Bernie is building momentum in ways that defy traditional thought about presidential campaigns. One is not supposed to be a democratic front-runner without big donors. What follows is an attempt to put a finer point on why its working so well. Specifically by debunking the myth that there is always a direct relationship between big money and victory in politics. Other factors (face-to-face contact, personal messaging, and the overwhelming number of affected working class people) matter more than money once message saturation has been achieved. The election experts who still consider Bernie’s “electability” a long shot are stubbornly ignoring a sea-change in electoral strategy, tactics, and thinking driven by the Sanders campaign. I speculate about some of those changes and conditions in the last section.

What I have to say isn’t necessarily original, its more a piecing-together of different ideas that have already energized Bernie’s movement. Nor is it intended to be closed-ended or comprehensive. I keep putting-off publishing this (in part due to some anxiety about posting things at all) but I feel like I need to get it out there. A reddit user recommended I post it here.

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1. Can’t Pay-to-Win Elections Anymore

A flawed assumption:

There tends to be a direct causal relationship between campaign spending and odds of victory.

While there’s a correlation, at least in congress, this article from 538 corrects the causal assumption and touches on several relevant and important points (I could probably use more than one source for this but a lot of points can be covered by this piece):

Money is certainly strongly associated with political success. But, “I think where you have to change your thinking is that money causes winning,” said Richard Lau, professor of political science at Rutgers. “I think it’s more that winning attracts money.”

In other words, predicted winners are over-funded by donors that want to (in theory) buy their allegiances or pad their track-record by noting how often they fund a winning candidate.

Not many studies prove causal connections to money and winning:

Even the studies that showed spending having the biggest effect, like one that found a more than 6 percent increase in vote share for incumbents, didn’t demonstrate that money causes wins. In fact, Bonica said, those gains from spending likely translate to less of an advantage today, in a time period where voters are more stridently partisan. There are probably fewer and fewer people who are going to vote a split ticket because they liked your ad.

Advertising eats billions during campaigns and it may not work:

Advertising — even negative advertising — isn’t very effective. This is a big reason why money doesn’t buy political success. Turns out, advertising, the main thing campaigns spend their money on, doesn’t work all that well. This is a really tough thing to study, Ridout said, and it’s only getting harder as media becomes more fragmented…researchers have been looking at the impacts of negative advertising since the 1990s. And, beginning around the mid-2000s, they began making serious progress on understanding how ads actually affect whether people vote and who they vote for. The picture that’s emerged is … well … let’s just say it’s probably rather disappointing to the campaigns that spend a great deal of time and effort raising all that money to begin with. Take, for example, the study that is probably the nation’s only truly real-world political advertising field experiment. During Rick Perry’s 2006 re-election campaign for Texas governor, a team of researchers convinced Perry’s campaign to run ads in randomly assigned markets and then tracked the effect of those ads over time using surveys. Advertising did produce a pro-Perry response in the markets that received the treatment. But that bump fizzled fast. Within a week after ads stopped running, it was like no one had ever seen them. What’s more, Ridout said, ads probably matter least in the races where campaigns spend the most on them — like presidential elections. Partly, that’s because the bigger the election, the more we already know about the people running.

You can add to the pile of failures Amazon’s attempt to buy a city council election with 1.5 million. GOP and Rispone himself spent millions in the deep south and couldn’t win. So while there’s clearly something to be gained from advertisements, they don’t always help.

While it is easy to cynically assume that the mob is fickle so dollars can buy minds, the reality is far different. It is a reality, however, that billionaire donors can’t accept. They prefer the self-reported success of lobbyists, super-PAC’s, and the various organizations that support them. Who have an incentive to say that a $10 million donation actually did something, even if its effects were marginal/fleeting/non-verifiable. There is a symbiotic re-assurance between lobbying billionaires and the intelligentsia that author the “proof” of their methods.

So a particular form of election theory groupthink congeals around the notion that money, while its returns may diminish, can always positively affect election outcome. Billionaires don’t want to hear what their dollars can’t do. So they have an inherent (ego)investment in ignoring hard evidence that over-spending on campaigns doesn’t help. Which is why fundraising and “electability” are hard-sold as voting criteria. The reasoning is perfectly circular:

Those who can buy the votes have earned the votes.

Or as Maggie Koerth writes in the 538 article cited above:

Another example of where money might matter: Determining who is capable of running for elected office to begin with. Ongoing research from Alexander Fouirnaies, professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, suggests that, as it becomes normal for campaigns to spend higher and higher amounts, fewer people run and more of those who do are independently wealthy. In other words, the arms race of unnecessary campaign spending could help to enshrine power among the well-known and privileged. “That may be the biggest effect of money in politics,” West [vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution] wrote to me in an email.

