OCTOBER PROVED TO BE a difficult month in terms of messaging. There were several events that the media viewed as significantly buoying the Clinton campaign—which necessarily hurt ours. The contest was clearly becoming a two-person race.
The first event was the Democratic debate in Las Vegas on October 13. It represented an important moment for Bernie’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. Polling at the time showed that in some states as many as 40 percent of the voters either did not know who Bernie Sanders was or did not have enough information about him to form an opinion. That’s the reality of politics.
Bernie had held rallies across the country to crowds of thousands, in some cases tens of thousands. He had been in the news for months. While people consumed with work on a campaign are sure that every word is being carefully considered by every voter, the truth is that people have real lives, with innumerable things competing for their time and attention. Hillary Clinton was known to virtually everyone. She had run for president in 2008. She had been secretary of state and had served as first lady.
The fact that we were unknown to so many people created a challenge in terms of the debate. Creating a lot of “contrast” with one’s opponent in a debate when the voters don’t even have an opinion of you is generally a risky strategy. In our case, all the data showed that the more people got to know Bernie and his agenda, the more they liked him. We had tons of room to gain support just by introducing Bernie to more voters and without engaging Hillary Clinton at all.
That reality drove our debate strategy. The CNN debate would be viewed by millions of people. From our point of view, we did not need or necessarily want to spar with Hillary Clinton. We just wanted Bernie to articulate his progressive vision to the nation. A lot of the talking heads on the political shows either didn’t understand that or pretended they didn’t understand it. In any case, this would be the chance for Bernie to get the kind of national exposure that the media was already giving to Donald Trump on a regular basis.
In a debate, however, it is not always possible to avoid exchanges, because your opponent may well want to engage you. Or the media may initiate an exchange. Hillary Clinton had shown herself to be a skilled debater in 2008. She could give as well as she got, and in most cases she could give more than she got. She was a dangerous opponent.
We also had to consider Governor O’Malley. He had hoped to position himself as the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton. But Bernie had “occupied that lane,” as the politicos like to say. O’Malley was trailing badly in the polls. Would he use the debate to go after Bernie? Or would he go after Clinton in hope of attracting voters who were not keen on Clinton and who were not Feeling the Bern?
The preparation required for this debate would necessarily be different from that of any Bernie had ever had to prepare for. He had a lot of experience debating. But he had not had a real contest since the 2006 U.S. Senate run—fully ten years before. And those debates had gotten “hot” in terms of tone and volume—not that Rich Tarrant didn’t deserve the heat, given the despicable attacks he had launched against Bernie in the paid media.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, had a lot of experience from 2008 debating at the presidential level. Most pundits at the time had given her high marks in her appearances against Barack Obama, who himself was great on stage.
Our research head director Edward Chapman and his team prepared all the debate-related research materials. They were extensive—Bernie, Clinton, and O’Malley all had long political careers. Bernie could be called out for votes cast twenty-five years before. Or some statement connected with his mayoral tenure from thirty years ago could be thrown at him. Of course, the others faced the same challenge.
Having all the details of your candidate’s record and those of the other candidates is just a first step. The records have to be combed over to find each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, including your own. Then that information has to be imparted to your candidate, who is the one who must stand on stage in front of millions of viewers and deliver. It is an exercise that requires important political judgment calls in terms of divining what will be the questions asked and the attacks made. It also requires discipline by the candidate, who must internalize a lot of information.
We decided to get Bernie to the West Coast days before the debate so that he and the rest of the crew could be acclimated to the time zone. He left Washington, DC, on October 9 and headed west for the rallies in Tucson and Boulder. The Tucson rally was one of the most memorable of the campaign. It was held in a large park with a stage. It was a 5,000-plus event, with an overwhelmingly Latino audience. Congressman Raul Grijalva—one of our earliest endorsers—helped organize the event and introduced Bernie. There was a tremendous sense of community as we heard the stories from young Dreamers whose families had been torn apart by a broken immigration system. No one who heard the stories that evening of parents and children being separated could have left unmoved by the tragedy so many were facing. Today, under Trump’s presidency, the tragedy is more severe.
Boulder was scorching hot the next day. Bernie spoke to thousands at an outdoor rally; people were fainting from the heat. The National Nurses Union was there in force and provided medical assistance. The union ran an independent expenditure campaign in support of Bernie’s run. Their bus traveled the country, and their membership seemed to be everywhere—Their work was an example of the impact that an independent grassroots effort can have.
That evening we arrived in Nevada. We stayed in Henderson, rather than in Las Vegas itself. It put us away from the huge media presence, but that was the point. This was Bernie’s first presidential debate. He needed to prepare and focus. Being a bit farther out made that all the more likely.
