Bernie Sanders Four Years Later

Despite my insulated boots, my toes are freezing. It’s 35 degrees outside and about 2-3 inches of snow blankets Brooklyn College’s east quad. The press area is a particularly dismal mix of brown slush, packed-in ice, and muddy patches of grass. After hours on my feet, the uneven terrain is starting to get to me. My back hurts, and I’m not the only one. All around me, people are shifting uncomfortably. Many have been here for hours—since the early morning—and it shows. An air of growing anticipation hangs over a diverse crowd, still shuffling in 20 minutes past the time Sen. Bernie Sanders and company were expected to take center stage. From the risers behind the podium, chants cut through the cold in an effort to keep people energized—“No More War!” “Green New Deal!”

Then, an eruption of cheers. No longer lethargic and shifting, the crowd alive, and I catch a glimpse of Nina Turner and Jane Sanders walking out of a side entrance of Boylan Hall—the backdrop of today’s event—toward the stage. Behind me, camera operators hiss and huff, and reporters prep their opening remarks. The campaign with no lesser ambition than the fundamental transformation of America has begun.

In many ways, Sanders 2020 is a continuation of Sanders 2016. That’s how the Vermont Senator and his team frame it: as another phase of an ongoing revolution against the entrenched political establishment in the name of working people. Sanders himself seemed to engage in perpetual campaign after Donald Trump’s election. Emerging from 2016 as the Democrats’ ‘what could have been’ candidate, the Vermont Senator leveraged his newfound national prominence to score a series of victories for progressive causes—shepherding a war powers resolution through the Senate to end US involvement in Yemen and pressuring Amazon and Disneyland into paying their workers a $15 an hour minimum wage.

Despite widespread speculation in the press that his support would drop off in the face of a diverse, progressive Democratic field, he managed to raise $10 million in the first week of his candidacy and recruit a million volunteers.

“I’m here with my family—my wife, my three children,” a man holding a baby had told me that morning. “My daughter just registered to vote today so one of the many reasons we’re out here…was really for them—to bring them out to an atmosphere like this. I want them to feel it…I want them to come out and feel the spirit of what it is to be out here…find something you believe in and be a part of something bigger.”

The day Sanders announced his second presidential bid, he set the bar with his fundraising numbers, raking in a whopping $6 million in the first 24 hours from nearly a quarter of a million people giving an average donation of $27. Walking around earlier, asking rally goers why they were braving the weather for Sanders, the energy and dedication that delivered those numbers is on full display and I’m met with familiar passionate responses: Bernie isn’t bought; Bernie genuinely cares about day to day struggles Americans face; Bernie is a fighter who stands for real change to America’s political system; Bernie is the real deal.

“He represents what America needs—like, most Americans are struggling right now,” one woman told me. “When it comes to other Democratic candidates, a lot of them are kinda parroting what Bernie already said when they were all laughing at him years ago.”

But for all the similarities to 2016, there are significant differences this time around. While he started out in May 2015 a relative unknown, and his announcement was met with little fanfare, Sanders today is a front-runner, and the eyes of the press are laser focused on him. His pitch is adapting to reflect these new realities. In the days leading up to the rally, the Sanders camp had teased a more personal approach than the average Bernie stump speech, which becomes apparent immediately in Jane Sanders’ heartfelt opening where she explains—slightly awkwardly—how she and her husband cut their teeth right here in Brooklyn as youngsters. “Those early years formed the values and principles that we still live by today,” she says.

Sanders, who has been notoriously private about his personal story—preferring instead to focus on policy—has always needed ambassadors to help sell his image to an electorate and media obsessed with personalities. No better team exists for that job than former Ohio State senator and Our Revolution chief Nina Turner, and journalist and criminal justice reformer Shaun King.

Turner takes the stage first, delivering a powerful sermon-like speech touting Sanders’ progressive bona fides. Using Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote that “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy,” Turner drives home the point that Sanders has stood out front on issues when it mattered—from civil rights to health care, minimum wage, and climate change.

“When you are willing, in the 1980’s, to be one of two white elected officials to stand by the side of the Reverend Jesse Jackson when he’s running for president, that’s the measure of a man,” she bellows. “When you are willing, at the age of 19, to know that in Chicago, housing discrimination against African American folks is rotten to the core and you are willing to be chained to a black woman on the front line, that’s the measure of a man!”