All this is changing as Bernie builds momentum.

Couple of qualifications:

1: None of this is to say that presidential campaigns don’t need money or ads! Certainly spending, especially on staff members and organizers, local offices, some ads and so forth is a necessary condition of winning the presidency. And if a campaign is going to have a truly national push, that requires a lot of money. However, in and of itself, money is not sufficient to win, as much disappointment that may cause the Koch’s (or denial, as the case may be). So donate to Bernie because it takes a sustained collective effort by us to push back against millions raised in wine caves and so on. Also Bernie’s ads do more than the competition because he actually has something to say and a massive affected audience. $5 for Bernie > $500 for Bloomberg.

2: While this deals mostly with advertising, big spending on big data during elections is truly a new beast and its not to be underestimated as Bernie progresses through the next year. Astro-turfing, deep-fakes, shit is going to get weird. Still, the connections formed through movement mobilization and human points of contact are the best antidote to even the most Orwellian of possibilities.

2. A better way to think about how money affects campaigns:

Campaign spending’s correlation with campaign success plateaus. Spending in excess of a necessary amount of money to win results in diminishing electoral returns. If a candidate can reach the necessary amount of funding to run a national presidential campaign(~$300 million, I’m sure there are other opinions on that figure), especially with a strong presence in early primary states, other factors (face-to-face messaging, connecting with impacted populations, influential voices, and economic realities) matter more than quantity of dollars raised.

Bernie doesn’t need to out-raise his opponents (though in some instances he can), he just needs enough money to run for president.

Bernie can win without billionaire donors sending him money in big chunks. As long as his private donors remain consistent and enthusiastic, he’ll have enough money to have offices in important states, hire a good number of campaign staff (and pay them decently and give them healthcare cause he’s not a bullshitter), buy effective advertising in places where it matters, maintain strong online presence, help fund and organize travel to canvassing events, etc. Other factors (discussed below) can make-up the difference between Sanders and his better-funded opponents.

Consider this graph that normalizes dollars to inflation, population growth, and income growth and estimates the spending of presidential campaigns:

With the outlier of Dole’s campaign, one can form the generalization that it takes about $300 million at a minimum to run for president. In 2016, Bernie raised $228 million and that was without the nomination or any of fundraising records he’s been setting this election. I’m speculating a lot here but when faced with Bernie as the democratic choice or 4 more years of the other guy, a $100 million 3rd quarter in 2020 once his primary competitors are gone is plausible. The point is not to count unhatched chickens but to give a sense of scale; Bernie will have enough money to run for president without big donors. He may have more than enough. (Perhaps a good point to raise when discussing his ‘electability’ with potential supporters). In fact, his funding can be steady enough to out-spend/last qualified and well-supported opponents like Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Cory Booker, and Julian Castro.

Still, as he gets closer to winning the nomination, more and more money will be thrown in his way. Especially dark money once the general election starts. The presumptive GOP incumbent has out-raised him in each of the last few quarters.

As the campaign continues, Bernie will be out-spent by his opponents…and he’ll win anyway.

He’ll have enough money to run for president and his movement can do the rest of the work, if not most of it.

Billionaires shouldn’t be able to buy elections, yes. But maybe they also can’t.

They are failing so far this election. And not for lack of trying.

3. Why everything is working and ideas for amplifying the message:

Its not only a question of how many dollars but what those dollars can do. Here are some factors that defy the thinking that funding is most of what matters for campaign success. (Certainly not a comprehensive list, and something to add to).

Too many aggrieved

Bernie’s dollars spend better and his volunteers do more simply because he is speaking the truth about the circumstances millions of Americans. It is a sad but true reality that you cannot knock on 20 doors in this country without hearing the story of someone who has been victimized by a private insurance company, a payday loan provider, insulin price gouging, gentrification, shorted benefits promised to them by their service in the armed forces, etc. etc. 2/3rds of bankruptcies are medical debt.

Corporate greed leaves a wake of aggrieved people. And that wake is too broad, income inequality and exploitation of the working class has reached a breaking point. Too many people have been affected and we’re finding each other. Its a numbers game the billionaires are bound to lose because they’ve exploited too many for too long.

Life expectancy is dropping in this country. Downward mobility is a thing here, particularly among African Americans. Climate change is directly affecting more regions, a grim preview of its disastrous potential for vulnerable front-line communities.