Supporting a candidate in a presidential debate is a big logistical undertaking that requires a big team. In addition to the actual debate prep team, there are surrogates, family members, staff covering communications and research, and advance staff to support them all. The ever-frugal Bernie felt greatly overstaffed. We definitely had more staff at the first debate than at any of the subsequent ones. But this being our first debate I wanted to be sure that we had what we needed. I took Bernie’s far-too-serious teasing about this in stride.
Debate prep is intense work. Bernie was provided with voluminous briefing books on past positions and votes, and on issues that we anticipated would come up. It is not all that difficult to anticipate what the universe of media questions will be. I would estimate that we were well over 90 percent accurate in figuring out which questions would be asked. By this time, the campaign had come to be defined in terms of issues and divisions between the candidates. Bernie dove into the materials. His years as a legislator gave him a lot of experience digesting material on various topics quickly.
We also had formal debate prep sessions. For the first time in his career, Bernie would be prepping with other people standing in for his opponents. Michaeleen Crowell, his Senate chief of staff, stood in for Hillary Clinton. Mark Longabaugh played Martin O’Malley. In addition, the prep would take place in what for us was a very crowded room of people—Tad, Mark, Jane, some other family members, the research team, the policy team, and state senator Nina Turner and her husband, Jeff.
Bernie had traditionally prepped for debates from written materials only, so this was a big change. When he asked whether we needed this many people in the room, Tad assured him that it was not too many. “I guarantee you there are at least forty people in the room prepping Hillary,” Tad said. “This is really a skeleton crew.”
Tad played the moderator. He would read questions from a three-ring binder. Bernie had an excellent grasp of the issues already because his candidacy was so policy-focused.
Because Hillary Clinton had been secretary of state, we spent a considerable amount of time on foreign policy issues even though we knew they would be a relatively small part of the debate. Her strength was her extensive experience. We had to focus on her judgment, which led her to support the Iraq War and the intervention in Libya.
Aside from filling in a gap here and there on substance, there was also a focus on the intangible aspects of debating. No one wanted to have a Rick Lazio moment. (During a U.S. Senate debate between Rick Lazio and Hillary Clinton, Lazio had walked from his podium to hers to deliver a document. It was widely panned as too in-your-face, particularly against a female opponent.)
We put the podiums fairly close together. Bernie, who talks with his hands, got some practice being close to an opponent. “So, I shouldn’t do this,” he joked, waving his hands in front of Michaeleen’s face.
Much of the prep was dictated by our overall strategy of using the debate to introduce Bernie to millions of Americans rather than as an opportunity to spar with Hillary Clinton. We knew that the issue of Clinton’s emails would be the subject of a question. Bernie expressed his view that he was not going to focus on it. He felt that the obsession with the emails was robbing voters of a real debate on substantive policy issues. The one thing we did not rehearse was the response he would give when asked about Hillary Clinton’s email troubles. That was all Bernie.
Hanging over everyone was whether Vice President Joe Biden would decide to make the CNN debate his first presidential campaign appearance. CNN even had a podium ready in the wings in case he jumped in. Because Biden was a maybe, and the other candidates had such long public records, we really did not do much “Biden prep.” If he had decided to show, we would not have been as prepared against him. As debate time approached, it became clear that he would not be there.
Right before the debate, the DNC leadership showed itself to be thin-skinned and petty even to questioning from the inside. Two DNC vice-chairs, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and former Minneapolis mayor R. T. Rybak of Minnesota, had the audacity to question why there were so few debates. Of course, as we now know, the debate parameters were written by the Clinton campaign and implemented by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Congresswoman Gabbard reiterated her concern in an MSNBC interview just days before the debate. Wasserman Schultz’s staff called Gabbard’s office and effectively withdrew her invitation to attend the debate. Everyone at the time thought it was just pettiness. Knowing now how the debate calendar was deliberately rigged, it wasn’t pettiness. It was arrogance—to retaliate against someone who is questioning your decision making when you know you have deliberately rigged the process. When asked about it on CNN’s New Day, I said that if the DNC wouldn’t give Representative Gabbard a ticket, our campaign certainly would. She ultimately did not attend, but she would later become one of our most effective surrogates.
The debate itself went very much as we had planned. Bernie delivered his message of combating wealth and income inequality, reforming the campaign finance system, breaking up big banks, and advocating for criminal justice reform. There were a few exchanges. On debate points—not sincerity—Clinton won the exchange on guns. Bernie’s position does not fit on a bumper sticker. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 position did. There was no room on that bumper sticker for her long and tortured history of being on all sides of the gun control debate.
On many other issues, Clinton showed some of the vulnerabilities that would plague her down the road, including flip-flopping on support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and the Keystone XL pipeline.
