Why Bernie Lost (And Why His Supporters Need To Face Reality)
As the Democratic primary process draws to a close, Sanders’ language has gotten increasingly fiery, and his supporters have bristled at the idea of conceding. Sanders continues to lie to his supporters, telling them that he has a path to the Democratic nomination. He tells his crowds that with a big win in California, he can close the gap in pledged delegates and overtake Hillary Clinton. Let’s be honest. He’s lying, and we all know that he’s lying. Hillary Clinton won by every metric possible. She won more states, she won the popular vote by nearly 3 million, she won in pledged delegates (by nearly 300, three times Obama’s largest lead), and she won the superdelegates. There is not a single democratic metric which Bernie Sanders won. If you think that the will of the people should decide elections, then you can’t possibly believe that Bernie Sanders should be the nominee.
The 2008 race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was a close one. This time around, Clinton’s margins dwarf Obama’s, and she has largely crushed Sanders. It wasn’t the elites. It wasn’t the one percent. It wasn’t Wall-Street or the big banks. It was regular people. More people wanted Hillary Clinton to be President than wanted Bernie Sanders. Sometimes it really is that simple. In politics, like in life, sometimes you just lose.
There Is No Conspiracy against Bernie Sanders
Sanders does have some fervent supporters, and quite a few have had a hard time admitting that more voters simply wanted Clinton. Instead of admitting the political reality, some have turned to conspiracy theories — that Sanders would have won, if only the election wasn’t rigged. The latest controversy came last weekend at the Nevada Democratic Convention, where Clinton ended the event with a lead in delegates. Sanders’ team alleged that Clinton “cheated” her way to victory, a claim that has already been debunked by Politifact.
Sanders supporters have also claimed that Bernie would have won, if not for Clinton’s Wall-Street connections and big money influencing the election. The problem with that assessment is that Sanders outraised and outspent Clinton throughout 2016. In New York, he outspent her by a 2–1 margin and still lost decisively, by double digits. Sanders also outspent Hillary on ads in the April 26 primary states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhone Island, and Delaware $4.6 million to $2.4 million. He only won a single state — Rhode Island, making April 26th one of his poorest performances of the primary season. If anything, Sanders proved that outraising and outspending your opponent doesn’t mean you’ll actually beat them.
Bernie didn’t lose because of some nonexistent conspiracy, and he didn’t lose because of money. Bernie lost because he couldn’t convince minority voters. Sanders tied or won the white vote nearly everywhere. In states that were nearly homogeneous (mostly white), Sanders dominated, besting Clinton by significant margins. But in the big, diverse states, Sanders struggled mightily and lost minorities by big numbers. States such as Florida, Virginia, Texas, New York, and Arizona were all major losses for Sanders, and all of those states have significant Black or Latino populations. In fact, demographics have the highest correlation of any metric of Sanders success or failure — states where Black voters comprised over 10 percent of the population, Sanders lost. When Black voters were less than 10 percent of the population, Sanders won. The primary essentially boils down to Bernie’s inability to connect with minorities. If he could have sold Black and Latino voters on his vision, he would be the nominee. They overwhelmingly rejected him though — for a number of reasons — so he lost.
If You Believe That Bernie Should Be the Nominee, You Don’t Believe In Democracy
I’ve been on record saying that I like Shaun King. I think he fights hard for Black Lives Matter, and he’s taken a lot of crap from both sides of the aisle, but he keeps getting back up. I admire his resolve to continue fighting for Black lives. But I think his insinuation that superdelegates are deciding the race is wrong, and one that is meant to inflame and rile up Bernie supporters.
The superdelegates have never handed the nomination to the loser in pledged delegates. Not once. The superdelegates have never gone against the will of the people and turned the loser into the winner. They are not going to do it this time either, and everyone knows it. Why would they?
At the beginning of the race, MoveOn.org created a petition saying that the voters should decide who gets to be the nominee. That was when Sanders supporters still thought he would win the pledged delegates and the popular vote. Sanders surrogates continually said that the superdelegates shouldn’t overturn the will of the people. That was early on in the race, before it became clear that Sanders would not come close to winning via any democratic metric. Now, in a hypocritical and self-serving turn, Sanders and his surrogates have claimed that they should win the nomination anyway, and that superdelegates should overturn the will of the people, but in his favor. They claim that the superdelegates should overturn the will of the people because Bernie might poll better against Trump. This is a disingenuous argument, because polls aren’t democratic. Letting the voters choose the nominee is. And the voters chose Hillary Clinton, by significant margins. If you believe that Sanders should be the nominee anyway, in spite of the people’s choice, then you don’t believe in democracy. You believe that the elites should decide who the nominee is, based on polls, or some other criteria that favors your favorite candidate. That actually sounds like oligarchy.
