Why Biden may have an easier time than Clinton winning over Sanders’ base
The end of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign removes the final roadblock standing between Joe Biden and the Democratic presidential nomination.
But it is Sanders’ army of young, progressive and strong-willed supporters who could pose the more menacing long-term threat to Biden’s ability to unify and excite the party as it marches toward a general election battle against President Donald Trump.
Coaxing Sanders’ backers to climb aboard without alienating the moderate and disillusioned Republicans Biden is counting on in November will be one of the most critical and delicate tasks the former vice president’s campaign undertakes in the coming weeks.
Yet Biden’s advisers argue they already sit in a more favorable position to coalesce the left than widely presumed for three central reasons: Biden’s visible and behind-the-scenes overtures on progressive policy, a considerably less contentious primary than the one between Hillary Clinton and Sanders in 2016, and the much higher stakes to remove Trump from office.
And the effort to make inroads with Sanders’ base is already well underway.
“We did not wait until Sen. Sanders came to his conclusion to start this outreach and this work,” said Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to the Biden campaign. “We started this highly targeted outreach more than a month ago and we’ve seen a willingness to engage with us because we’re not doing it for press purposes.
Ever since their sole one-on-one debate in mid-March, Biden has made a point of showering Sanders in compliments and gently extending an olive branch, without seeming presumptuous or ever pressuring the Vermont senator to end his campaign.
He’s praised the “passion and tenacity” of Sanders voters, while at the same time avoiding embracing the full platter of solutions they’ve championed. He’s promised significant change “structurally and practically — that can bring everybody along.” And on Wednesday, he even embraced Sanders’ campaign slogan. “You will be heard by me,” Biden said in a direct plea to Sanders’ supporters. “As you say: Not me, us.”
Minyon Moore, a longtime Democratic Party stalwart and Hillary Clinton ally, said Biden’s natural instincts for unity and empathy make him well-suited to talk to those who may not agree with him.
“He’s trying to say, ‘I’m going to lead for everyone.’ He doesn’t have to project either-or. He has to project both-and,” Moore said.
Meanwhile, the Biden campaign has had internal working groups dedicated to progressive outreach since its rout of victories on Super Tuesday. From college campus outreach to talks with grassroots groups like the Sunrise Movement and March for Our Lives, the campaign has deployed a team of surrogates and younger elected officials to navigate rough spots with suspicious and even adversarial components of the progressive movement.
“Some are to talk about the policy, some are to talk about the politics before we get the policy,” Sanders said of these conversations. “Our engagement does not start from where don’t align. It’s where do we align and how can we expand among the alignment.”
Of course, there will always be holdouts. And while he pledged to work with his former rival, not even Sanders was ready to fully throw his support behind Biden on Wednesday.
But that political marriage is likely to take place once the two candidates and their campaigns have more substantive conversations about the type of general election race Biden plans to run and how Sanders can be most helpful.
Former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, who has rededicated himself to increasing youth voter turnout, said Biden’s most effective pitch to that constituency would be laser-focused on issues.
“It’s not enough just to be anti-Trump,” Steyer said. “He’s going to have to inspire them and reassure them that a lot of the values Bernie represented are going to be part of his platform and are in his heart. This isn’t ‘anybody but Trump.’ … It’s not a return to the Obama-Biden presidency, it’s a forward-looking Biden presidency.”
One policy the Biden campaign is already considering expanding is its climate plan, which has adopted the framework of the Green New Deal but not its most ambitious emission-cutting targets. A campaign adviser noted that Biden was looking for a way to expand the environmental justice component of his plan to place greater emphasis on lower-income and minority communities.
Biden has also taken intentional steps to the left on several other issues. He’s committed to placing a 100-day moratorium on deportations of nearly all immigrants who came into the country illegally. He’s endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy plan, which provides for student debt relief, as well as getting behind a plank of Sanders’ plan to make public college tuition-free for families with annual incomes below $125,000. Biden also plans to use his prior fights on gun control and marriage equality as evidence of his progressive bonafides.
On Wednesday, a coalition of progressive groups released a wish list of 14 commitments and policy proposals they want to see Biden adopt, including a pledge to appoint a Department of Homeland Security who will dismantle ICE and support for the legalization of marijuana.
“The victorious ‘Obama coalition’ included millions of energized young people fighting for change. But the Democratic Party’s last presidential nominee failed to mobilize our enthusiasm where it mattered. We can’t afford to see those mistakes repeated,” the letter from eight progressive groups, including Justice Democrats and The Sunrise Movement, reads.
Biden will never be able to satisfy all the demands of the left. “If we ran the campaign that Tweeters wanted, we would probably not be where we are,” quipped a Biden adviser.
But allies also believe Biden doesn’t generate the visceral antipathy that Clinton did, and that the reality of risking another four years of Trump during a national pandemic only makes the case more compelling.
“I think Bernie’s language was really important today when he said, united we stand, together to defeat Donald Trump,” said Jim Messina who ran President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign on MSNBC. “There will be no replay of 2016.”
Biden and Sanders also appear to have a genuine fondness for each other that could help forge a more trusted alliance over time. Sanders, in fact, ignored some advisers’ appeals to attack Biden in earlier debates because Biden was nice to him in the Senate, according to the Huffington Post.
And after Sanders addressed a livestream of his supporters of his decision to effectively end their hopes for a progressive revolution, one of his first calls was with Biden.
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Join NowThis story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 5:02 PM with the headline "Why Biden may have an easier time than Clinton winning over Sanders’ base."