Bernie delivered the most memorable line of the night. When the moderators brought up Secretary Clinton’s emails, Bernie said to a standing ovation, “Let me say something that may not be great politics, but I think the secretary is right. I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” Clinton loved it.
The point that Bernie was making—a point that was lost on the media even though he clarified his remarks in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo immediately after the debate—was that the media was covering the Clinton email debacle to the exclusion of almost any other issue in the Democratic primary. Bernie wanted to talk about trade policy, the minimum wage, the crisis in college affordability, climate change, and the rest of his progressive agenda. His point was not that there was no merit to the controversy. His position was that the legal process should take its course and that the media should broaden the scope of its coverage of the primary to include substantive policy issues.
To the extent anyone in the media or the viewing audience caught that point, Larry David’s subsequent Saturday Night Live portrayal of Bernie completely blew it away. (Bernie thought that the Larry David portrayal, while over-the-top, was hilarious.)
Bernie did one other thing that should be mentioned. He invoked Sandra Bland’s name in the debate. No one knew at the time that in doing so he was keeping a promise he had made to Sandra Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal. He had by chance recently met her at the East Street Cafe in Union Station in Washington, DC. I did not know about the meeting until after the debate, when I read an account of it on soulunbound.com written by the Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner, one of the people accompanying Geneva Reed-Veal that night:
I was completely blown away by the unexpectedness of it all, the sacredness of the moment, and the sincerity of all involved. You do not often get to witness moments like that. Moments when agendas are laid aside and people who might not otherwise ever have the chance to connect without cameras watching can simply honor one another’s pain and humanity.
“What happened to your daughter is inexcusable,” he said. “We are broken, and this has exposed us.” He then continued by promising that he would continue to #SayHerName #SandraBland and would not give up in the pursuit of justice.
The spontaneity of the moment lent sincerity to words unrehearsed, phrases unplanned, in an interaction that was never supposed to take place.
We asked Senator Sanders if we could take a picture with him and he consented. He did not impose upon Ms. Geneva to ask for a picture of his own. He did not use the moment as an opportunity to promote his campaign. He took no record, he made no statement. He did not try to turn it into a publicity stunt. He simply made space for a sacred moment, and then let it pass without trying to gain anything from it.
For that, I respect him. For that, I am grateful. That choice may not have made him a very good politician, but it made him a better man.
This meeting almost more than any other sums up Bernie Sanders. Yes, he’s loud on the stump, sometimes impatient, and extremely driven. But he also feels a deep and sincere connection with the people he meets in his travels. That’s a side of Bernie so few get to see. When I later asked him about the meeting, he said, “It was a personal meeting.” It all became clear. To Bernie, Saying Her Name at the CNN debate had become personal.
The Netroots protesters months before had wanted him to Say Her Name at the conference. He had been saying Sandra Bland’s name and the names of other victims of police violence before tens of thousands of people ever since. Now he had said her name to almost 16 million viewers sitting at home watching the Democratic debate.
The media almost universally hailed Secretary Clinton as the winner of the debate. They praised her poise and presidential demeanor. There never was any doubt that Hillary Clinton was a candidate of great intelligence and poise, with a presidential demeanor—and that she was good at debates. But everyone knew that before the debate even started.
From our point of view, the debate was a tremendous success. Bernie had delivered the most memorable line of the evening, and the issues that he brought to the campaign dominated the discussion on stage—as they would throughout the campaign. Our goal had been to have him make his case to the nation. He had. And the nation was interested. Philip Bump’s analysis in the Washington Post that evening showed that Bernie generated huge online interest in terms of Google searches whenever he spoke during the debate. And the interest continued postdebate. Bernie also bested Clinton on Twitter that night.
Following the debate, Tad Devine and I and our other surrogates went down to what is called the spin room. We had watched the debate from our work room—in this case, a small two-room hotel suite. Inside the suite were jammed our press, research, and advance staff and our surrogates. Part of the function of the work room is rapid response. In anticipation of the debate, we had well over a hundred fact sheets prepared on aspects of the various candidates’ records and positions. These can be sent out to all the media in real time to either reinforce an attack leveled against an opponent or to defend your own candidate.
Many in the media just ignore them. But there are others who find the background information useful. When a topic came up in the debate that was the subject of one of our prepared sheets, the press staff would put it up on a screen and I would yea or nay it. This was our first go-around with this type of rapid response, but it worked pretty seamlessly. We also monitored social media to see the reaction to the ebb and flow of the debate.
Before the close of every debate, we huddled to condense our talking points for the spin room. Tad usually took the lead in compiling them, but it was a collaborative process that a small group had input into. It was usually a list of the top five talking points. We would then leave the suite before the closing statements so we could be first in the spin room. I didn’t see the closing statements of any of the debates during the campaign.
