Bernie Sanders and his team are cer­tain­ly hav­ing a ban­ner week.

While the Ver­mont Sen­a­tor trav­els the coun­try cam­paign­ing for Hillary Clin­ton, his team has been work­ing to ful­ly cap­i­tal­ize on Paul Ryan’s recent attempts to rile up his right wing base by invok­ing Sanders as a bogeyman.

Team Sanders has respond­ed by send­ing out a series of fundrais­ing appeals to raise mon­ey for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates run­ning down­bal­lot in key con­gres­sion­al races.

Ryan first invoked Sanders last Fri­day while speak­ing to a group of Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin stu­dents, warn­ing of what would hap­pen should Democ­rats retake the Sen­ate major­i­ty by defeat­ing some of Mitch McConnel­l’s enablers.

“If we lose the Sen­ate, do you know who becomes the chair­man of the Sen­ate Bud­get Com­mit­tee? A guy named Bernie Sanders. You ever heard of him?” Ryan said, empha­siz­ing his words for dra­mat­ic effect.

It was­n’t long before Ryan’s mem­o­rable com­ments became the basis for an email appeal sent out to Bernie’s rather large cam­paign list:

Andrew,

Repub­li­can Speak­er of the House Paul Ryan issued a very dire warn­ing this week. You need to see it:

“If we lose the Sen­ate, do you know who becomes chair of the Sen­ate Bud­get Com­mit­tee? A guy named Bernie Sanders. You ever heard of him?”

You heard the man. Let’s take back the Senate.

Four of our best oppor­tu­ni­ties to take back the Sen­ate are in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, North Car­oli­na, and Penn­syl­va­nia. Each race is incred­i­bly close. But if the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nees win, we will have a far more pro­gres­sive Sen­ate – and a major­i­ty to enact our pro­gres­sive agenda.

The final FEC fundrais­ing dead­line of the cam­paign is Wednes­day at mid­night. Split a $4 con­tri­bu­tion now between Cather­ine Cortez Mas­to, Mag­gie Has­san, Deb­o­rah Ross, and Katie McGin­ty before tomor­row’s deadline.

How close are these races? The lat­est poll aver­ages have Deb­o­rah Ross down by just two points in North Car­oli­na. In Neva­da, Cather­ine Cortez Mas­to is up by two. Mag­gie Has­san is down by a lit­tle more than two points in New Hamp­shire. And in the tight­est race of all, Katie McGin­ty is up by less than a half per­cent in Pennsylvania.

Four Sen­ate seats we need for a major­i­ty. Four ded­i­cat­ed lead­ers who could serve with Bernie Sanders. At most a two per­cent dif­fer­ence in the polls for every race.

Your con­tri­bu­tions can be the dif­fer­ence between vic­to­ry and defeat in each of these elec­tions. Small-dol­lar con­tri­bu­tions from emails like this can push Cather­ine Cortez Mas­to, Deb­o­rah Ross, Mag­gie Has­san, and Katie McGin­ty over the top on elec­tion day.

With tomor­row’s FINAL fundrais­ing dead­line for the FEC, the time is now for us to step up and help take back a Sen­ate majority.

Split a $4 con­tri­bu­tion between the cam­paigns of Cather­ine Cortez Mas­to, Deb­o­rah Ross, Mag­gie Has­san, and Katie McGin­ty before tomor­row’s deadline.

You can make the dif­fer­ence in this elec­tion to take back a Sen­ate major­i­ty. Thank you.

In sol­i­dar­i­ty,

Jeff Weaver
Team Bernie

This first email gen­er­at­ed near­ly half a mil­lion dol­lars, prompt­ing sev­er­al fol­low-up appeals which have also been very suc­cess­ful… like this one from Wednes­day, which was signed by Bernie Sanders him­self:

Andrew,

I heard what Paul Ryan said about me: that if the Repub­li­cans lose the Sen­ate, I will be the chair­man of the Sen­ate Bud­get Committee.

