Sanders supporters ready to take on Trump as progressives’ voices grow louder after the election: ‘We have to do what the Tea Party did’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

Hillary Clinton was supposed to be president. The Democrats were supposed to be competitive in the Senate and the House.

In that scenario, Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, might have been in effect sidelined as Democrats hunkered down for four years of a steady, if unspectacular, continuation of Barack Obama’s centrist agenda.

But instead, Donald Trump won the election – with an anti-establishment message that bore some similarities to Sanders’ own government-outsider election bid – and Sanders has found himself promoted from anti-establishment outsider to the Democrats’ leadership bench.

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Indeed, some Sanders progressives now see Trump’s victory as a validation of the populist agenda Sanders championed during his campaign.

“Progressives are used to punching up, but here we find ourselves in a real position of credibility and power,” said Raul Grijalva of Arizona, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive caucus.

As the party seeks to rebuild in 2017, caucus members believe the election of the DNC chair is an early test of whether Democrats will embrace economic populism.

Sanders’ first priority is to elect Keith Ellison, the progressive congressman from Minnesota, as DNC chair. Ellison, who is seen as the frontrunner, is being challenged by the labor secretary, Tom Perez, who enters with support from allies of Clinton and the Obama administration.

“Right now we are fighting for the chair of the DNC and it is truly emblematic of the division within the Democrats,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses United, which endorsed Sanders during the primary. “If the Democratic party rejects the Sanders base, it will be at their extreme peril.”

On a tactical level, all eyes are on 2018 and how to elect progressives to seats at the local, state and national level.

“We have to do in 2018 what the Tea Party did in 2010,” said Dan Cantor, the founder and executive director of the Working Families party.

Though Sanders has become synonymous with the progressive movement, activists say 2017 won’t hinge on voters feeling the Bern. It will be about empowering the next generation of progressive leaders.

“We need younger voters to get engaged and to lead, and not just in political office. We need young shop stewards and young activists, too,” said Larry Cohen, the former president of the Communications Workers of America and the head of Our Revolution. “We older people need to move over and encourage these young people to rise up. That’s where the energy is. That’s where our future is.”

Moumita Ahmed is among those young activists working to capitalize on the gains Sanders made in 2016.

She is one of the organizers of the million millennials march, which will take place in Washington the Saturday after the inauguration, and she said Sanders had an important role to play in telling his supporters how they can get involved in grassroots activism.

“He’s the one with the platform. He’s the one who’s going to get media attention,” Ahmed said.

“So he really needs to let people know what the grassroots is doing – so that we can absorb people’s energy.

“Because there’s so many people who are out there right now who don’t know what to do, but they’re ready to do something. So Bernie can sort of focus everyone.”

Charles Lenchner, co-founder of People for Bernie, an independent group which campaigned for Sanders during the Democratic primary, said Sanders was already showing a willingness to fill that role.



“Just look at him,” Lencher said.

“He’s like the Energizer bunny. He’s running around every single day. There’s press releases, there’s town halls, there’s livestreams.”

Sanders held one of those town halls in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on 13 December. He managed to find common ground with Trump supporters in the audience on the ills of trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and on the failure of establishment politics.

Alongside public appearances, Sanders also set up the “Our Revolution” organization, which aims to harness the energy that the Vermont senator’s presidential bid created.

In the November election, Our Revolution threw its support behind progressive candidates, encouraging people who had supported Sanders to fundraise and door-knock for local politicians.

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Our Revolution’s website has a list of ballot initiatives that activists can support and a calendar of events that people can attend.

But Lenchner said progressives should be wary of relying solely on Sanders to lead a grassroots movement.

“His job is to be a legislator and hold the right positions and to message on the issues. But then it’s up to us in the movement to do with that what we will,” Lenchner said.

“Our job is much more at the level of our own communities, our own constituencies, our own organizations.



“Our job is to create the wave that is going to push back against Trump and his allies in elections.”