For those who have not been to one, which I expect is most readers, the spin room is where all the media is set up to conduct interviews with surrogates. And because this was the first debate, ALL the media was there. The television networks have set locations around the outside walls of the room, but most reporters are just wandering around. As different surrogates enter the room, they are mobbed by the reporters. Because a spin room is so crowded and chaotic, each campaign surrogate is trailed by a staffer carrying a sign—called a lollipop—with the surrogate’s name on it, so the media knows who is available.
The reporters shout out questions. No prescreening. No filter. Cameras, recorders, and notepads take down your every word. It’s a stressful environment. The press team is there, setting up times for television “hits” with the various networks. They also can help pull you away from any situation that does not seem to be going all that well. I was rescued more than a few times over the course of the campaign by Arianna Jones, Sarah Ford, or Symone Sanders.
Bernie had asked if he should make an appearance in the spin room. Tad assured him that the only time candidates come to the spin room is when they have had a disastrous performance and need to do something desperate to rehabilitate themselves.
Everything seemed to be going well until Bernie was contacted by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell to do an interview. His plan was to slip into the spin room and go to the MSNBC booth and then slip out again. Oh, the best-laid plans! The second that Bernie (accompanied by Michael Briggs, Phil Fiermonte, and Shannon Jackson—carrying the “Bernie Sanders” lollipop!) stepped into the room, the media swarmed him. I was across the room and saw a tremendous amount of commotion. But it was impossible to see what was going on through the throngs of reporters and cameras.
In the rush to get to Bernie, the press corps was essentially trampling Andrea Mitchell. She started to go down and Bernie took over. Here’s the Yahoo! News report from Hunter Walker:
In the wake of his debate performance, Sanders’ arrival in the spin room led to a near-stampede as reporters and cameramen rushed over to speak to him. The pack of press followed him as he walked out of the spin room.
Yahoo News was standing right behind Sanders as the human surge began to knock Mitchell off balance. Sanders threw his hands out and pushed the crowd away as he shouted for people to move back. As the crowd began to part he reached over to Mitchell, who was still regaining her footing.
“You all right?” Sanders asked. “Are you OK?”
After checking in with Mitchell, Sanders continued admonishing the crowd to move back.
“All right! You know, excuse me! Please move back! You’ve almost injured—” Sanders said before trailing off and turning back to Mitchell.
“Are you all right?” he asked again.
“Yeah,” Mitchell confirmed. “I’m OK.”
Sanders continued to wave his hands and urge the crowd to back up.
“All right now! Stop it!” he declared. “Will the cameras slow it down?”
Sanders then reached out and touched Mitchell’s shoulder. Seemingly relieved, she took a deep breath.
“Are you all right?’ he asked.
“I’m sorry,” Mitchell said. “That was a dangerous situation. I apologize.”
Sanders waved off Mitchell’s apology. She went on to describe the incident as a “terrible situation.”
“You don’t apologize. These people,” he said trailing off and pointing to the surrounding crowd.
He then proceeded to grant Mitchell an interview. She began by acknowledging the huge crowd Sanders brought into the spin room.
“There’s a lesson in this,” Mitchell said to Sanders. “Obviously, you did very well. You’ve been on fire tonight.”
Bernie had rescued one of the nation’s top journalistic talents from her own media colleagues. Walker’s account, while detailed, doesn’t begin to capture the genuine interaction between Bernie and Andrea Mitchell. Thankfully, the video of the event is widely available on the internet.
Mitchell’s remark that “There’s a lesson in this” was true. Bernie never went near a spin room again.
The next morning, he appeared at the American Postal Workers Union National Convention in Las Vegas. And then he was off to the West Coast. Over the course of the rest of the month, he made appearances on numerous national shows: with Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Maher, Tavis Smiley, Jimmy Kimmel, Jesse Jackson, and on The View. Much of the rest of the time was spent in Iowa.
Of course, politics is not an endeavor where you just go your merry way without outside events interfering. The third week of October brought us important events completely out of our control. The first was the decision by Vice President Joe Biden to pass on the presidential race. Throughout the summer and fall there had been a tremendous amount of political speculation about whether he would jump in. It was obviously a difficult and very personal decision for him, given the loss of his beloved son Beau on May 30, 2015. Joe Biden had been a U.S. senator and was vice president, but he is known equally as a deeply loving and devoted father. Given his loss, many thought that understandably he would not be able to dedicate his entire being to a competitive run for president.
There had been news stories for months; people were trying to read the tea leaves. A majority offered evidence that he would in fact run. As widely reported in the media, there were meetings with DNC officials, labor leaders, and big-dollar donors. There were public statements by people who had spoken with the vice president that indicated he would run.
