At the end of the day, the best way to change minds, activate people, and win elections is to communicate with your constituents face-to-face. I fully understand that TV and radio ads play an important role in political campaigns, as does social media, but the most effective tool that we have for serious politics is getting out and directly communicating with the people. It’s also a lot of fun.
Face-to-face politics can take place by knocking on doors or by walking down Main Street and engaging people. It can happen through town hall meetings. It can happen by marching in parades. It can happen by holding large rallies. As a candidate, I have done all of that and much more—and I love doing it.
I often get amused by my colleagues in Congress and the pundits on television who keep asking, “How can we turn Trump’s working-class supporters around? How can we make them understand that Trump’s agenda is for billionaires, not for them?” Well, here is a wild and crazy idea not very often acted upon. Why don’t we go out and respectfully talk to them in the communities in which they live?
And that’s what I did on the weekend of February 23, with well-attended rallies in Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Some of the rallies were cosponsored by Not One Penny, a progressive organization opposed to Trump’s tax giveaways to the rich. Other rallies were cosponsored by progressive candidates.
Our first rally was in Chicago, which is definitely not Trump country. It is, however, the home of the Chicago Democratic Party machine, a powerful political organization. Over the years, Chuy García has become a good friend of mine. He is a progressive member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners and a leader in the Illinois Latino community. Now he was running for Congress in a seat vacated by Luis Gutiérrez.
Several years ago, Chuy ran a brilliant and surprisingly effective campaign for mayor against Rahm Emanuel, the machine-backed and well-funded Democrat. In that campaign, he did exactly what progressives have to do. He put together a strong grassroots working-class coalition of whites, blacks, Latinos, and young people.
During his campaign for mayor, I attended a rally for Chuy at a union hall on Chicago’s South Side. It was a great meeting, standing room only, enormous energy. Chuy ended up losing the race in a runoff election, but Sue Sadlowski Garza, a political ally of his and a candidate for the board of aldermen, won, in an upset victory. I was happy to have helped her. During my campaign for president, Chuy more than reciprocated the support I had given him. He was at my side time and again as we traveled the country, and he played an especially important role in Illinois, where we almost pulled off a major upset against Clinton.
Now I was back in Chicago for his campaign for Congress. It was another great event. A mariachi band; a beautiful theater and a packed house with a diverse audience (different ages, different colors, different backgrounds); and a rousing introductory speech by Nina Turner, the president of Our Revolution.
What I liked most about Chuy’s campaign was that he was in it not just for himself. He was actively supporting a number of young Latino and black candidates who were taking on the Democratic machine in Chicago at various levels. There is nothing more inspiring than seeing bright young people getting involved in politics, and that’s what Chuy was helping to make happen. As we left Chicago, I promised to help not only Chuy but these young candidates as well. And then it was on to Iowa.
I love Iowa. It is a small rural state like my own state of Vermont, with down-to-earth, hardworking people. Today it is a state strongly controlled by the Republican Party. Its two senators are Republican. Its governor is Republican. Its state legislature is Republican. In my view, it is a state not so much won by Republicans as lost by Democrats, who have not been bold enough in standing up for the working people of that state. I was in Iowa to try to change that, by supporting a candidate who was fighting for a progressive agenda, a candidate who would provide a real choice for voters.
Iowa, of course, holds the first nominating contest in the presidential primary process. As a result, in 2015, I spent a lot of time in Iowa and got to know many of the people there. In fact, we ended up doing over one hundred town hall meetings and rallies in every nook and cranny of the state. The person who helped coordinate that successful campaign for me was Pete D’Alessandro, and he was now running for Congress. Like Chuy García, Pete is from the working class and has not forgotten where he came from.
The rally for Pete in Des Moines was spirited and, for a Friday afternoon, well attended. A few days after the event, we were able to send out a fund-raising request for Pete that brought in a significant number of small donations for his campaign. In the evening, we did a large rally with Not One Penny, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In a state controlled by Republicans and won by Trump, there was still significant grassroots energy against his tax proposal.
And now it was on to Wisconsin—another state that, in recent years, has drifted far to the right under Republican rule, but a state that I had won during the primary process. As the progressive publication Mother Jones stated, “In Wisconsin, the senator is fomenting a working-class Rust Belt insurrection against Trump.” They got that right. That’s exactly what I was doing.
The major event of the day was a rally in Racine, with Randy Bryce, a union ironworker who, at the time of the rally, was taking on the most powerful Republican in Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan.
It is fair to say that there was no House race more important than this, and that the eyes of the nation were on District 1, Wisconsin. I was delighted to be in Racine with Randy, because the competing ideologies that were reflected in this campaign reflect the different visions of where our country should be heading. On one side was a candidate who was addressing the needs of working families. On the other side was a candidate who was supporting the greed of the billionaire class.
Paul Ryan is the flesh-and-blood representative of oligarchy. He is fully supported by the Koch brothers, the third-richest family in America, and other billionaires. According to the Washington Examiner, “House Speaker Paul Ryan collected nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from Charles Koch and his wife after helping usher through a massive tax reform law. According to a recent campaign finance report filed Thursday, Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, each donated $247,700 to Ryan’s joint fund-raising committee. Five other donors, including billionaire businessmen Jeffery Hildebrand and William Parfet, each contributed $100,000 in the last quarter of 2017, according to the records, which were first reported by the International Business Times.”
But it’s not just the Koch brothers and the wealthiest individuals in the country. Paul Ryan is strongly supported by Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the military-industrial complex, and all of the powerful special interests that dominate the economic and political life of our country. At that moment, he had an astounding $10 million in his campaign coffers, but even that number is misleading. Given his unqualified support from corporate America and the 1 percent, there was no limit to the amount of money he and his supporters could raise for his reelection.