That sounds like a very good idea to me. It means that we can estab­lish pri­or­i­ties for work­ing peo­ple, and not just the bil­lion­aire class.

What would be equal­ly excit­ing is if the Democ­rats took back the House, and Con­gress­man Ryan was no longer Speak­er. That would mean the clear­est pos­si­ble path to enact our agen­da – the most pro­gres­sive agen­da of any par­ty in Amer­i­can history.

In the last day, you have respond­ed tremen­dous­ly to our call to sup­port four lead­ers who will help shift the bal­ance of the Sen­ate. More than 20,000 peo­ple have con­tributed more than $900,000 to ten can­di­dates who are inspired by the polit­i­cal revolution.

Dur­ing our cam­paign we pushed our­selves to reach goals that many thought impos­si­ble. That is why we set a very big, very auda­cious goal that we did­n’t know if we could reach, but that we thought it was very impor­tant to try. But you’re about to smash that $1 mil­lion goal.

So, we’re going to need a big­ger goal.

Let’s raise $2 mil­lion before tonight’s final FEC dead­line of the cam­paign for can­di­dates for the House and Senate.

Can you start with a $3 con­tri­bu­tion between Paul Clements, Cather­ine Cortez-Mas­to, Deb­o­rah Ross, Zephyr Tea­chout, Mor­gan Car­roll, Nanette Bar­ra­gan, and Rick Nolan?

Con­sid­er for a moment the pow­er that exists in the U.S. Sen­ate. Right now, the Repub­li­can major­i­ty is using their pow­er to block any mean­ing­ful action on address­ing income inequal­i­ty or cli­mate change. In addi­tion, with­out a Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty the Sen­ate is refus­ing to con­firm fed­er­al judges and, incred­i­bly, has left open a crit­i­cal seat on the Supreme Court.

With a Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty, we can change all of that. What Paul Ryan is specif­i­cal­ly afraid of is the pow­er of the bud­get com­mit­tee. That com­mit­tee defines the spend­ing pri­or­i­ties of the entire gov­ern­ment. The work of that com­mit­tee says how much rev­enue the gov­ern­ment should have, and where its mon­ey should go.

I have some thoughts on how the gov­ern­ment should allo­cate its spend­ing. I’m sure you do, too.

The first step to being able to enact our pro­gres­sive agen­da is tak­ing back the Sen­ate. And if we take back the House… well, the sky is the lim­it for what we can achieve.

Help us reach for our new, auda­cious goal of rais­ing $2 mil­lion for can­di­dates for the House and Sen­ate by mid­night tonight. Add a $3 con­tri­bu­tion now split between Paul Clements, Cather­ine Cortez-Mas­to, Deb­o­rah Ross, Zephyr Tea­chout, Mor­gan Car­roll, Nanette Bar­ra­gan, and Rick Nolan.

Thank you for all you do.

In sol­i­dar­i­ty,

Bernie Sanders

Paul Ryan’s oper­a­tives respond­ed by for­ward­ing the email to their own list in an attempt to gen­er­ate more cash for endan­gered Republicans:

— Foward­ed Message –

From: Paul Ryan
Sent: Thurs­day, Octo­ber 20, 2016 5:09 PM
Sub­ject: FWD Bernie’s Email (Please Read)

I spoke last week about what would hap­pen if we lose our major­i­ty in Con­gress. It looks like Bernie Sanders was lis­ten­ing, because a staffer showed me the mes­sage he sent to his sup­port­ers yesterday.…

Read it and find out why it is so impor­tant to hold the House and Sen­ate this November.

Bot­tom line: we must stop Bernie Sanders, Nan­cy Pelosi, and the Pro­gres­sive Democ­rats from tak­ing over Con­gress. Please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion today to stop this dan­ger­ous, pro­gres­sive agenda.

Thank you.

