FROM THE OHIO RIVER VALLEY TO THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
WITH NEW YORK AND THE April 26 states in the rearview mirror, our last best hope for demonstrating strength to the superdelegates was to rack up a series of wins on June 7, as difficult as that would be. Six states were holding contests that day, including New Jersey and California, which had the biggest delegate total of any state. But we had to get back on our feet first. Indiana was the next state on the calendar, followed by West Virginia, Oregon, and Kentucky, and then Puerto Rico. If we were going to have a big showing on June 7 we had to win most, if not all, of these.
Indiana was a state we had polled well in earlier, but after the New York and April 26 losses Hillary Clinton had pulled ahead. The public polling was also bad for us. FiveThirtyEight gave Bernie only a 10 percent chance of winning. The RealClearPolitics polling average had Clinton up by nearly 7 points.
Four key factors played into Bernie’s upset victory in the Hoosier State. The first was our strong local campaign, which had been on the ground since after Oklahoma on March 1. The second was Bernie’s ability to campaign intensely there. The third was the help of labor in Indiana—spearheaded by United Steelworkers Local 1999 president Chuck Jones. Importantly, the Steelworkers represented workers at a Carrier plant targeted for closure. These workers understood in a very personal way the impact of the free-trade agreements that Bernie had opposed for his entire political career. The fourth was Bernie’s continued growing support among African American voters. By the night of his 5-point upset in Indiana, Clinton’s lead among all African Americans in Indiana was only 10 points. Given the age divide in Bernie’s support, that margin meant that he was winning the votes of African American voters under forty by a huge margin—and likely the broader eighteen-to-fifty-four age bracket.
The win in Indiana showed Bernie might be down but never out. It also presaged Clinton’s general election problems in the industrial Midwest. Bernie also used his win as an opportunity to lay out the case for why superdelegates should move to him.
NBC’s Carrie Dann reported, “In remarks to reporters in New Albany, Indiana, Sanders argued that he is the better candidate to compete in a general election against Donald Trump, whose win in Indiana Tuesday night set him on course to become the likely GOP nominee. ‘I sense a great deal of momentum,’ Bernie said. ‘While the path is narrow—and I do not deny that for a moment—I think we can pull off one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States.’ A week later he enjoyed a 15-point win in West Virginia, where he prevailed in every county.
Oregon and Kentucky were the next week. Both were closed primaries, and Oregon’s voting is all done by mail. As many expected, Bernie won Oregon, although by a smaller margin than our earlier polling had shown. The narrowness of our path forward was starting to have an impact on voters. But Oregon was a milestone for the campaign. It was Bernie’s first win in a closed primary state.
Kentucky proved in many ways the more interesting contest that day. Despite its closed primary, our campaign had an active ground operation in place, and Bernie spent considerable time campaigning in person. Due to resource constraints, we put up only a relatively modest television buy.
The Clinton campaign decided to go all-in, as reported by CNN’s Dan Merica, with television, radio, a dozen surrogates, and eleven appearances by the candidate herself. During the primary, I got an email from Tad and Mark’s firm that Clinton was outspending us on television. To match them, we’d need another $150,000 or so. Bernie, who always preferred grassroots campaigning over television ads, decided that we would use Kentucky to show that a campaign could win without spending a lot on television. We would let the Clinton campaign have the television advantage. We almost pulled it off.
Clinton won in the Bluegrass State by two-tenths of 1 percent. In hindsight, that extra television money would have put us over the top (as would have also been the case if we had come in with more momentum). Kentucky confirmed what we had seen in other states: a grassroots campaign, Bernie’s personal presence, and a robust paid media campaign was the formula for winning. Take out any of those pieces and our chances of victory went down substantially. Still, Bernie’s tie in Kentucky, even though we were outspent on television, validated what Oregon showed. Bernie could do well in closed primaries—even when he was outspent on television.
The last contest before California voted was in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was experiencing incredible financial problems, and wealthy creditors were squeezing the island hard for repayments at the expense of vital services like education. Bernie had spoken strongly against the type of austerity regime Puerto Rico was being forced into—not unlike what the European Union was doing to countries like Spain and Greece.