The Most Progressive Thing You Can Do This Fall Is Defeating Donald Trump
If you are a progressive, Hillary Clinton isn’t your enemy, despite what Sanders, Devine, Weaver, and others in Bernie’s campaign might say. Clinton championed the Affordable Care Act along with President Obama and other progressives, and today, America’s uninsured rate is below 10 percent, for the first time ever. She consistently fights against the gun lobby, and she’s already unveiled a $275 billion infrastructure investment and jobs plan which would stimulate the economy. She is the leading voice in pay equality for women, and she has elevated the voices of marginalized communities.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, champions mass deportation for Latinos, crushing Black protesters, banning Muslims from the country, and punishing women for having abortions. He’s an open white nationalist, and he’s literally had members of the KKK endorse him. Who cares if Trump is against trade deals? A Klansman who doesn’t like trade is still a Klansman. A white nationalist who is against trade deals or the big banks isn’t progressive. They’re bigots. They are the enemies of progress. And if you are a progressive, then you should have a vested interest in stopping Trump, even if you can’t get Bernie Sanders. Sanders has already said that he’ll work “24/7” to stop Trump from becoming President, and that statement didn’t come with a qualification about him winning the nomination to do so.
Although Sanders has talked tough, it is probably going to go down like this: Bernie will drop out at some point after California, and he’ll endorse Clinton at the convention. He’ll call for party unity, and he’ll say that Trump can’t be allowed in the White House. And he’ll be right. Trump represents an evil much greater than the partisan gap between Clinton and Sanders. Prominent liberal figures — including President Obama and Elizabeth Warren — will campaign hard for Clinton. Sanders probably won’t do as much campaigning, but his endorsement of Hillary and his attacks on Trump at the convention will do enough to push most of his supporters into the Clinton camp. Already, 80 percent of Sanders supporters in California have said that they’ll be voting for Clinton in the fall. That number means that Sanders’ camp is already much closer to Clinton’s than was the case in 2008, where a large segment of Clinton’s supporters claimed they wouldn’t vote for Obama at all (they did, of course, in the end).
The Future of Bernie’s Movement
Bernie Sanders is going to lose. He’s probably going to drop out after California, and he’s probably going to endorse Clinton at the convention. In short, he’s only got a few weeks left in the spotlight. So what is the future of Bernie’s movement? What will Sanders’ legacy be? Well, as I see it, Bernie’s movement has two options.
The first option is to double down on the failed strategy of going after working class whites in an attempt to remake the Democratic Party in their image. An article written in our favorite socialist publication, The Jacobin, proposes Democrats do just that: reach out to working class whites and make them the focus of the Democratic Party, even if said whites have high levels of racial resentment and have voted Republican (because of said racial resentment) since Civil Rights passed. Sanders has long focused on working class whites. In an interview with the National Journal in 2014, he said this: “Let me ask you, what is the largest voting bloc in America? Is it gay people? No. Is it African Americans? No. Hispanics? No. Its working class white people.”
Working class whites are a shrinking portion of the electorate, as the minority percentage of the population grows each year. Working class whites have also long resisted social programs (that they believe will help minorities), even though Bernie won them on the Democratic side, the majority of working class whites still vote Republican. Focusing on working class whites is a losing strategy for Democrats, and it is why Sanders could not win any of the big, diverse states in the Democratic Primary this year (sealing his defeat).
The second option for Bernie’s movement is move into the future. That means to move away from alienating core constituencies of the Democratic Party, and to stop harassing women and minorities online. That means embracing identity politics and diversity at the top, instead of decrying it. A Democratic Party where women and minorities have huge influence and make major policy decisions is the future. If Bernie’s movement doesn’t accept that, they will likely fade as the demographic numbers shift against them. Instead of harassing women and minorities, Sanders supporters need to be asking them what their interests are, and how the Party can work to meet them. Sanders supporters should be in the Deep South, meeting with Black church congregations to find out what challenges they face. They should be meeting with Latino organizations to learn more about their needs. Those are the groups that Sanders couldn’t reach — if there is a future for Bernie’s vision, it starts with his supporters learning more about the minorities who rejected him so overwhelmingly.
Will Bernie be remembered as the angry old guy who handed the country to Trump? Will Bernie be forever associated with the man who would deport Latinos, turn the military inward to crush Black protests, and who would punish women for abortion? Or will he be remembered as the man who endorsed Clinton, turning his movement into a grassroots operation that helped to elect liberals on the local and state level, so some of his policies may actually get considered in the future? The choice is up to Sanders and his supporters. Trump wants to take the country back a century, to a time where Jim Crow was the law of the land. And true progressives will be fighting like hell to stop that from becoming a reality.