Let’s do this,

Paul Ryan
House Speaker

But two can play at that game, and Bernie’s team has now respond­ed in kind.

Andrew,

It looks like you got Paul Ryan’s atten­tion. And he’s not happy.

The Speak­er of the House for­ward­ed the email Bernie sent to you to his entire fundrais­ing list. You can see what he said below.

Paul Ryan real­ly does­n’t like that you donat­ed more than $1.8 mil­lion in two days to take back the House and Sen­ate (which is an AMAZING feat, and some­thing for which we are so grateful).

He even put in a big, red but­ton when he for­ward­ed Bernie’s email that says “HELP STOP SANDERS.”

We’ve got their atten­tion. Now let’s show what we real­ly can do.

Split a $3 con­tri­bu­tion between Bernie’s thir­teen can­di­dates for the House and Sen­ate so we can take back Con­gress, make Bernie a com­mit­tee chair­man in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate, and enact our pro­gres­sive agenda.

The incred­i­ble con­tri­bu­tions you’ve made in the last two days are com­plete­ly chang­ing the dynam­ics of these races for Con­gress. We are so grate­ful, because your sup­port means cam­paigns can train more vol­un­teers, talk to more vot­ers, and turn out more peo­ple on Elec­tion Day.

Paul Ryan knows the tremen­dous impact you’re hav­ing, and he’s scared. Let’s keep it going.

In sol­i­dar­i­ty,

Team Bernie

Paul Ryan’s inten­tion in invok­ing Bernie Sanders  may have been to rile up his base, but what he may not have real­ized is that he was also doing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and its tick­et a big favor at the same time.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­ers have been long­ing to see Sanders deploy his cam­paign machin­ery and email list in sup­port of Democ­rats run­ning down­bal­lot. Ryan’s com­ments pro­vid­ed Team Bernie with the per­fect grist for a days-long series of rein­forc­ing email blasts appeal­ing for funds to help Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates in piv­otal U.S. Sen­ate con­tests — right in the mid­dle of Octo­ber.

Thanks to Paul Ryan, Bernie Sanders sup­port­ers have a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion for what  the future could hold. Effec­tive activism is all about siz­ing up the pos­si­bil­i­ties and work­ing to turn those into real­i­ty, not aim­less­ly dwelling on the past.

Bernie Sanders may not have won the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion for Pres­i­dent, but he could be a very influ­en­tial leader in a Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-con­trolled Unit­ed States Sen­ate. He could be a key com­mit­tee chair, per­fect­ly posi­tioned to shape legislation.

I have been telling oth­er activists this for months, but I’m so glad that the Repub­li­can Speak­er of the House has now come out and said the same thing.

Ryan’s intent was to use Sanders as a bogey­man, as bait for his base. But in bring­ing up Sanders, Ryan also legit­imized him — affirm­ing his impor­tance in this election.

In the span of less than twen­ty sec­onds, Ryan con­cise­ly paint­ed a vivid pic­ture of the fierce­ly beloved pro­gres­sive Sen­a­tor’s poten­tial role in the 115th Con­gress… and his com­ments have clear­ly excit­ed the imag­i­na­tions of Sanders’ legions of sup­port­ers, who have now been remind­ed of what is pos­si­ble instead of what might have been.

Team Bernie has now exploit­ed Ryan’s com­ments to the tune of near­ly $2 mil­lion. That’s a lot of mon­ey for down­bal­lot Democ­rats in key races.

“If we lose the Sen­ate, do you know who becomes the chair­man of the Sen­ate Bud­get Com­mit­tee? A guy named Bernie Sanders. You ever heard of him?”

Yes, Paul Ryan, I’ve heard of Bernie Sanders. I was a proud del­e­gate for him to the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. And like mil­lions of oth­er peo­ple in this coun­try, I’d love to see him as the chair­man of a key com­mit­tee in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate come Jan­u­ary — whether that’s Appro­pri­a­tions or HELP.