Bernie in July vs Bernie in January
Marshalltown, July 2015
I had the pleasure of seeing Bernie Sanders speak in person for the first time in Marshalltown this last July on a Saturday afternoon. Living in Ames at the time, I made the deal with my apolitical girlfriend that if I went to the Des Moines farmers market with her, we would stop and see Bernie on our way home. We got there maybe 30 minutes early and sat in the second row, about 10 feet from a small podium.
My girlfriend (she has a name, it’s Alyssa, I think shes lovely) had never seen nor heard of Bernie Sanders at that point in July, despite my enthusiasm for him already, and both she and I were blown away by the simple man with powerful statistics and crumpled, handwritten notes he likely took with him everywhere. He talked about the obscene gap between the superrich and ordinary Americans, he talked about the real unemployment numbers, and he talked about his record of fighting for veterans and for working class folks. He told us, how is it that in the richest country in the history of human civilization that we have almost a third of our kids living in poverty? How is it that in the richest country in the history of the world, how can we underfund benefits to seniors and veterans? He said this has come to pass because the game is rigged, and big money has corrupted Washington and we need a grassroots movement to take back our democracy.
I was also interested by what he didn’t say. No once did he mention Hillary Clinton, and he only made a passing remark about the Republican field. He reminded the crowd that he had never taken out a negative ad in his life, and that he never would. Lastly, he never mentioned if his candidacy was a long-shot, or if “electability” mattered.
We saw him in the basement of a UAW hall, and had a standing-room-only crowd of about 100 packed into this small building. He took several questions, and I remember in particular a question from a woman about how her conservative friends think their taxes will be raised, how Democrats want to take their guns, and that all government is bad, and she wanted to reach out to them on these issues. Bernie answered her by saying that it is important that we do not let rhetoric and wedge issues divide us and that it’s important to have real conversations with our neighbors. At the time, this struck as me as profound as I was used to partisan attacks and treating far-right wingers as lost causes. What we really need in this country is for people to come together, and refused to be divided by petty wedge issues.
I had found my candidate.
Toledo, January 2016
Fast forward from the hot July sun to subzero windchill temperatures. Having been following the campaign for several months now, not only me but also Alyssa received text updates from the Bernie campaign about a week before his visit to Iowa, giving several dates and locations. Rather than events at bigger cities like Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, we elected to see him in Toledo, about an hour from my hometown. I figured we would get another up-close view at a smaller venue, and the timing worked out. Driving down Friday afternoon, we were both pretty excited to see “the man himself” in the flesh again.
In a similar crowd of mostly older adults with some young families, I immediately noticed a larger media presence at the event. It appeared that about half were on Bernie’s staff, taking pictures for the campaign. After short introductions from local volunteers, Bernie calmly walked out into the room and this time he appeared to have more loose-leaf handwritten notes, but this time it wasn’t crumpled up! He began his stump speech by citing familiar statistics about inequality and the Great Recession, and stressed that this Presidency isn’t about electing Bernie and then going home. It’s about getting people who have given up on the democratic process to become engaged and active citizens again.
He listed his major policy positions, namely getting large corporations and wealthy individuals that pay nothing in taxes to pay “their fair share” in order to fund basic governmental programs, such as a infrastructure bill, a Medicare-for-all system that would supersede Obamacare, and expanding Social Security by “ending the cap” on contributions by wealthy individuals. I know Bernie gets the wrap about ‘free this, free that’ , but on every issue he demonstrated a place where getting more tax revenue from one place would fund his vision of a program. He also talked about raising the minimum wage to $15/hr over five years and family leave for new mothers.
After going through policy, he acknowledged the “YOOGE” amount of money and influence of the fossil fuel and pharmaceutical industry, and how their lobbying hurts average Americans and keeps our costs high. He brought up how he was the only candidate with no SuperPac money and how he was going to end corrupted pay-for-play politics.
He ended his prepared remarks with something new. He brought up how he was the most electable candidate in recent polling pitting him or Hillary versus several Republican nominees. In every instance, Bernie did several points better than Hillary. Who’s more electable now?
At the end he did a Q&A session, and while I was too shy to ask a question he had several immediately thrown at him. He answered questions from veterans with his experience on the Veterans Services committee, and how he voted against the Iraq war. He turned a question from a visibility upset man about Hillary’s moral integrity into a point about how he’ll never engage in negative campaigning. He did however have some choice words for Donald Trump, whom he cited as ‘part of the whole system we’re fighting against.’
All in all, I felt like I saw the same Bernie on the issues, but this time he had more ammunition. On top of his record on the issues and his ethical stance on campaigning and donor money, he also had numbers to prove that he could win. One of the last comments was from a man who stated that it was recently published locally that Toledo has 51% of it’s population under the poverty line. Bernie finished with a diatribe against Trump, incredulous that while Trump thinks wages are too high, average Americans in the heart of the Midwest live in poverty.
Analysis
I hate to sound like a crazed fanboy, but it’s hard to not be excited about this campaign. This is no longer about raising up these core issues in the minds of Americans, but actually beginning the process of taking our democracy back. He’s got the momentum, and it all depends on one thing: voter turnout. If there is a massive showing of the young, the old, and independents at the Democratic caucus, there’s a good chance Bernie will be getting the Iowa boost to the national stage. I can’t wait for Feb first!