Bernie went to Puerto Rico to campaign. It was an expensive detour; by this time, he was trying to spend a lot of time in California. In the end, Clinton won, as she had in 2008. But her margin over Bernie (22 points) was far smaller than her margin in her previous presidential run (36.5 points).
* * *
June 7 represented the last hope to create the momentum that could convince superdelegates to take another look at Bernie Sanders. Six states were voting that day: Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Mexico, New Jersey, and the largest state, California, which alone had 475 pledged delegates (still only about two-thirds the value of the superdelegates).
With resources a major issue now, we made the difficult choice to forgo television ads in the expensive media markets of New Jersey, even though it was the second-largest prize of the day. We also were “dark” in Montana and the Dakotas. We did put some ads up for New Mexico’s closed primary. California was a challenge. Many voters in California vote early; in the case of those voters, television advertising is a waste. We also didn’t have the tens of millions that would be needed to blanket the state anyway. We focused our advertising in Southern California, where the percentage of voters casting early ballots was lower. It also allowed us to reach more of California’s considerable Latino population, with whom our organizers were working intensely.
This relatively small buy would be backed by nonstop Bernie appearances in California, from one end of the state to the other. Our scaled-down staff worked to pull off the overwhelming schedule of rallies. We were also trying to contend with California’s balloting system. The primary in California was technically open, but independent voters had to explicitly request a “Democratic” ballot to receive one that included the presidential primary. Otherwise they would receive one that had only the down-ballot primaries. Because of the size of the state, it was extremely expensive to get word to independent voters. The result was a lot of confused and frustrated Californians and suppressed participation of independents in the Democratic presidential primary.
There was grumbling from the other side about Bernie’s continued campaigning in California when the pledged delegate math was so stacked against him. Just on the basis of pride points, the Clinton campaign didn’t want to lose in the nation’s largest state. Although I’ve never discussed it with people in the Clinton campaign, I am sure they were not happy to be investing money in a state so close to the end of the process that they believed they would win hands down in the general election. But there were many voices in the Democratic Party who welcomed our contesting the primary there.
Bernie’s decision to fight in California was a potential boon to down-ballot Democrats. Under California’s primary system for down-ballot candidates, all contenders, regardless of party, appear in a single “jungle” primary, and the top two finishers go on to the general election. A huge turnout among Democrats to vote in the Bernie-Clinton race made it more likely that two Democrats would emerge victorious in congressional primaries and other down-ballot races. In those instances, the Democratic Party was guaranteed a general election win. This was perceived to be more true in 2016 than before, because on the Republican side Donald Trump had already locked up the nomination in Indiana, so there was less incentive for Republicans to come out to vote. In addition, a contested primary in California activated the volunteer base, whether they were for Bernie or Clinton. We got a lot of private praise from organs of the party who were focused on winning down-ballot races, even if a contested primary in California was not popular in the Clinton camp.
The issue of debates raised its head again during the California primary, but in an unusual way. The first development was that the Clinton campaign reneged on their previous commitment to participate in a May debate in the state. This is one of the three they had promised in exchange for getting their extra New Hampshire debate. During the debate over debating in California, Fox offered to host. We would have done it on any network, so when Fox stepped up, we agreed to it. I get why the Clinton campaign didn’t want to debate this late in the process, but they had publicly committed to it at the highest levels of their campaign. A promise made was not a promise kept in this case.
While the debate with Hillary Clinton was falling through, it looked as if there might be an even more noteworthy event—a Sanders vs. Trump debate. On his May 25 show, Jimmy Kimmel asked Trump if he would agree to debate Bernie Sanders. According to CBS News, Trump responded, “How much is he going to pay me?” Kimmel said, “You would do it for a price? What would the price be?”
Trump continued, “If he paid a nice sum toward a charity, I would love to do that.” “What if the network put up the money?” Kimmel asked. “That could happen also,” Trump replied.
We responded in a tweet from Bernie: “Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary.”
