Bernie Sanders signs off: “While the campaign ends, the struggle for justice continues on”

Though many states have not not yet held nom­i­nat­ing events, the bat­tle for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s 2020 pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion effec­tive­ly came to an end today with Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders’ announce­ment that he is end­ing his cam­paign, leav­ing for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden as the pre­sump­tive nominee.

Sanders announced his deci­sion in a con­fer­ence call with his cam­paign staff on Wednes­day morn­ing, and then explained his deci­sion to his sup­port­ers via a live address. (You can watch the whole thing right here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate.)

It is an igno­min­ious end to one of the most dra­mat­ic and sus­pense-filled pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cies of recent his­to­ry. Rock­et­ing to nation­al promi­nence dur­ing his bid to wrest the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion from Hillary Clin­ton – and rein­vig­o­rat­ing the left wing of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics in the process – he came sur­pris­ing­ly close to beat­ing the for­mer Sec­re­tary of State and First Lady.

After los­ing the pri­ma­ry, he cam­paigned for his for­mer rival against Don­ald Trump, encour­ag­ing his base of young pro­gres­sives to sup­port Clin­ton, a can­di­date about whom many of them had seri­ous reservations.

After Trump’s elec­tion, Sanders (as arguably the most pro­gres­sive mem­ber of the Sen­ate) became a de fac­to leader in the oppo­si­tion to Trump: lay­ing into the Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion on the floor of the Sen­ate, hold­ing mass ral­lies, and releas­ing three books on his polit­i­cal vision for the future.

When he declared his renewed run for the pres­i­den­cy in Feb­ru­ary 2019, Sanders was in a strong posi­tion. He was one of the best-known and most pop­u­lar polit­i­cal fig­ures in the coun­try, and he was able to quick­ly re-mobi­l­ize his coali­tion of sup­port­ers from his first pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2016.

How­ev­er, the 2020 race proved to be very unlike 2016. In a field of over two dozen can­di­dates, Sanders had to stand out both from well-known Demo­c­ra­t­ic fig­ures like Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Joe Biden, and from charis­mat­ic, pop­u­lar new fig­ures like May­or Pete Buttigieg and Sen­a­tor Kamala Har­ris. Sanders held onto a sol­id base of ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers, but much of the sup­port he might have com­mand­ed in a less crowd­ed pri­ma­ry field went to oth­er candidates.

Sanders remained at the front of the pack through­out the pri­ma­ry sea­son thanks to the loy­al­ty of his base, but he some­times strug­gled to gain atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in some of the ear­ly debates, which fea­tured ten can­di­dates at a time.

At the start of Octo­ber 2019, the Sanders cam­paign faced a major set­back when the Sen­a­tor suf­fered a heart attack, putting him out of action for weeks and prompt­ing seri­ous dis­cus­sions over whether con­tin­u­ing to the cam­paign would be viable. How­ev­er, by the end of the month, Sanders was back on his feet.

His strong per­for­mance in the Ohio debate, along with a group of high-pro­­file endorse­ments from promi­nent pro­gres­sives like U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, fueled a come­back narrative.

By the start of 2020, Sanders was the strongest remain­ing can­di­date in the race; both Joe Biden and Eliz­a­beth War­ren seemed to have peaked after ear­ly surges, while Sanders’ coali­tion of sup­port remained solid.

The ear­­ly-vot­ing states bore this out. Sanders won the pop­u­lar vote in the Iowa Cau­cus (although May­or Pete Buttigieg edged him out in the state’s arcane del­e­gate sys­tem), then nar­row­ly won New Hampshire’s primary.

In Neva­da, his campaign’s efforts to gal­va­nize Lati­no vot­ers pro­duced an over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry, with Sanders lap­ping the field.

At that point, his cam­paign appeared all but unstoppable.

How­ev­er, South Carolina’s pri­ma­ry at the end of Feb­ru­ary changed every­thing. Joe Biden – pow­ered by an incred­i­ble show of affec­tion from the black com­mu­ni­ty – was able to win the state by a com­fort­able margin.

This vic­to­ry (which fol­lowed an embar­rass­ing slew of loss­es) proved deci­sive. It demon­strat­ed that Biden that could win and that he was viable.

An aston­ish­ing series of events fol­lowed: all of the remain­ing neolib­er­al can­di­dates dropped out in quick suc­ces­sion and endorsed Biden, along with a flood of influ­en­tial Demo­c­ra­t­ic fig­ures. Their sup­port – along with the pos­i­tive media it gen­er­at­ed – gave Biden momen­tum going into Super Tues­day.

On March 3rd, Biden won nine states (but was denied the great­est prize of all, Cal­i­for­nia), and put him­self square­ly back in the front of the race.

The stage appeared set for a lengthy war of attri­tion between Sanders and Biden, with Sanders rely­ing on his field oper­a­tion and an army of young activists, while Biden would rely on an increas­ing­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed base of sup­port from mul­ti­ple wings of the par­ty, as evi­denced by his many endorsements.