Which means there are too many people primed for a national movement for it to wait any longer. We need only open ourselves to communicating, networking, and organizing with each other. If a presidential campaign, even for some old white dude, is a good enough reason to do that, so be it. Its not about him, its about us.

Connecting with Existing Justice Movements

This needs to be, and is, more than a campaign for president. There are children in cages. Open forms of violent hate are abound. The president is openly racist, anti-semetic, and sexist. The architect of american immigration policy is a white supremacist. And all of these forms of violence and exclusion are not rooted in something that started with the 45th president. They are forms that historic struggles for justice have fought for generations and thereby shaped this country. 45 didn’t create white supremacy, misogyny, and trans phobia; they created him. And those systems of oppression, exclusion, and violence are hundreds of years old. So connecting with the justice movements that have already been engaged in resistance is the best way of resisting the current manifestations of white supremacy, patriarchy, cis-privilege, and so on.

This movement needs to draw on the proven potential for political revolutions to re-shape the political future and agenda in this country based on the demands of aggrieved communities. Which means collaboration, not competition, with existing social justice movements in this country.

Fragmented Media

The sharability and networking capabilities inherent to social media mean that — in a sense — Bernie is immune to media blackouts and other ways of diminishing the reported success of his campaign. Major networks can not cover him all they want, shares will always ‘out-flank’ the top-down approach to silencing his movement.

In fact, Ryan Grim has made an powerful argument recently for why this is helping because it keeps Bernie’s campaign out of the traditional wax and wane patterns in primaries. In other words, media attention causes scrutiny that invariably stalls a candidates upward mobility. I agree and would take it steps further:

Bernie’s blackout reveals to voters that there is something to be silenced. If the blackout is becoming so laughably evident, voters begin asking well what is so tempting about him that powerful decision makers wouldn’t want me to know about him? Voters know who he is, so the blackout can’t harm his name recognition. News sources will start breaking rank because the temptation be the only paper/network genuinely covering his ‘surprisingly’ successful campaign is going to become too great. The LA Times recently noted the blackout in a first indicator of outlets starting to act like there’s an elephant in the room who may be the next president. (This part was written before the blackout started happening). Media outlets participating in the “Bernie blackout” now look a little silly. An ad from a stranger is not as compelling as friend’s post. Take this study for example. While big-money can go to great lengths to make ads and target them with Orewllian efficiency, the bottom line is that people trust other people more than they computer screens. Even though they interact with other humans mostly through those screens. So if you convinced you uncle who voted for our current president to vote for Bernie and he’s tweeting about it now, a lot of his followers are giving Bernie more serious consideration than they would have just seeing an ad. There is a form of authenticity that goes along with real-people sharing stories on social media. A way to network and understand sentiment that cannot be faked or bought.

Brands vs. Movements

Perhaps the reason why he’s being underestimated is that the theoretical cookie cutters being applied are from political science instead of social movement theory. Traditional campaigns build brands (with some human marketing components). Bernie is building a movement. If 100 people knock on doors this weekend and find 100 more people who will knock on more doors (or text/phone bank), then momentum will continue to grow. Hence the reason Bernie keeps rising in polls despite the media blackout, despite a health problem, and despite not really saying brand-new things other than the same stuff he’s been saying for his whole political career. Brands languish when they run out of marketing tactics and messages. Movements pick-up momentum because more people are involved as solidarity among affected groups spreads.

Throwing money at a branding effort associated with a politician will produce diminishing returns.

For a movement, message is momentum and the truth is loud. So the traditional laws of election inertia don’t apply.

Sharing Stories Matters

Money cannot buy this movement’s greatest strength which is solidarity.

The inundation of voters with media mean that there is no shortage of commercials, facebook ads, radio spots, etc. At no point during the 2020 election will the average voter lament not seeing enough ads about the candidates to make a decision. The Kerry and Gore presidential campaigns are good historical examples of what happens when 90's-style “win the moderates/independents” method results in plastic, focus-group generated candidacies with no substance.

