Bernie Sanders is rolling out a prolonged, media-savvy launch of his long-expected 2020 Presidential campaign. It began with a video announcement emailed to his supporters last Tuesday, and will culminate, according to the campaign, with an “official” launch party in Burlington, Vermont. In between he’s done a few national media appearances, including a prime-time CNN Town Hall, and will hold rallies this weekend in Brooklyn and Chicago.
It’s relatively similar to the launch of his 2016 campaign. That began with an announcement emailed to his supporters on April 30, 2015 and culminated nearly four weeks later with a rousing launch speech in Burlington, Vermont.
The themes and policies Sanders is running on are also similar to his previous go-‘round. That’s unsurprising: although he has shifted over time on some topics, he has held firm for decades on his core platform of addressing economic inequality and injustice.
The septuagenarian Senator might not change his ways, but this is not the same Democratic nominating contest that he entered four years ago. Back then, Sanders was the first to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination, and he easily bested Martin O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Webb, and Lawrence Lessig for access to the limited available political oxygen.
Sanders, then, became the only option for those looking for a more liberal option than Clinton—but also for those hoping simply to apply pressure to push Clinton to the left; those disillusioned or angered by the Democratic Party establishment; those troubled by what they perceived as the Clintons’ ethical baggage; those worried that Clinton’s baggage (or gender) rendered her unelectable in the general election; and even conservative Democrats who favored his populism over her classic liberalism.
This time around, Sanders’ announcement tour comes as activists in early primary states have been filling rooms to see more than a dozen major Democratic figures pitch their Presidential prospects. Even as Sanders makes his run official, the political media is looking over his shoulder at Beto O’Rourke, the former U.S. Representative from Texas, prepares his entry any moment.
Far from the only alternative, Sanders is now one in a crowd.
Not that Sanders will get nudged aside, by any means. He trails only Joe Biden in early polls, and is reportedly raising money hand-over-fist from his substantial and loyal supporters.
So, no doubt, Sanders will get to spend the next 12 to 18 months traveling the country, and appearing in debates, spreading his message. He’s certainly earned the right to do so.
The question is why? Unless you are one of the few who believe that this time he’s really going to be elected President, it’s hard to see what there is for Sanders to achieve as a candidate in the 2020 cycle.
He could arguably have been more effective standing apart from the fray, as the party’s impartial voice of progressivism. Candidates would undoubtedly have sought his approval for their platforms and policy proposals, hoping to win a share of his liberal supporters.
Instead, one of two scenarios is likely to unfold.
In one, Sanders holds onto the primary votes of his core progressive-populist supporters—making them unavailable to Elizabeth Warren and other candidates with similar views, and helping a more moderate candidate win the nomination.
In the second, Sanders loses those supporters to other liberals, and ends up embarrassingly irrelevant to the process.
To an awful lot of Democrats, it seems obvious that Sanders should simply declare victory in the battle of ideas, and go home.
Leading Or Following?
It’s remarkable to look back at Sanders’s 2015 campaign launch speech. Almost all of the policies Sanders outlined in it are now standard party thinking: $15-an-hour minimum wage; paid sick leave; job-creating infrastructure investment; undoing the Citizens United campaign finance ruling; higher taxes on top earners and corporations; transformation from fossil fuel-based energy; universal pre-kindergarten; college availability for everyone; and even single-payer health care.
However, there’s something even more striking about that March 26, 2015 speech, from today’s perspective: what’s missing.
Immigration goes unmentioned in the speech. So do gun violence, criminal-justice reform, and voting rights.
A single reference to African-American youth unemployment is the only mention of race; a call for pay equity is the only mention of gender. There is nothing on LGBTQ issues.
Presidential campaign launch speeches of 2020—from relatively mainstream candidates such as Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, let alone Warren—have emphasized many of those topics, while still ticking off most of the old Sanders checklist items. They have also woven in their own backgrounds and achievements, which Sanders has typically avoided.
He will try to rectify those gaps in the coming campaign. His two-minute launch video mentions criminal justice, women’s rights, and immigration—although only after the litany of issues from that 2015 launch speech. The plan to speak in Brooklyn, where he grew up, and Chicago, where he was an activist college student, are intended to place his life’s work into the context of civil rights and racial justice.
But there’s the rub: instead of Sanders pulling the Democratic Party to his agenda, it looks like he is now the one following the lead of others. He is the one playing catch-up with their policy agendas.
They’re even leading the way on issues that are considered his home turf. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker both have affordable-housing proposals that target low-income households. Julian Castro has a universal pre-K plan that he implemented as mayor of San Antonio. Elizabeth Warren has plans for child care, college affordability, and wealth taxation. Kirsten Gillibrand has proposals for universal paid family leave, and public campaign financing.
There are many more proposals coming, including a variety of paths toward single-payer health care.
Amid that robust exchange of ideas, Sanders will run essentially the same campaign that he did four years ago, emphasizing the same issues and the same policy prescriptions. That will no longer feel like adding to the debate, or moving the needle. Those ideas have already been incorporated; there might not be much value in being on stage reiterating them.
Unprepared for change
Perhaps Sanders will show that he is prepared to step up his game in his second Presidential campaign, rather than running a stale “Bernie revolution” redux.
Early signs are not promising.
One small but telling example came during Monday’s CNN Townhall, when Wolf Blitzer asked whether Sanders would release his tax returns from the past 10 years. Sanders answered that he would, at some unspecified time, “sooner than later.” His returns are boring, he jokingly assured Blitzer. It will just take a little time, because he has no fancy accountants; his wife Jane usually does them.
It was almost a word-for-word reprisal of his response when Blitzer asked him the same thing in April, 2016.
He never did release them that year, other than his 2014 return—which he finally provided after weeks of pressure, and after being caught untruthfully claiming to have already made it public.
His weird claim, three years later, to have still not retrieved the documents, couldn’t help but bring to mind Donald Trump’s oft-repeated, and never-fulfilled, pledge to release his tax returns.
Nobody suspects that Sanders has more to hide in his returns than Trump does. It’s just odd that, knowing full well that it would be an issue, Sanders reached the starting line for his 2020 campaign without preparing to put it to rest.
More significantly, to many Democratic voters, Sanders has done surprisingly little to address his acknowledged weakness in connecting with black Democrats.
At that CNN town hall, and elsewhere, Sanders continues to sound awkward, and often defensive, when asked about racial issues. In one of his first announcement-day interviews, with Vermont Public Radio, he suggested that it is discriminatory to favor candidates of a different skin color or gender over him.
The Sanders campaign touted the diversity of its initial wave of co-chairs and top staff; but the list included just one African-American, Nina Turner of Ohio, who is returning from the 2016 Sanders team. Rather than pro-actively seeking out African-American media, he has given broadcast interviews almost exclusively to white men since announcing his campaign.
None of these are insurmountable stumbles. But, Democratic voters have many more choices this time—and opponents will be much quicker to strike at his mis-steps. Sanders might quickly end up wishing he had spent this cycle influencing the race from the sidelines.