There is a reason why the billionaire class loves Ryan, and that is because his ideology is that of a right-wing extremist. He worked hard to repeal the Affordable Care Act and supported efforts to throw as many as 32 million Americans off the health insurance they currently have. He helped write the Republican tax bill, which provides massive tax breaks to corporate America and provides, at the end of ten years, 83 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent. He has been one of the most aggressive members of Congress in trying to cut and privatize Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. There is virtually no federal program that benefits working families, the elderly, children, or the sick that Ryan would not cut.
Randy Bryce is a candidate with a radically different vision from Ryan’s, and he comes from an entirely different world than Ryan’s. A year before he announced his candidacy, he was employed as an ironworker and, during his work career, had suffered many of the same problems as other people in the district, including unemployment and poverty. He is exactly the kind of candidate that the Democratic Party needs to attract.
Randy’s agenda is the agenda of the working class of America. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and create millions of well-paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. He demands that the rich start paying their fair share of taxes. He wants to make public colleges and universities tuition-free, and he believes that health care for all is a right, not a privilege.
The turnout for the rally was extraordinary. On a Saturday afternoon in Racine, we brought out over 2,000 people. There was not an empty seat in the auditorium, and the overflow section was packed as well. It was especially exciting to look out at the crowd and see the front rows filled by members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other unions. They were there to support one of their own.
As a local TV station reported, “The crowd roared as Sanders took the stage Saturday at Memorial Hall in Racine. ‘We need to get rid of Republican control over the House and of the Senate and bring in leadership that is prepared to fight for working people, not just billionaires,’ Sanders said.”
What I also said is that the political revolution is alive and growing. More and more Americans, in Wisconsin and across the country, are beginning to stand up and fight for a government that represents all of us and not just the powerful few. The event with Randy was powerful and moving.
Can a candidate like Randy Bryce, an ordinary working person, defeat one of the most powerful and well-funded politicians in the country? We will never know, because Paul Ryan chose not to defend his seat instead of facing a tough reelection fight. But having seen the size and enthusiasm of that crowd in Racine, I wouldn’t have bet against Randy.
In the evening, we headed to Green Bay, a conservative part of Wisconsin that had voted for Trump. On the drive in, we stopped at Lambeau Field and recorded a video in front of the statue of Vince Lombardi. To their enormous credit, the people of Green Bay are the only community in the country with a publicly owned NFL team.
Once again, the crowd at the Not One Penny rally was large. Here, my attack against the president was not just about his dishonesty and his reactionary economic policies. It was also about his cynical effort to divide the nation. I said that Trump was “try[ing] to divide the American people. You have presidents who have been conservative, liberal, and progressive. But every president has understood that when you get to the Oval Office, your job is to bring our people together. Now, for cheap political reasons, what we’re seeing is a president who is dividing us up, a president who is pushing racism and sexism and xenophobia.… This country has struggled for too long fighting bigotry. We’re not going backward. We’re going forward.”
Our last public event was in Lansing, Michigan, a state that Trump won by less than 1 percent. Once again, the turnout was strong, over 2,000. One of the major points that I made in Lansing was that as a result of our strong showing in 2016, including our victory in Michigan, many of the “radical” ideas that we had proposed during the campaign were now being seriously discussed throughout the country and, in some cases, being adopted. As the Detroit News reported:
Sanders opened his speech by recounting his 2016 campaign, including his surprise Michigan primary victory over eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The self-described Democratic socialist said many of his ideas once criticized as too “radical” or “extreme” have become part of the mainstream debate, including his calls for tuition-free college, a “Medicare for all” single-payer health system and a $15 minimum wage.
He urged supporters to continue those fights. “You can have great candidates, you can have great ideas, but unless you have a movement of people behind those ideas, we will not succeed,” he said.
After the rally in Lansing, we drove to Flint, Michigan, for a closed-door meeting with Pastor Ezra Tillman Jr. and local residents at the First Trinity Missionary Baptist Church. Most Americans know that Flint is the city where the residents, including many children, were poisoned by high levels of lead in the drinking water. It is also a very poor city, with a majority African American population. During my campaign for president, I visited Flint twice, in one case holding a town hall meeting, and I promised that I would return after the election whether I won or lost. I kept my promise.
All the meetings I have held in Flint have been painful and emotional. This is a city under siege, with enormous problems, where the residents feel ignored and betrayed. Imagine, in a closed room, hearing from a mother whose daughter had been a bright, gregarious young girl and then, as a result of exposure to lead in the water, suffered neurological damage that significantly limited her cognitive and emotional abilities. Then understand that she was just one of many casualties.
While having the most toxic water system in the country, the residents of Flint were forced to pay the highest water bills in America—and they’re still paying them. How is that for powerlessness: paying outrageous prices for a basic necessity that, because of government malfunction, is causing brain damage and destroying lives?
Meetings like these are extremely difficult for me. The problems in Flint—a poisonous water system, poverty, racism, high unemployment, poor schools, and inadequate health care—are not going to be easily solved within the current political and economic framework of Michigan or the United States. In Washington, Congress is much too busy working on tax breaks for billionaires to worry about the people of Flint. While the very rich get much richer, the people of Flint continue to be ignored and continue to suffer.
In the midst of all that, what could I honestly say to the people in the room? What kind of legitimate hope could I offer them? What they don’t need are more lies and promises that will not be kept.
Amidst all of these problems, however, I would be remiss not to point out the incredible dignity, intelligence, and resiliency of the people we met with. They inspired me deeply. I saw more humanity in a one-hour meeting there than I see in a year in Congress. I was especially impressed by the beautiful high school students who were there, black and white. They are not giving up. As best they can, they are fighting back for their community and their future.
The one promise that I made at that meeting was that I would not forget Flint. We would work with the people there in any and every way possible.