As detailed by Glenn Thrush in Politico in the summer of 2016, President Obama during this time was working behind the scenes to dissuade Joe Biden from running and to bolster Hillary Clinton’s campaign. President Obama’s interest was in preserving his legacy, and the powers that be viewed Hillary Clinton as the strongest general election candidate. Thrush notes that the president’s political director fed the vice president “a steady diet of polls showing a steep uphill climb,” while longtime Obama aide David Plouffe warned the vice president that his candidacy could place third in Iowa behind Bernie Sanders.
An October 14, 2015, email suggests that Ron Klain, the vice president’s former chief of staff, also played a role in torpedoing a run by Joe Biden. Klain emailed John Podesta, “Thanks for inviting me into the campaign, and for sticking with me during the Biden anxiety. You are a great friend and a great leader. It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise—and I am definitely dead to them—but I’m glad to be on Team HRC.”
In our campaign there was a division of opinion about whether a Biden candidacy would be a positive or a negative for us. On the positive side, the vice president’s entry into the race could split the Democratic establishment that was lining up behind Hillary Clinton. That split would be seen in terms of endorsements and money. If the vice president was successful enough, the split in the establishment could push Hillary Clinton into third place (which would have set off a mass panic on the part of the establishment forces that were dumping big-dollar contributions into her campaign and pro-Clinton super PACs). It could have also propelled Bernie Sanders to the top in many contests.
On the other hand, Biden’s strong connection with working-class voters could have created competition for rank-and-file labor votes—although the vice president’s support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have weighed against him. There was also a concern that, had the vice president run, the president would have felt compelled to support him in a more public way than he had Hillary Clinton, and earlier in the process.
Bernie, for his part, was not going to change his game plan based on speculation. He wanted whatever information was available, but he did not waste a lot of time trying to guess what the vice president would do. In his mind, Joe Biden would either run or he would not. Bernie Sanders would continue doing what he was doing regardless of who was in or out.
Of course, Vice President Biden did not run. On October 21, 2015, Tad and I were waiting to meet reporters for lunch. They called Tad and canceled. The vice president had an announcement. Tad and I decided to stay, have lunch at the bar, and watch the vice president on the TVs there.
When we saw Vice President Joe Biden standing at a podium on the White House grounds with the president at his side, we knew that he was not going to run. That in and of itself was not all that surprising. What was surprising was the speech he gave. He decried income inequality, called for free college tuition, criticized the political establishment, and on and on. As Thrush reported, Tad looked at me and said, “Holy shit! That’s our message. That’s what we’re running on.” Indeed it was. The most interesting part of Joe Biden’s speech was that it was clearly made from a draft of remarks meant to announce his candidacy for president. If you took the word “not” out of it, it was his announcement speech.
The media went into a frenzy anointing Hillary Clinton the nominee almost immediately after. CNN reported that Joe Biden’s decision put “Hillary Clinton in a stronger position to capture the Democratic nomination.” In my personal view, it did benefit her campaign. But it didn’t help to hear it echoing through the media. And there was virtually no coverage that the vice president of the United States had endorsed the platform that Bernie Sanders was running on.
Vice President Biden’s decision to not run was followed on the twenty-second by Hillary Clinton’s eleven-hour appearance before the U.S. House select committee investigating the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. The Republicans showed up in force to take on Hillary Clinton. Let’s say it wasn’t even a fair fight. She demolished them.
There were certainly aspects of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state that could be criticized from a policy perspective—and during the campaign we did criticize her in that regard. She was a military interventionist who holidayed with Henry Kissinger. She had promoted fracking technology internationally, and she had said glowing things about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But laying the tragic deaths in Benghazi at her feet personally came across as the unprincipled political attack it was.
The positive impact of that hearing on her campaign with Democratic voters could not have been greater if she had choreographed it herself. There she was, going toe-to-toe with a gaggle of Republicans who could barely throw a punch, let alone land one. The Republicans’ position was made all the worse because House majority leader Kevin McCarthy had admitted on Fox News only a few weeks before that the purpose of the Benghazi hearings was to hurt Hillary Clinton politically.
Well, the Republicans’ ham-fisted overreach backfired. As Reuters wrote, “This partisan battle became an opportunity for Clinton to display her leadership skills. As her Republican congressional opponents got into screaming matches, she sat back, smiled and shook her head at the divisiveness and pettiness of Congress.”
From our point of view, the Republicans had played right into Hillary Clinton’s hands. They had unified Democrats behind a candidate they rightfully perceived was the subject of a political inquisition and had given Hillary Clinton an opportunity to show her mettle. And she did not disappoint.
In the aftermath of her annihilation of the Republicans on the Benghazi committee, the Clinton camp began to go aggressively on the attack against Bernie. The goal of the new attack was to paint Bernie as a misogynist for his comments on gun control during the CNN debate. In discussing his record on gun control, he had said, as reported by NPR:
As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton [is] that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence that we are seeing.