The authenticity of this movement’s ability to share stories matters:

Bernie himself is authentic. He doesn’t fix his hair. He isn’t robotic, he’s openly pissed about a lot of things. He’s real, and even supporters of other candidates have to acknowledge that. He is not a plastic candidate and his positions have been consistent for the better part of a century. His campaign tactics cut through the banal hum of constant digital media bombardment. Having a face-to-face conversation with someone trumps hundreds of hours of tv ads. Some texts shared back and forth matter more than some well-targeted promotion on fb for Bloomberg. A phone call matters more than a CNN story that asserts Bernie is a longshot. Especially given the statistical prevalence of economic and social injustice (noted above). Many people go through their day without more than 1 or 2 conversations with someone, especially one where someone asked what mattered to them. Those points of contact do more meaningful work to create change (and affect the electorate) than advertising (especially if that ad is for a candidate that is clearly full of shit).Here’s a fun way to think about this: Every door you knock on, you stand a good chance of deflecting $10k’s in advertising aimed at that household, especially in early primary states. The ads are noise, you’re a person who connected with them about a shared struggle. So picture the piles of Koch cash burning every time you ring a door bell or push send. Because their lies cannot break your connection with that individual. Bernie’s not just winning more votes, he’s creating more supporters. His campaign isn’t only making more voters, its making more activists. His numbers keep going up because there are more and more people working for the movement every day. Democracy is about participation beyond voting. And beyond an ouster of 45, America needs a re-invigoration of its own sense of political life. We need to re-invent 21st century political participation in a way that is more immune to the toxic and deceptive potentials of strictly virtual interaction. Bernie can catalyze that movement.

influence of public thinkers on social media

“Celebrity endorsements” is a very shallow way to understand the importance of Killer Mike supporting Bernie Sanders. It isn’t only that people who like an artist will know that they like Bernie so they’ll like him too. Its also that media’s evolution has made it more possible that ever to find like-minded people through podcasts, social media, etc. And that like-mindedness can achieve new depths to greater numbers through varied forms of interaction.

Bernie getting a bump after the Joe Rogan interview/endorsement was no accident. It was because of an accessibility of Bernie’s message to a varied set of listeners, connected to Rogan’s podcast maybe because they liked MMA or maybe because they liked his DMT doc so they started listening however long ago. But whichever way, they were willing to listen to Bernie (better than they would listen to an ad) because an expressive opinion they respected was also willing to listen. Danny DeVito’s support matters. This kind of thing matters. Pussy Riot’s endorsement is important in helping define Bernie’s stance in the world against dictatorial regimes like Vladimir Putin’s.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement is a another good example of how an endorsement can mean more than a rubber stamp but actually influence voters (and quickly at that).

Surprising shifts in support can be triggered by public figures/podcasters/broadcasters/social media presences because a deeper form of identification that can be achieved through constancy/frequency of message dissemination that happens on various platforms. Musicians have always been famous but now they connect with their fans everyday about whatever is on their minds.

I could write a lot more about this and might later but I think the Sanders campaign should more openly start sitting-down with public figures that have strong social media presences and ask them what is important to them in the next election. Musicians, performers, podcasters, artists, twitch streamers, youtubers — political revolutions are always accompanied by cultural and artistic ones. So I think it makes sense to fan that flame by connecting with those that create culture, regardless of its medium or form. Musicians and actors; yes (I remember a comment someone made about having a music festival over the Summer, I think that’s brilliant and could help him win). But also gamers and designers. What if Bernie had a cup of coffee with Hideo Kojima? Where could that go?

Social media has changed more than the ability to target ads, it also fosters forms of human connection that people identify with intensely, in ways that can’t be purchased. So there is cascade-potential for movements within those connections.

Conclusion

I am writing this to openly address a doubt among Bernie supporters. That despite all our energy, there is a voice in the back of all of our minds saying this is a hope against hope; that we are participating so we can say we did the right thing. That the tsunami of billions that will be spent attempting to prevent a Sanders presidency is simply too much. That he is more of a good idea than a president. That he can’t really win. But we’re gonna try.

The time has come to forget those doubts. They are no longer useful or accurate. Bernie is the front runner because he is pushed forward by a movement whose purpose is a response to the greatest kairotic moment of our time. America’s working class people are responding to the call to breathe life back into democracy and hope back into the future, here and around the world. We are proving that we can succeed in the face of opposition. The hardest parts of the campaign are yet to come. So now is the time to squash any lingering doubt about structural or funding-driven issues dooming the Sanders campaign to failure. Its simple: we donate and work, he wins. Nothing is out of reach now. No bullshit.

So donate. Volunteer. Share your stories. And build solidarity. If you’re on the fence about going to an early primary state to canvass, do it. You want to be a part of this great thing that is happening, to say that you were there when things changed. That you helped.

The way presidents get elected is changing moment to moment as Bernie gains momentum. All presidential elections will be different after this campaign. And the world will be different too.

Because Bernie Sanders is going to be the next President of the United States.