Bernie's big-crowd strategy

Bernie Sanders spoke in front of thousands of admiring progressives Wednesday evening. But since the event was in Wisconsin, none of them will actually be voting in the early states where Sanders hopes to put a scare into Hillary Clinton.

Rather than single-mindedly chasing votes across New Hampshire and the 99 counties of Iowa, Sanders has instead embarked on a swing through the progressive heartland, designed to generate big crowds and a national liberal groundswell behind his candidacy.


He’s running to win a movement as much as an election, and there’s no clearer sign of it than the liberal strongholds he’s visiting — Madison, Wisconsin; Minneapolis; Denver; Portland, Maine.

“The news of large crowds manages to make its way to people, particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire,” said senior Sanders adviser Tad Devine. “It’s demonstrating that the message Bernie is delivering is connecting with a large audience.”

The idea is to barnstorm the nation’s most progressive cities in the hopes of attracting field organizers, small-dollar donors and, most importantly, the kind of media attention that insurgent candidates are typically starved for.

“Cities chosen are likely to produce donors and enthusiastic crowds — something you all love to see so you can say the Clinton campaign must be/should be starting to worry,” said Gina Glantz, who ran Bill Bradley’s 2000 primary challenge to Democratic front-runner Al Gore.

More than 3,000 people showed up to see Sanders in Minneapolis on the Sunday after his campaign kickoff — the only place he visited on that maiden trip other than New Hampshire and Iowa. (The campaign, expecting a much smaller town meeting, apologized at the time for not having enough coffee and bagels for everyone.) At least 5,000 showed up to the University of Denver for a Saturday night rally earlier this month.

On Wednesday night in Madison, Wisconsin’s liberal citadel, roughly 10,000 people showed up for a raucous rally — by far the largest number for any candidate in either party so far.

“Whoa, in case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people here,” said Sanders, who largely gave his standard stump speech.

“Tonight, we have more people at a meeting for a candidate for president of the United States than any other candidate,” he said, to cheers from the crowd.

Next week, Sanders will be in Portland, Maine — though the campaign isn’t entirely sure where, since they have to change to a larger venue after getting more than 2,000 Internet RSVPs. And the campaign is also planning an upcoming rally in Boston, likely in July.

Sanders hasn’t exactly ignored Iowa and New Hampshire — he’ll be in the Hawkeye State for several days later this week. The candidate has also drawn big crowds in those early states — his Davenport rally was the biggest for any candidate in Iowa so far. He’s also visited South Carolina and Nevada recently.

But it’s the bigger liberal cities (and college towns) that offer the prospect of the kind of huge turnout and passionate response that allows Sanders to make the case that his long-shot campaign should be taken seriously.

Wisconsin, in particular, has proved to be friendly territory. Earlier this month, Sanders scored a burst of national attention by winning 41 percent of the vote at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention’s straw poll, finishing a close second to the front-runner Clinton — a strong showing given that Sanders is not a registered Democrat and his campaign didn’t organize at the event.

On Wednesday, Sanders returned to the 10,000-seat Alliant Energy Center, where he spoke at Fighting Bob Fest, an annual Wisconsin progressive festival, in 2011. He also keynoted last year’s festival.

The big-crowd strategy is a familiar one for liberal insurgents like Sanders. In 2007, Barack Obama was way down in the polls but got tens of thousands of people at rallies in Austin, Oakland, Atlanta and New York City. Howard Dean, the last Vermonter to run for president, also earned attention for his Sleepless Summer tour in 2003 — a 10-city trip that drew huge crowds in liberal hubs such as Portland, Oregon; Seattle; New York City; and Chicago.

“It’s a strategy that worked,” said Dean’s campaign manager Joe Trippi. “We raised quite a bit of money. The size of the crowds demonstrated that we had a significant following in the party.”

Trippi noted that the big venues also allow Sanders to establish himself as the clear second-place candidate to Clinton and close out other primary rivals, like former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley or former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee.

“It obliterates the rest of the field … It captures press attention,” said Trippi. “Right now at this stage, what you’re trying to do is be one of the two. And so far, Sanders’ strategy is doing a much better job of that than any other candidates.”

The progressive strongholds also offer Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist and perhaps the most liberal sitting senator, something of a home-field advantage: as a former mayor of the very progressive Burlington, Vermont, he’s familiar with the voice and ethos of those places. That helps explain why, when he was exploring a potential bid in April, Sanders tested his message in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, where he campaigned for liberal mayoral candidate Chuy Garcia.

“It provides an echo chamber for your message,” said Doug Wilson, deputy campaign manager for Gary Hart’s 1984 Democratic presidential campaign against former Vice President Walter Mondale. “It would be like Ted Cruz going to a lot of places in Texas and the South.”

There’s another benefit to the big-crowd strategy: It provides a helpful split-screen contrast with Clinton, who has mostly eschewed large rallies in favor of smaller, more intimate roundtables and more private fundraising events. When Sanders was railing against income inequality at a big rally in Las Vegas last month, Clinton held fundraisers with movie stars and Hollywood executives in Southern California.

The Sanders campaign insists that the tour of liberal America isn’t just an exercise in crowd-building, but is instead crucial for building a national campaign.

“He goes to Madison. He has a big crowd. That’s how we build an organization in Wisconsin. For a campaign that hasn’t been around the block before and built an organization [that’s important],” Devine said before the event.

Still, the campaign — and the candidate himself — isn’t shy about touting the strong attendance numbers. “This campaign is catching fire for a simple reason, and the simple reason is we are telling the truth,” Sanders said at a recent fundraiser in Southern California, after rattling off crowd sizes and RSVPs from events in Las Vegas and Denver.