I believe that there is a consensus in this country. A consensus has said we need to strengthen and expand instant background checks, do away with this gun show loophole, that we have to address the issue of mental health, that we have to deal with the strawman purchasing issue, and that when we develop that consensus, we can finally, finally do something to address this issue.
As Tamara Keith reported in the same story, Bernie had used similar language months earlier, in August 2015, to describe the gun debate in America during a CNN interview:
Coming from a rural state, which has almost no gun control, I think I can get beyond the noise and all of these arguments and people shouting at each other and come up with real constructive gun control legislation, which most significantly gets guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.
In fact, Bernie’s statements represented his view. Since he had come to Congress, the issue of gun control had become an increasingly partisan issue. Before, it had been largely a rural/urban issue. This, in part, allowed the Republicans to make huge inroads into rural America, while Democrats lost there. Even so, there is a large consensus among voters—both rural and urban—on a number of gun safety measures, such as universal background checks. But in Bernie’s view, there seemed to be more interest in fighting than in solving the issue, more interest in making partisan points than in making progress.
The reality is that in Vermont, during deer season (the two weeks ending the weekend after Thanksgiving), hunters can be seen everywhere with firearms. No one feels unsafe; you drive by dozens of people on country roads carrying loaded high-powered rifles. From my own experience growing up in a rural area, often the most prominent item in someone’s house is a glass case with the guns on display and ammunition stored right below. No doubt that is the case in rural communities across America. By bringing regular people together, rather than the lobbies on both sides, a national consensus for keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them could be crafted.
But the day after the Benghazi hearing, and fully ten days after the CNN debate, Hillary Clinton turned her perceived disagreement with Bernie on gun control into a charge that he was sexist. Tamara Keith quoted Clinton: “I’ve been told to stop, and, I quote, ‘shouting about gun violence.’ Well, first of all, I’m not shouting. It’s just, when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.” Ten days after the CNN debate, the Clinton campaign—through the candidate herself—had fired the first volley in their Bernie-is-sexist narrative. I unfortunately would walk into the same line of fire about a week later in Iowa after the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner—the “JJ.”
The JJ is in most ways the premier political event in the Iowa caucus process. It is an event attended by thousands, with a stage in the round where all the Democratic Party’s candidates address the crowd. Around the stage is a seated area where dinner is served. Beyond that are rows of chairs where dinner is not served. And beyond that the walls are lined with bleachers. The bleachers are divided by candidate, which has the effect of creating cheering sections. The event is a huge fund-raiser for the Iowa Democratic Party; tickets must be purchased to attend. As we had done in the past, we bought only a few seats in the more expensive area up front and many more tickets in the bleacher area.
To make their splash, the Clinton campaign had Katy Perry perform a free outdoor concert before the JJ. That was pretty hard to top. Our plan was to hold a rally and then march across a bridge with a mass of supporters to the doors of the hall where the JJ was being held. It ended up being a powerful visual, with throngs of people crossing and with Bernie in the lead. As CNN reported, Hillary Clinton broke with the long-standing tradition that candidates march with their supporters to the dinner. Her supporters had to walk to the JJ without her.
We did have a little fun that day. After months slogging it out in Iowa, the local team and I decided to try a little creative campaigning. Katy Perry’s Super Bowl performance back in February 2015 had created a sensation because one of the two costumed dancing sharks that accompanied her seemed to be out of sync with the dance routine. Appropriately, from our point of view, it was the “left” shark who seemed not to be with the program. Pete D’Alessandro got the idea that we should have a Bernie left shark attend the Katy Perry concert, so he ordered a shark costume. Our own left shark then went to the concert wearing a Bernie t-shirt and danced out in front of the event.
In addition, we wanted to reach all the young people who were going to the Katy Perry concert. We knew it would be a big hit—some of our own volunteers were going to see the show. Handing out literature or standing around with signs would have been inappropriate. So I decided we would take to the air. Not the airwaves but literally to the air. During the concert we hired a small plane with a Bernie banner trailing behind to circle the area. The banner read, “Revolution Starts Now Feel the Bern.” It was a great morale booster. The Bernie Air Force was flying.
Antics aside, the JJ was an important night, as it always is in Iowa. That meant that Bernie’s speech had to be great. A group of us including Jane, Tad, and Briggs met with Bernie to talk through it. The tone between the candidates was beginning to get testier. Bernie had gone high instead of low during the CNN debate when asked about Hillary Clinton’s emails. She had returned the favor by suggesting he was a sexist ten days later. There were sharp differences between the two on substantive policy.