How­ev­er, a few days after Super Tues­day, both Biden and Sanders were swept up in a phe­nom­e­non of even grander pro­por­tions than the race for the White House. COVID-19 hit the USA in ear­ly March, throw­ing Amer­i­can pol­i­tics into chaos.

The last tele­vised debate between the two men stark­ly demon­strat­ed the impact of the pan­dem­ic on Demo­c­ra­t­ic politics.

Instead of a crowd­ed audi­to­ri­um in Ari­zona, the can­di­dates faced each oth­er in a small CNN stu­dio in Wash­ing­ton D.C. to avoid risk of infec­tion. In that debate, Sanders threw every­thing he had against Biden, but – through an unusu­al­ly strong per­for­mance and some fibs – Biden emerged pret­ty much unscathed.

The remain­der of the con­test was anti­cli­mac­tic. Sanders believes strong­ly in retail pol­i­tics. He loves to speak to large crowds; ral­lies are his pre­ferred way of gal­va­niz­ing peo­ple to take action. The phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing restric­tions imposed to counter the pan­dem­ic put an end to the cam­paign’s abil­i­ty to hold rallies.

Although Don­ald Trump car­ried on with his ral­lies well after it was clear that it was unsafe to do so, Sanders respon­si­bly switched to live-stream­ing speech­es to his fol­low­ers and rais­ing mon­ey on behalf of char­i­ties bat­tling the pandemic.

Mean­while, Biden strug­gled to stay vis­i­ble, but rode a sense of inevitabil­i­ty to easy vic­to­ries in lat­er states. When Biden crushed Sanders in Illi­nois, Flori­da, and Ari­zona on March 17th, the Sen­a­tor report­ed­ly began con­sult­ing his top advi­sors about the future of the cam­paign, which led to him drop­ping out on Wednesday.

Bernie Sanders will not be the next pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, but he will undoubt­ed­ly go down in Amer­i­can his­to­ry as an impor­tant polit­i­cal figure.

When he first began his pri­ma­ry chal­lenge to Hillary Clin­ton in 2015, he was a vir­tu­al unknown, seen as a rad­i­cal out­sider on the fringes of Amer­i­can politics.

In the sub­se­quent half-decade, his two pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns and relent­less activism have changed the very land­scape of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life.

As a self-pro­fessed demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, Sanders unapolo­get­i­cal­ly chal­lenged the neolib­er­al con­sen­sus that has dom­i­nat­ed polit­i­cal dis­course in the Unit­ed States for four decades. The social­ist move­ment is the Unit­ed States has found new life, with groups such as the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA) increas­ing their mem­ber­ship ten­fold and polls show­ing that the Cold War-era stig­ma around the term “social­ism” is being reject­ed by huge num­bers of Amer­i­cans.

Sanders also man­aged to over­haul the pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Before his cam­paigns, Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians com­pet­ed to out­do each oth­er over who could be more hawk­ish on for­eign pol­i­cy and more stingy with the budget.

The 2020 pri­ma­ry saw can­di­dates try­ing to out­do each oth­er with big ideas: there were mul­ti­ple com­pet­ing ver­sions of Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, mas­sive immi­gra­tion reforms, and rad­i­cal racial jus­tice programs.

Sanders’ cam­paign of 2016 proved that his poli­cies were pop­u­lar and pos­si­ble, and the Trump pres­i­den­cy proved that they were necessary.

And there’s no going back.

Mean­while, Joe Biden has made it through one of the most gru­el­ing pri­maries in polit­i­cal his­to­ry, but he faces an even greater chal­lenge in unit­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to take on Don­ald Trump. The qual­i­ty of his cam­paign to date has been less than impres­sive, and many pro­gres­sive vot­ers have lit­tle love for him.

Beat­ing an incum­bent pres­i­dent is a chal­lenge even at the best of times, and the COVID-19 cri­sis has hand­ed Don­ald Trump the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exploit the “ral­ly round the flag” effect by pre­tend­ing to be a nation­al leader (and play­ing down his own incom­pe­tence and denial). There is fresh evi­dence, how­ev­er, that Trump’s dai­ly per­for­mances in the White House brief­ing room are not res­onat­ing.

Biden will have his work cut out beat­ing Trump, and could ben­e­fit from the elec­toral tal­ents, loy­al sup­port­ers, and cam­paign­ing expe­ri­ence of Sanders.

Biden is well aware that with­out Sanders and his sup­port­ers, he will strug­gle might­i­ly to win against Trump. To earn the sup­port of Sanders vot­ers, Biden will have to meet them where they are, espe­cial­ly on pol­i­cy. He will have to make good on his promis­es to reach out to his for­mer rival in a mean­ing­ful way that can uni­fy the par­ty and ensure Don­ald Trump’s defeat this November.