Although his staff tried to spin that he had been kidding, the next day Trump said that the number he had in mind was in the $10 million to $15 million range. Every network was immediately interested in hosting the debate—including at least one that offered to put up millions and millions for charity to satisfy Donald Trump’s demand. I said at the time that it might have been the most-watched presidential contest debate ever. And it might have been.
I went on TV to prod Donald Trump to go through with the debate, telling NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Bloomberg’s Halperin and Heilemann, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that I hoped Trump wouldn’t “chicken out.” “What we’ll have to see, Wolf, is does Donald Trump have the courage to get on the stage with Bernie Sanders. That remains to be seen.” In the end, Donald Trump did chicken out. Even though there were millions on the table for charity, he didn’t quite have the “fortitude,” as I said on Bloomberg, to match his bravado.
In many of those interviews, the host tried to get me to engage on the issue of Hillary Clinton’s emails. A State Department inspector general report had been issued on the topic. As was the case throughout the campaign, I didn’t bite, and neither did Bernie or any of the staff.
As June 7 drew near, the polling in California got supertight, with the RealClearPolitics poll average showing Clinton with only a 2-point lead. That is, until the Associated Press decided to become a newsmaker instead of a news reporter.
The night before the June 7 primaries in six states, the AP ran a story, based on its count of superdelegates, explaining that Hillary Clinton had enough combined pledged and superdelegates to lock up the nomination regardless of how the six contests came out. It would have been bad enough if the AP in the normal course of its delegate counting had come to this determination and put it out the day before this critical primary day. Their reporting was to have a serious impact on voter turnout and sentiment the next day. But the greater issue about the AP’s conduct is far more distasteful. It wasn’t reporting news. It was creating it.
The AP engaged in an active campaign of harassing and cajoling superdelegates to get the result it wanted. Below is an email I received from Nick Carter of our staff with a synopsis of what he heard from more than one superdelegate about the AP’s efforts. This is a summary of a conversation Nick had with the friend of a superdelegate who was badgered, as well as a text exchange between that superdelegate and the Associated Press.
Nick’s synopsis:
Weird stuff seems to have transpired in last 24 hours.… the AP started aggressively calling uncommitted supers as early as 6:00 am. I know of at least 2 supers who got called several times by multiple AP reporters. They didn’t seem to just want an answer on who they’re supporting, but in at least one situation the AP was described as actively trying to persuade supers to take a stand and wasn’t satisfied with the answer “uncommitted.”
Nick’s summary of the conversation with the superdelegate’s friend and the text exchange:
The superdelegate’s friend says that she was called six times today by the AP beginning at 6 am. She was also texted several times by at least two different reporters. One left a voicemail. Below is from a text conversation between an AP reporter and an uncommitted super.
The Clinton campaign later emailed and later called and told her what the AP was doing, apologized and said not to talk to them. The Clinton campaign told the superdelegate that it was happening to many others and not to talk to them.
The superdelegate’s friend writes that the superdelegate reached out to the Clinton campaign after AP made it sound like the campaign had given her contact info and declared her preferences on her behalf.
The superdelegate refused to speak to them, so the texts continued.
TEXT MESSAGE EXCHANGE BETWEEN SUPERDELEGATE AND AP:
AP reporter: I didn’t receive your cell number randomly so am hoping we can chat …
AP reporter: Could you just verify yes re your support-not seeking to publicize just have you in broader tally—that’s why I was given your number.
Superdelegate: I plan on staying uncommitted until the Convention in Philadelphia.
Superdelegate: I know that not what you want to hear but that is my intention.
AP reporter: Oh it was suggested to me otherwise … so you’re not backing Clinton? That’s why I was given your number
Superdelegate: I am not publicly stating either way at this time.
AP reporter: I guess in terms of my request I don’t see it as public in terms of putting your name out there—included as part of broader tally that show sentiment of superdels if national convention were today, how would you vote?
AP reporter: Call me to chat?