On issue after issue, Hillary Clinton was late to the party, whether it was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Keystone pipeline, gay marriage, mass incarceration, or gun control. Her positions over time “modulated” to reflect the mood of whatever electorate she was trying to win over. Bernie’s record, on the other hand, had a marked consistency over the course of decades. In addition, she was still out of sync with Democratic voters on important issues like fracking and her interventionist foreign policy leanings.
The trick was finding a way to articulate those differences, and the fact that Bernie was there when it was not politically popular, without directly calling out Secretary Clinton. Tad suggested using the rhetorical device of political forks in the road. When confronted with difficult political choices, Bernie chose one direction. Others took the alternate, easier path. That then became the foundation for the speech.
In addition, we suggested that people could depend on Bernie as president even when things got politically difficult: “I pledge to you that every day I will fight for the public interest, not the corporate interests. I will not abandon any segment of American society—whether you’re gay or black or Latino or poor or working class—just because it is politically expedient at a given time.” This alluded to several of the policy differences between the two, where Hillary Clinton had taken the wrong fork in the road: on the Defense of Marriage Act, the punitive aspects of the Crime Bill, turning back unaccompanied minors from Central America, the Welfare Reform Bill, and unfair, antiworker trade bills.
The speech was written as we drove the byways of Iowa. Now for the delivery. Bernie likes to give his speeches standing at a podium with his handwritten notes. The issue was that the stage at the Iowa JJ was in the round. A large part of the audience would be behind him. In addition, there were teleprompters at floor level around the stage. Bernie decided he wanted to give his remarks in his traditional way regardless, so we conveyed that to the Iowa Democrats.
All the candidates were held in an area separate from the crowd. Bernie made a point of introducing me to Secretary Clinton. Robby Mook, her campaign manager, was also there. It turned out that he and I were wearing the exact same outfit. When I say identical, I mean identical. We were even wearing the same Johnston & Murphy shoes. (I just bought another pair of them recently. I call them my “Robby Mooks.”) The other staff and some of the media got a big kick out of it.
The candidates were called in and introduced to the boisterous crowd. They then went to their respective tables as the party chair and various candidates running for other offices spoke first. I made my way back to the bleachers, where our supporters were amassed. A little while later a staffer came up and said that Bernie wanted to see me right away. I headed over to his table.
Bernie said that the event was in the round and that his normal way of speaking from behind the podium with notes wasn’t going to work. He wanted us to load his speech into the teleprompter. He said, “Jeff, I am going to use the teleprompter, but I’m not going to follow the script exactly. I am going to add some stuff and move some of the parts around. Then I might go back to some parts I skipped. Can you work with the teleprompter person so they keep up with me?”
I got an electronic copy of his speech to load in the teleprompter and to meet the teleprompter operator. I brought her the copy of the speech, apologized, and asked if I could sit there and guide her. She was a real trouper and extremely proficient. I was feeling bad about this last-minute imposition when a Clinton aide ran up and said he had the final version of Clinton’s speech to be loaded in. This obviously created even more work for the teleprompter operator, but I did feel some consolation that at least we weren’t the only ones changing things up at the last minute.
When Bernie took the stage, his supporters exploded with chants and cheers. He had kept his printed notes with him, and he placed them on a music stand that had been provided. He always liked to have the printed notes with him as a backup, even on the rare occasions he used a teleprompter. He began by making the point that the Republicans seemed to forget the disastrous state of the economy when President Obama took office. None of this was in his prepared remarks.
Then he went to the script; but he jumped down a few paragraphs from the beginning. Because I was part of the speechwriting process, I was very familiar with the material. The teleprompter operator told me to just tell her where to move things. We were off and running. We jumped back and forth through the speech, waiting at times as Bernie added new material. Both the teleprompter operator and I were more than a little stressed. If she didn’t have the right material up at the right moment, the flow of the barn-berner of a speech he was delivering would be interrupted. Well over twenty minutes later he finished, to thunderous applause. No one watching knew about the stressful teleprompter operation going on behind the scenes.
Hillary Clinton spoke after Bernie. Many of our people who had been standing in the bleachers for hours without food started to file out. Clinton supporters tried to paint them as rude or as false Democrats. I think they were just tired and hungry.
After the event was over, the presidential candidates and their families took the stage. Bill Clinton came over to Bernie and Jane, put his arms around each of them, and said how “proud” he was of both of them. It came across as wildly condescending.
Following the JJ Dinner, Tad, Briggs, Phil Fiermonte, and I had a scheduled interview with John Heilemann. We met in a hotel room in the DoubleTree hotel by the Des Moines airport. We usually stayed at that hotel when we were in town. It was convenient to the airport and was sufficiently far from the downtown Marriott, where most of the media stayed, that there was a modicum of peace. Heilemann sprang for the pizza. Little did I know as we started talking that I was about to walk into the crosshairs of the Clinton campaign’s “Bernie and his people are all sexists” narrative.
