Bernie supporters at a rally in Pasadena, California in May, 2019

Bernie gains frontrunner status

In recent days, Bernie Sanders won the popular votes in both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Many would downplay these contests being that these are very white states and therefore not representative of the diversity of the Democratic Party. While that’s certainly true, let’s not overlook that even in predominately white Iowa and New Hampshire, diversity outreach helped Sanders. Exit polls of Iowa caucusgoers showed Bernie won 38% of people of color, which was 17 points ahead of the next candidate (Joe Biden). Similarly in New Hampshire, exit polls showed Bernie was the choice of 32% of people of color, 16 points ahead of the next candidate (Biden). (Note: all polls are guesstimates, so we can’t view these numbers as precise, but we can view them as suggestive.)

Putting aside demographics for a moment, there’s something rather important to keep in mind about Iowa and New Hampshire: these are swing states in the general election. Recall that if Al Gore had managed to win New Hampshire in 2000, he wouldn’t have needed a recount in Florida. So it behooves our party for our candidates to work very hard in Iowa and New Hampshire during the primaries to build a good rapport with their electorates. (Michael Bloomberg, having skipped these contests, has lost this opportunity to make a good first impression with voters in these critical swing states.)

While Sanders did win some more diverse states last cycle, everyone — including of course Bernie himself — knew that improving in this area would be crucial if he ran again.

And it appears he has. A Marist College poll back in December showed Sanders slightly leading our field of candidates among people of color, at 29% (3 points ahead of Joe Biden) which, along with support from younger voters, helped account for why Sanders overall trailed Biden by only 2 points in that poll; this was one of the first polls presaging Bernie’s rise to frontrunner status. Just a few days ago, a poll released by Monmouth University again showed Sanders currently leading the field with people of color; Bernie, at 28% in this poll is 8 points ahead of his nearest competitor (Joe Biden). Among whites, Bernie also leads the field in this poll at 25%, which is again 8 points of ahead of his nearest competitor (Pete Buttigieg). It’s mathematically obvious that if Bernie is leading with people of all races in this poll, then he must be the frontrunner in the poll, and indeed he is: at 26%, Sanders leads his nearest competitor (Biden) by 10 points with a margin of error of 5.2%. This recent Morning Consult poll also shows Sanders as the frontrunner: in this poll, Bernie is at 25%, 3 points ahead of Biden, with MOE of 1%.

Racial justice activist and Bernie 2020 National Surrogate Philip Agnew

The people behind the numbers

Bernie 2020 National Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray

But simply looking at raw numbers doesn’t give you a feel for the diversity outreach that the Sanders campaign has actually been doing. First, you need to look at the folks who are the public face of the campaign. For example, as I described in this diary, the Sanders campaign has outstanding young activists like Latino Press Secretary Belén Sisa, who is a DACA recipient, and National Surrogate Philip Agnew, who co-founded the racial justice organization, Dream Defenders. When Bernie was off the campaign trail for a short while recuperating from his stent procedure, San Juan, Puerto Rico Mayor and National Campaign Co-Chair Carmen Yulín Cruz was stumping for Bernie in New Hampshire, and when Bernie was doing jury duty at the Trump impeachment trial, he could count on charisma powerhouse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to stump for him in Iowa. At event after event, National Campaign Co-Chair Nina Turner fires up the crowds like no one else can, giving “Senator Bernard Sanders” a long, enthusiastic introduction, culminating with her signature “With these hands!” rallying cry. And National Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray is not only an engaging and on-point campaign spokesperson, but she’s also been using new media to vastly redefine this role: I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s interviewed more people in campaign podcasts than she’s been interviewed.

So that’s the highly visible public face of the campaign, but what sort of outreach has been happening on the ground, in the trenches? Here’s a telling anecdote from Iowa. You may recall that some early Iowa results were reported from a tiny satellite caucus at a union hall in Ottumwa. Fourteen out of the 15 attendees — immigrant workers employed at a local meatpacking plant — voted for Sanders. The overwhelming support for Sanders in this microcosm of democracy didn’t happen by accident. Jacobin:

In a strategy more reminiscent of labor organizing than anything typically seen in presidential politics, the Sanders campaign assigned several people — including field organizers Tristan Bock Hughes, Charisa Wotherspoon, Devon Severson, and the campaign’s National Labor Organizer Jonah Furman — to post up at the gates of the JBS meat processing plant. For several nights, they canvassed outside the factory from 10 PM to 3 AM, engaging workers in conversation as their shifts ended. The campaign organizers spoke to workers in multiple languages about their lives, their work, and Sanders’s platform and campaign. The campaign’s strategy was to find people enthusiastic about Sanders and convince them to not only caucus for him, but to get their coworkers to caucus for him as well. An example of one such person was Wendwosen Biftu, an Ethiopian worker who was excited about Sanders from the beginning. After being canvassed outside the plant, Biftu came to the field office with his ten-year-old daughter, who helped translate for him, and expressed an interest in organizing others to caucus for Sanders.

That sort of outreach was no doubt repeated in many places. As another article from Jacobin puts it:

The face of the Iowa working class has morphed since the heyday of the CIO and the Packing House Workers union. In those years, Ottumwa was almost entirely white, with meatpacking workers mostly of English, Swedish, and German descent. These days, nearly a quarter of the city is nonwhite. Ottumwa isn’t an anomaly. While Iowa remains about 90 percent white, many pockets of the state boast relatively high numbers of nonwhite residents. In the months leading up to the caucus, Bernie Sanders, more than any other candidate, made it a point to court these workers.