_BREAK IN MESSAGES_
AP reporter: […] necessarily being publicized or have names attached to votes …
AP reporter (1:25 pm): The tally shows how superdels would vote if convention were held today …
AP reporter (2:49 pm): The tally shows how superdels respond who are clearly for Clinton but not seeking publicity at this time, agree to be included as part of tally that reflects sentiment of superdels if national convention were held today.… Not to much to ask? I know your preference bc I was given your number.… Can you verify yes? And then I’ll leave you alone …
AP reporter (5:27 pm): Last try—we basically are looking for 1 more—want to be a part of that big moment? No names …
_END OF FIRST EXCHANGE_
A SECOND REPORTER TEXTS HER:
AP reporter 2: Ms #### I am Stephen Ohlemacher at the Associated Press. I believe you texted with a colleague of mine. We are very close to making history today so I am eager to talk with you. Thank you!
In fact, the second reporter who texted the superdelegate bragged on Twitter about how he had badgered superdelegates:
Stephen Ohlemacher @stephenatap tweeted . June 6, 2016: Dear superdels, I promise to stop calling you 6X a day AP count: Clinton has delegates to win Democratic nomination.
Note that the Clinton campaign told the superdelegate not to answer the AP at the same time the AP is strongly suggesting that the Clinton campaign has given the AP the superdelegate’s contact information and indicated that the superdelegate is pro-Clinton. A senior Clinton staffer confirmed to me after the primaries that they were not happy about the story coming out the night before the California primary; they feared there would be a voter backlash. That didn’t stop the AP from trying to deceive the superdelegate that the Clinton campaign wanted the superdelegate to cooperate.
The conduct of AP reporters in browbeating and deceiving superdelegates dealt a severe blow to the credibility of an important media institution and to the media as a whole. It is hard to defend the media in other instances from charges that it manufactures news when there are examples like this one. This type of conduct spreads disrepute over an entire profession. Reporters and editors who are not willing to police their fellows when this type of thing happens share the blame for the loss of faith that Americans have in the fourth estate.
As the day ended, a few of us huddled around some laptops in a sparsely furnished room in our Los Angeles headquarters. We lost badly in New Jersey, won in both Montana and North Dakota, and came up only about 1,100 votes short in South Dakota (oh, for just a few paid media dollars!). In New Mexico’s closed primary, we lost by only 3 points.
As the California results came in, Ben Tulchin, who has loads of experience in politics in the Golden State, gave us his interpretation of how things were going. (It took weeks for the California numbers to be finalized. Still not sure why it takes so long there.) We were doing very well up north and along the Nevada border. We also ended up winning Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and San Luis Obispo. But it was not enough. Hillary Clinton’s margin ended up being 7 points.
* * *
For us, that June 7 primary had been do-or-die. Without winning California, there was no prospect of even starting a conversation with superdelegates. Any chance of winning the nomination—however slight it was by that point—was over on the seventh, even though the voters of the District of Columbia would not have the final word for another week.
From the beginning of the race, Bernie had said he would support the Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton was not yet technically the nominee; the convention had not occurred. But now that really was just a technicality. She had more pledged delegates, and the loss in California meant that any appeal to superdelegates would be futile.
Bernie’s race had always been about advancing progressive change in the country. An endorsement of Hillary Clinton was only a matter of time, but he had to figure out the most effective way to do it while protecting the interests of the over 13 million people who voted for him and the tens of millions more who supported him by the end of the campaign. He wanted to continue to advance their issues, at the same time ensuring that he was not a spoiler. Above all, he did not want the country to elect Donald Trump. Bernie took his pledge to support the Democratic nominee seriously, and he intended to keep it. It came down to a question of when and how, not if.
In the days leading up to the California vote, Robby Mook and I had talked cordially. Our talks were mostly not substantive, but the lines of communication were open. Bernie decided that he should meet with Hillary Clinton and discuss a list of items he supported before there would be any talk of scheduling an endorsement. I sent Robby Bernie’s list.