Heilemann’s article is readily available online, but the critical moment came when he asked me if I thought that Hillary Clinton was “a craven hypocrite and opportunist.” His article reports my response this way, “‘A craven hypocrite?’ Weaver replied, grinning slyly. ‘That’s a little bit harsh, don’t you think?’ Then he added, with a chuckle, ‘Look, she’d make a great vice president. We’re willing to give her more credit than Obama did. We’re willing to consider her for vice president. We’ll give her serious consideration. We’ll even interview her.’”
Admittedly inartful. But there was a sincere point there. The Clinton campaign was increasingly trying to position her as an Obama loyalist whom the president had chosen to be secretary of state. The tactic of trying to stand in the Obama glow was one that they would employ throughout the campaign, especially when we were competing in states with a lot of African American voters. Everyone apparently forgot the acrimonious campaign that the two had engaged in in 2008, and that President Obama had, as a matter of fact, chosen Joe Biden to be vice president rather than Hillary Clinton. In my humble opinion, she was overplaying her closeness with the president. My sarcastic reply was meant to convey that. Others took it as a sexist attack on Hillary Clinton’s qualifications.
At this point in the campaign, we had only really begun to engage the Clinton campaign, having spent the summer and the first debate introducing Bernie to the country. The pile-on from the Clinton campaign and their surrogates was impressive following my VP remark. It included a full-court press in the media and a major tweetstorm. It was effective, and our response, which was to more or less let it die down, was not. Lesson learned.
If this exchange had happened in the spring of 2016, when we were in a more forward posture, the response would have been simple. If my half-joking comments, as misinterpreted as they were, represented sexism, what “-ism” did Bill Clinton’s serious suggestion that Barack Obama drop out in 2008 and become Hillary Clinton’s vice president represent? At the time, Bill Clinton made those remarks, Barack Obama was ahead in the delegate count.
The social media response was not good. There was a push from parts of the campaign for an apology, an idea that no one at the top of the campaign supported. Bernie did end up referring to the comments as “inappropriate” when pressed in a television interview. It didn’t bother me. We had a crisis, and it had to be overcome.
The rest of a very hectic October was dominated by two events. The first was a National Student Town Hall meeting at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The event was streamed online to some 250 other locations on campuses in all 50 states. It was a remarkable event for a couple of reasons. Bernie announced his position that the federal government should remove marijuana from the list of prohibited drugs under the Controlled Substances Act. This would leave regulation of marijuana to the states. It was the position he had been leaning toward throughout the discussions in the campaign. And before thousands—attending in person or via livestream—Bernie put it on the table. The second came during a spontaneous moment during the question-and-answer period. Remaz Abdelgader, a Muslim student, expressed concern about growing Islamophobia in the United States. Bernie was moved by her question. He brought her on stage and embraced her. And then he described his commitment to fighting racism, invoking the killing of his own family members at the hands of the Nazi regime. That kind of personal response was rare from Bernie. He hates to talk about himself. It’s only about the issues. His personal story was made only more powerful by the image of an older Jewish man standing with a young Muslim women united against racism.
My two boys were with me that night at George Mason University. I don’t think they understood the significance of that moment, but I was proud that they were there. Bernie’s concern for the plight of American Muslims would earn him broad support in that community throughout the primaries.
Another significant event at the end of October was a meeting between Bernie and Vice President Biden. I cannot reveal all the details of the meeting, but I think it is fair to say that the vice president was not unsympathetic, as anyone who had heard his nonannouncement speech would have figured out. It’s an understatement to say that he was not a fan of the Clintons.
That would be confirmed when, in a CNN interview with Gloria Barger, he praised Bernie: “Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real, and he has credibility on it. And that is the absolute enormous concentration of wealth in a small group of people.” About Clinton, he said, “It’s relatively new for Hillary to talk about that.” It was widely viewed as a swipe at Hillary Clinton, despite his effort to massage his remarks the next day. He also spoke favorably about Bernie’s position on gun safety—something that Hillary Clinton was trying to make an issue.
As reported by CNN’s Dan Merica in March 2017, Biden continued his criticism that the Clinton campaign failed to focus on the kitchen-table issues facing middle- and working-class Americans during the 2016 election: “This was the first campaign that I can recall where my party did not talk about what it always stood for—and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class. You didn’t hear a single solitary sentence in the last campaign about that guy working on the assembly line making $60,000 bucks a year and a wife making $32,000 as a hostess in restaurant. And they are making $90,000 and they have two kids and they can’t make it and they are scared, they are frightened.”
You tell ’em, Joe!