Bernie Sanders secured his first concession from the Democratic establishment on Monday when the Democratic National Committee agreed to grant his supporters greater representation on its convention platform committee.

But, as is increasingly becoming clear, he and his restless loyalists have no intention of stopping there.


Sanders is rapidly revealing that his nomination battle against Hillary Clinton represents just one front in his wider war on the Democratic Party’s entrenched leadership, and that the other fights — from Washington, D.C., to Nevada, to Wyoming — are about to get far more attention.

Gone are any new attacks on the likely nominee, though Sanders has kept up his jabs at certain of Clinton’s policies and still needles her over her political prospects. But the Vermont senator — long perceived by many of his Democratic colleagues as a gadfly — is stepping up his assault on the party’s way of doing business.

Sanders’ newly aggressive tack burst into view with his refusal to condemn the chaos at Nevada’s party convention earlier this month, and intensified this weekend with his endorsement of the little-known Florida professor who’s challenging DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her House seat.

His latest push is especially vexing for the Clinton campaign, amid signs that the Sanders challenge is weighing down her poll numbers against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

It confirms that he’s not likely to be deterred by losing — he still wants to amass the greatest possible number of delegates heading into the Democratic convention in July, to maximize his leverage to change party rules and nomination procedures.

That’s why he’s competing to win California, the largest delegate target of any state in the entire nominating process, with a drawn-out series of megarallies up and down the state. It’s why he’s started peppering his speeches with more entreaties to Democratic leaders to open up the party, a reference to his push to include independents in primaries. And it’s why his backers are eyeing a handful of upcoming events — starting with this weekend’s Wyoming party convention — as opportunities to assert his vision, loudly if necessary.

“Bernie Sanders has said since Day One that this couldn’t just be about electing one person,” explained Ben Wikler, Washington director of MoveOn.org, which is backing Sanders. “He’s looking at the narrow path to victory. But [now] he’s also looking at the enormous number of other avenues to pursue."

“All the power of the Sanders movement to reshape the Democratic Party and politics flows from success in the Democratic primary, and that’s why you’re seeing this focus on California,” he added. “By doing this in California, Sanders demonstrates to every candidate and potential candidate in California, as in many other states, that [running a campaign like his] is a winning strategy.”

Sanders has grown more forceful in his condemnation of the Democratic establishment in the days since the Nevada convention was shut down by hotel security, the party headquarters was defaced by protesters backing Sanders, and the chairwoman was inundated with death threats. While party leaders like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid quickly condemned the mess, Sanders trod more carefully, recognizing the concerns of his supporters who felt they had not been properly represented or taken into account at the Las Vegas event. His statement three days after the blow-up denounced the harassment but presented the party with a series of suggestions for improving its procedures.

He went further on Sunday, denying reports of violence at the convention while defending the right of his backers to demonstrate outside the Democratic National Convention in July — for which some of his supporters have secured permits: “What happened is people were rude, that’s not good. They were booing, that’s not good. They behaved in some ways that were a little bit boorish, that’s not good. But let’s not talk about this as violence,” he told ABC News, adding that “of course people have the right to peacefully assemble and make their views heard."

Yet it was his Saturday endorsement of Tim Canova, a long-shot candidate in Wasserman Schultz’s district, that many Democrats in Washington saw as a show of disdain for them and the party chairwoman. Even the subject line of his Sunday fundraising email for Canova — which the candidate said on Monday had raised him over $225,000, a huge amount for a House race — made clear the true target of the move: “Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.”

Addressing Senate business on Monday morning, he also served notice to his colleagues back in the Capitol that he isn’t going anywhere: “We have an important choice to make,” he wrote in a letter to the Democratic senators, looking at an issue rocking an upcoming primary contest. “Do we stand with the working people of Puerto Rico or do we stand with Wall Street and the Tea Party?”

All the while, however, Sanders has held off scaling up his assault on Clinton, aside from political stings like suggesting to ABC News on Sunday that Clinton is seen by some voters as the “lesser of two evils” compared to Donald Trump. When Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook and Sanders senior strategist Mark Longabaugh each pitched the merits of their candidates at a meeting of state Democratic chairs over the weekend — staying in the room for each other’s presentations — it was read by those in attendance as a gesture of unity between the campaigns.

Nonetheless, the slow cooling of public tension between the Clinton and Sanders camps is far from a sign of harmony between the senator and a party establishment that’s largely pro-Clinton. Democrats across the country are girding for more state-level battles at local conventions, beginning with what could be a contentious Saturday in Wyoming — a state where Sanders won the popular vote but the pledged delegates were split — over that state’s delegate apportionment process.

Meanwhile, Sanders is set to step up his endorsements of insurgent congressional candidates. His team is still finalizing the list of roughly a dozen candidates in Democratic primaries to join the four to whom he has already thrown his support.

Coming at a time when his own campaign is hurting badly for money — it reported having less than $6 million on hand to begin May — Sanders’ willingness to raise funds for others serves as a subtle admission that his path forward is more about a broader change to the party than his own attempts to secure tangible concessions before July.

After all, each of the fundraising emails for his chosen candidates splits the receipts between Sanders and the House hopeful, effectively depriving him of much-needed campaign cash. That arrangement sends a message that echoes his rejoinder to a North Dakota crowd member earlier this month, who shouted out that the country needed Sanders.

“No president, not Bernie Sanders or anybody else, can do it alone,” he said. “We don’t need a savior! We need a political movement.”