The list was a combination of process and policy initiatives. Bernie wanted reform of the Democratic nominating process and of the party itself. He wanted the removal of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as head of the DNC. (Only later, when the hacked DNC emails were released, was a fuller picture of the DNC’s role exposed.) He also asked for adoption of his college plan, the centerpiece of which was free tuition at public colleges and universities. He knew that Hillary Clinton would not agree to adopt his position on single-payer health care, but he did put forward a bold proposal to double access to primary care through community health centers, triple funding for the education of health care providers who agreed to serve in underserved communities, expand Medicare to people in their mid-fifties, and commit to including a public option in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. This last provision would create a voluntary public health insurance plan that would compete in the exchanges with the private plans. The public option and the Medicare expansion had been components of the ACA, but they were stripped late in the legislative process by allies of the private insurers who did not want the American people to see how much more cost-effectively the government could provide health insurance—and they still don’t.
Robby and I arranged for Bernie and Hillary to meet on the night of June 14. That was the day of the Democratic primary in the District of Columbia. Bernie had pledged to take his campaign through every primary and caucus on the calendar. On this point he was also determined to keep his word. And he did. DC’s primary was the last one.
We agreed to meet at the Capital Hilton in DC. The Clinton campaign agreed to make the meeting room arrangements. The attendees would be Bernie, Jane, and me from our side and Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and Robby Mook. We agreed to arrive separately, knowing that the media would be everywhere.
Our contingent arrived first. As we pulled up, the media was in full force outside the hotel. We were escorted past them into the hotel and up the elevators and were shown into the suite where the meeting was to take place. While waiting for Secretary Clinton and her advisers, we briefly discussed Bernie’s asks. I think each of us understood that we were in a position we had hoped never to be in. We had fought so hard to win, and at times it had seemed possible. But at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton had just gotten more votes.
Bernie is not a “sitter.” As we waited, we all milled about the suite. I was nearest to the door when Secretary Clinton and her team arrived. I extended my hand and said, “Nice to see you, Secretary Clinton.”
“How are you, Jeff?” she replied. It felt almost as if I should hand her my sword. Not that I carried one, but it would have been appropriate for the moment if I had.
Greetings were exchanged all around. Hillary Clinton and John Podesta sat on a small couch, Robby Mook in a chair beside them. Bernie, Jane, and I sat in chairs across from them separated by a small coffee table.
Secretary Clinton was obviously not feeling well. She coughed throughout the meeting, consuming a lot of cough drops. The Trump campaign subsequently tried to create a narrative that she has a severe health problem. That night I had a lot of sympathy for her. The campaign had been grueling for everyone, and I also had personally pushed on while being quite sick at times. I viewed it as a sign of strength, not weakness, on her part.
Bernie congratulated Hillary Clinton on the race, and she returned the compliment. Of course, they had known each other for over twenty years. And while there were certainly policy disagreements between them—in some cases deep policy disagreements—Bernie had always respected her. On the campaign trail, he had often expressed the fact that he personally liked her. I can’t say that was the most popular applause line with his supporters, but it did reflect his true feelings.
When we then turned to the list, my belief was that it would be relatively easy for them to agree to the process items Bernie had proposed and less easy for them to move on policy. Over the course of the campaign, candidates become boxed into the policy proposals they advocate for and are forced to defend in debates and in the media. The process issues were the first to be discussed.
One of the first subjects was Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Bernie and his supporters deeply resented the entirely biased role she had played in the campaign. It had started with the number and schedule of debates. Then she had tried to impose a political death sentence on the campaign in December 2015 over some low-level staffers getting access to ultimately inconsequential data because of the DNC’s defective systems. She had unnecessarily injected herself into a dispute over the Nevada party convention and had overseen the joint fund-raising program that starved state parties and allowed the Clinton campaign to dodge campaign finance limits. In short, she had been throwing shade on our campaign from the beginning.
I knew that there was no love between the Clinton campaign and the chairwoman. Nor was there any in the White House. Or among large numbers of the DNC’s top leaders. When Bernie was on his way to meet President Obama on June 9, Senator Harry Reid had made a point of calling Bernie during the car ride to remind him to ask the president to dump Wasserman Schultz.
