It’s not about me, Bernie Sanders likes to say. It’s about you.
The Vermont senator swept millions of young or disengaged Americans off their feet by insisting his presidential campaign was about bringing people together to restore democracy. But now that Hillary Clinton has locked up the nomination, what used to be a galvanizing call to political revolution now sounds like a parody of a break-up speech. It’s not me, it’s you.
But will this grassroots movement sit at home with a creamy pint of Bernie’s Yearning ice cream, binge-watching “Curb Your Enthusiasm?”
Maybe not. There are already other suitors lined up at the door.
First in line, of course, is Hillary Clinton. She’s sympathetic about the heartbreak but just wants to remind her former foe’s supporters that she has a lot in common with them. I care just as deeply about income inequality and getting money out of politics as you do, she croons.
She had a wingman in Iowa last week: former Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley. He predicted Clinton would win over Sanders voters.
“So much of the energy that came together around Senator Sanders’ campaign was about making our nation a place where the economy works for all of us again. That’s certainly a sharp contrast to Donald Trump. And I believe you will see that energy come to the Clinton campaign,” O’Malley said.
The Green Party also came knocking this week, hoping to lure Sanders backers out of the Democratic Party for a nice wheatgrass smoothie and a cozy chat about what a real political revolution looks like.
Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has started sending the equivalent of ostentatious displays of red roses and embarrassingly expensive gifts. He said last week that Sanders supporters should join him in getting special interest influence and money out of the political system. He mocked Clinton’s campaign slogan, “I’m with her.”
“She thinks it’s all about her. I know it’s all about you,” Trump said Wednesday.
That may have come as a shock to those who thought Trump’s campaign was all about him.
Then there’s the good friend who just wants Sanders revolutionaries to be OK on their own for a while.
In Iowa, that’s Evan Burger of Slater, a former Sanders campaign staffer in Iowa who is now working as an organizer for Iowa CCI Action. The well-known Iowa progressive organization was one of the first to host Sanders in Iowa. He said the question of whether Sanders supporters will join Clinton or stay home isn’t the most important one.
“For us, that’s almost really missing the point to some degree,” Burger said. Sanders made the point that without a political revolution behind an agenda, it doesn’t really matter who’s in the White House.
“These Bernie people … they’re dedicated; they’re not going anywhere. And some of them will stay within the party, some of them will go Green, but one thing that is in common across a lot of them is they’re looking for ways to get involved in local organizing campaigns and move forward the issues that Bernie is talking about,” Burger said.
CCI Action is working on three issues in particular that Burger thinks will bring together Sandernistas: raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, clean water, and defeating fossil fuel pipelines. CCI Action members joined with its national organization and other community groups in a People’s Summit last weekend in Chicago centered on these and other issues.
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The group plans to hold local versions of the People’s Summit around Iowa this summer, leading up to the CCI Action Summit on Aug. 20, Burger said.
CCI Action won’t be the only progressive organization that tries to engage the attention — and potentially the spare change and volunteer hours — of former Sanders supporters. It remains to be seen whether Sanders himself will attempt to turn his campaign into an issue-advocacy organization or steer supporters in any particular direction.
Burger said while they would welcome Sanders’ support, CCI Action will move forward with trying to advance the senator’s agenda regardless.
And when I asked Burger, a 25-year-old Iowa native and Columbia University graduate, when he plans to run for office, he laughed. “It’s all about the movement. … It’s not about me.”
Kathie Obradovich is a columnist at The Des Moines Register, where this piece originally ran. Follow Kathie Obradovich on Twitter: @KObradovich
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