decentralized model that allowed the enormous progressive enthusiasm for Sanders to be quickly transformed into outreach to undecided voters. Our Revolution used the same mechanism to enable people to get together to watch Bernie’s live cast. 
 
 The second strategy is to back ballot initiatives — public votes on proposed laws — for progressive change. Our Revolution will be actively campaigning for endorsement of 125 ballot initiatives in November. Sanders singled out Ballot Measure 1 in Alaska that would create automatic voter registration, countering right-wing efforts to disenfranchise the poor and marginalized. He also talked up initiatives that will advance the right to universal healthcare he spoke of so often in the primary. Proposition 61 in California is designed to regulate the amount the state pays to pharmaceutical companies for medicines. Colorado’s Amendment 69 would create a government health insurer, funded by payroll and income tax increases. It’s right out of the Bernie playbook and it has a chance of getting up. 
 
 There is clearly a lot of work to do and, even without the presidency, plenty of opportunities to pursue the agenda Sanders carved out. But will he be able to continue to generate the kind of loyalty and enthusiasm that powered his presidential bid?
 
 Niko Klein is a California-based impact investor who gave serious time, energy and money to Bernie 2016. For over a year he hosted two or three Bernie phone banks a week in his San Francisco apartment. Each week, Klein would power through calls to voters across the country while graciously helping novices work the Bernie dialer, and explaining the finer points of the voter registration laws in the state holding the next primary. He travelled from California to Nevada, Pennsylvania and New York to knock on doors for Bernie.
 
 Klein is exactly the kind of committed activist that Our Revolution needs. But, to borrow a phrase, he’s not there yet. He was deeply disappointed by the manner in which Sanders handled himself at the Democratic National Convention, especially by the endorsement of Clinton. He’s confused by Sanders’ failure to canvass for Tim Canova who is in a primary contest with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the discredited former head of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton ally. Klein asks: “Is Bernie more interested in being a high-minded, collaborative politician who is interested in playing the political game going forward or is he more interested in leading the movement?” 
 
 These tensions spilled into the public arena this week with eight top Our Revolution staffers resigning. The walkout was sparked by the appointment of Jeff Weaver, who headed up Bernie 2016, as president of the new organisation. While Sanders pointedly praised Weaver on Wednesday night as somebody who has been by his side for decades, he has become the locus of controversy over the future of the Bernie movement. 
 
 Claire Sandberg was the digital organizing director for Bernie 2016 and, prior to her resignation, the organizing director for Our Revolution. She told Politico: “It’s about both the fundraising and the spending: Jeff would like to take big money from rich people including billionaires and spend it on ads. That’s the opposite of what this campaign and this movement are supposed to be about and after being very firm and raising alarm the staff felt that we had no choice but to quit.” 
 
 As Bernie supporters absorbed Wednesday’s live cast at a house party hosted by Progressive Democrats for America, the organisation behind the ‘Run, Bernie, Run,’ campaign the mood was more positive. A nurse talked about the pleasure of seeing his 16 year old daughter become more deeply engaged in politics as they went leafleting for Bernie together over the course of the primary season. As a father, he saw the setback of losing as a lesson that change takes time. 
 
 Another attendee, Susan VanKuiken, acknowledged the strains the movement is experiencing. She talked about being at a packed meeting, full of young people almost in tears, insisting they couldn’t vote for Hillary. But she also talked about the excitement of getting swept up in Bernie’s primary campaign, and saying that, after a rest, she’s “pumped up and ready to go again. It’s our only chance.”
 
 The Democrats hope that Trump will not only lose in November but that he’ll take Republican congressional candidates down with him. They only need a net addition of four Senate seats to win a majority there. In that scenario, Senator Sanders has every chance of becoming Chair of the Budget Committee or the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It will be an excellent spot to exert leverage over a Clinton administration, all the more so if he has a popular movement behind him demanding progressive change. Whether he can hold together the movement he has built over the last year remains to be seen.