Every time I had raised the issue of Wasserman Schultz with the Clinton campaign, they had blamed her continued tenure on the White House. Whenever I raised the issue with the president’s people, they blamed the Clinton campaign. From my calls with them, I knew that the Clinton people were exasperated with Wasserman Schultz. But I could never tell whether it was because she had put her fingers on the scale in such an incompetent way. Regardless, it just always seemed the case that no one wanted to expend the political capital necessary to push her out, especially as her term would be ending soon anyway.
At our meeting at the Hilton, Hillary Clinton balked at forcing her out. My suspicion was that the Clinton campaign did not want to do anything that would impugn the legitimacy of her victory. Forcing out Debbie Wasserman Schultz would be an acknowledgment that the DNC chairwoman had stacked the deck in Clinton’s favor. That was not our point, however. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as chair of the Democratic Party during a vigorously contested primary, was supposed to be neutral. She clearly was not. This action item would resolve itself at the Democratic National Convention, when the chairwoman was pushed out after DNC emails were released proving how the organization had worked against our campaign.
Bernie also expressed concern about Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s appointment of Connecticut governor Malloy and former congressman Barney Frank as chairs on the Democratic Platform Committee and the Democratic Rules Committee. We expected that Clinton partisans would be appointed to both those positions. But Malloy and Frank both had viciously attacked Bernie personally. Our campaign felt very strongly that these committees, which would meet before the Democratic National Convention, should be run in an evenhanded way.
In this case, Hillary Clinton refused to agree; these were her supporters, and she could not abandon them. I understood her loyalty, but this had seemed one of the easiest items going in. Not a good sign for finding common ground.
The discussion turned to policy. I feared we were going to hit more brick walls, and at first it seemed that it might go that way. Bernie raised the issue of free tuition at public colleges and universities. He talked about how transformative it would be in terms of opening college for many middle-income and working-class families. On the trail, this had been one of the most popular planks in his platform. People understood that what once had been an attainable path to a better life for their children—a college education—was increasingly a pipe dream that could never be realized. Even if it could be realized, it came with years of crushing debt payments.
Hillary Clinton reiterated her view that she did not want to send rich kids to college on the public dime. This had been her critique of Bernie’s plan during the campaign. (Inconsistent, we thought, with the fact that American public high schools and grade schools are open to all.) At this point, I felt that we all might be spinning our wheels. Then John Podesta leaned in and asked if Bernie would be willing to consider some kind of cap on income. Bernie said it depended on what the cap was. Podesta threw out a hypothetical $100,000 or $150,000. Finally, a breakthrough. We agreed that this needed further discussion to see if an agreement could be reached.
Bernie turned to his health care agenda items. This time there was no hesitation. On point after point, Hillary Clinton agreed. She agreed with adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act and to opening up Medicare to those between the age of fifty-five and sixty-four. Both had been part of the ACA originally but had been stripped to accommodate conservative Democratic senators. The loss of these two provisions created many of the current problems with the ACA (but not all of them, to be sure). She agreed to tripling the National Health Service Corps, and doubling funding for community health centers.
She also agreed that we needed to review the nominating process and the focus of the DNC. Both items would find their way into a commission that would come out of the pre-convention rules committee.
As the meeting wound down, it was suggested that Robby Mook and I stay behind to work out next steps for getting agreement on the specifics of the policy proposals. There was not a lot of talk about the timing of an endorsement. The Clinton campaign clearly wanted it sooner rather than later, but they did not push for a date.
Once everyone else had left the room, Robby Mook and I talked for another two hours about the process that we would use to work through these policy items. We set up telephone meetings for the coming days. Jennifer Palmieri came in, and we were entertained with Robby Mook’s impersonations of both Bernie and Bill Clinton. His Bill Clinton was much, much better.
That night we were soundly defeated in the District of Columbia primary. But there was a sense of relief that we had agreed on a path forward. Major policy differences were being worked out, and we had agreed to review an improved process for nominating and party reform. It was a good sign for the future. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would be able to find common ground on some issues and constructively work together as president and senator in a way that was true to the principles of each.