Returning to the story of the Ottumwa satellite caucus:

The Sanders campaign understood that the concept of a separate satellite caucus, introduced just this year, might be confusing. So to make sure that the workers they’d identified actually made it to the caucus on Monday before their shift began, the campaign engaged in a second round of organizing. They brought in volunteers Abby Agriesti and JP Kaderbek, union members and labor activists from Chicago, to knock doors and get people to commit to showing up. Agriesti says that they wouldn’t have been able to secure those commitments without the initiative of workers themselves. On one occasion, she says, “We went into an apartment complex where several of the Ethiopian workers lived. We came upon some women cooking together in the basement. One of them walked me into her apartment and woke her husband up. Her husband, Mebrahtom Geberetatios, got dressed and took me around to introduce me to everybody else. Then he asked to see my list so he could follow up with everybody.” The fruits of the campaign’s efforts were visible on Monday, when Sanders won the first caucus in Iowa by a fourteen to one vote — the fifteenth caucus-goer being an Elizabeth Warren field organizer. As the procession got underway one of the Sanders field organizers, Charisa Wotherspoon, was spotted translating instructions into Spanish for Honduran JBS workers who’d turned up to caucus for Sanders.

You could see this coming

Long before the Iowa and New Hampshire contests yielded those encouraging exit poll results for Sanders regarding support from people of color, there had already been numerous articles this cycle talking about the Sanders campaign’s diversity outreach. Despite all this, in his most recent “Cattle Call,” Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitas opines:

[T]ruly national candidates work to broaden the tent and bring new supporters into their coalition. That’s why I don’t see Sanders winning in the end: He still can’t push beyond his core base. ... [W]hat’s most damning is that he’s not even trying to broaden his coalition.

As a matter of fact, Sanders’s diversity outreach efforts in Markos’s own state of California have been widely publicized. For example, here’s an LA Times report. Here’s a report in The Guardian. Here’s an excerpt from a Vice article:

“There's been a civic awakening among young Latinos,” [Latino Community Foundation policy directory Christian Arana] said. “This is a huge opportunity to incorporate a young Latino population that has often been ignored. For Bernie to go to Fresno City College, you know, like the heart of young Latinos in the Central Valley, it's a big deal.”

Indeed, I referenced Sanders’s outreach efforts in California and elsewhere — outreach to Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans — in a well-received Daily Kos diary, the title of which might have caught Markos’s eye:

”Bernie’s campaign and movement reflect the diversity that Daily Kos’s founder exhorts.”

Here are some excerpts from that diary:

“On Monday [Dec. 16], he locked up the support of the entire Coachella [California] City Council — a show of strength in the [98% Hispanic] working-class city of 45,000 with a rich history of immigration and farmworker activism. Some Coachella residents who attended the rally said they frequently feel overlooked by national political candidates. Until Sanders' visit, no president or presidential candidate had visited Coachella since John F. Kennedy spoke at Coachella Valley High School in 1961.” —Desert Sun x NEWS: the Mayor of Coachella and the entire Coachella City Council endorsed @BernieSanders today. And the people are down with him too. pic.twitter.com/4x8Drb2aS9 Ã¢ÂÂ Anna Bahr (@anna_bahr) December 17, 2019

“Elizabeth Alcantar Loza, the vice mayor of Cudahy, Calif., explained how Sanders inspired her to run for office for the first time. … Kingsburg, Calif., City Councilwoman Jewel Hurtado took the stage there too, explaining that Sanders was the influence for her upstart run for office just last year at age 20.” —Vice Elizabeth Alcantar Loza, the vice mayor of Cudahy, Calif., explained how Sanders inspired her to run for office for the first time. In Fresno the day before, student organizer Rosalie Baptista, invited the crowd to a student organizing meeting. Kingsburg, Calif., City Councilwoman Jewel Hurtado took the stage there too, explaining that Sanders was the influence for her upstart run for office just last year at age 20. Hurtado, who joked that she’s the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Central Valley, told VICE News in an interview after the rally that when it comes to the Latino vote, she and her fellow Berniecrats are ready to turn it out.

“Sanders' perceived authenticity and decades-long congressional record, in tandem with outreach to Asian American and Pacific Islander voters, make him the candidate to support, according to the supporters ABC News spoke with.” —ABC News The Sanders campaign has tapped several Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders to prominent roles. Faiz Shakir, Sanders' campaign manager, is Pakistani American; California U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, who was born to Indian immigrants, is a national co-chair of the Sanders campaign; Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor and the first Korean American elected official in the city's history, serves as the campaign's California political director. The campaign has also secured state and local endorsements from Asian American and Pacific Islander elected officials in several states. For some like Jenny Wong, city auditor of Berkeley, California, and a Sanders endorser, seeing Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders holding key positions on his campaign staff signals that Sanders, if elected, would also bring racial diversity to his administration. … Sanders' perceived authenticity and decades-long congressional record, in tandem with outreach to Asian American and Pacific Islander voters, make him the candidate to support, according to the supporters ABC News spoke with. "Here's someone who is actually speaking out for us and defending us and giving us a platform -- and giving us power," Texas Sanders volunteer Gemini Wahhaj said.

Morehouse College SGA president: “I feel like Bernie’s relations with young Black people is the most developed in the race right now” —News One “I feel like Bernie’s relations with young Black people is the most developed in the race right now,” said [John] Bowers, the Morehouse SGA [Student Government Association] president who is also an economics major political science minor. “His plans on social development are much more thought out than any other candidate.” … “I have been supporting Sanders since the 2016 primary,” Victoria Iglesias Roche, a senior political science major at Spelman, said. “Bernie is the most liberal and progressive representative, and he has the track record in Vermont to get it done.”