Bernie Sanders’ path to the White House has been incredibly narrow but, after his near-draw in Iowa on Monday night, there’s clearly open road ahead of him.
On Tuesday, the race in which pundits long-ago declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive victor will begin in earnest; sit tight, it’s going to be a very long, bumpy ride.
The margin between Sanders and Clinton was razor thin all of Monday night – certainly thinner than anyone would have imagined possible last spring, when he was down by 42 points in a national poll. Coming in anywhere near close to Clinton in the Iowa caucus would’ve been a significant victory for Sanders; the near-tie showed the deep resonance of his message.
The actual results underscored what he and his supports have said all along: establishment Democrats have underestimated him and the power of his movement.
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Sanders rode his self-proclaimed radical ideals all the way to a virtual tie in Iowa which, as Jamelle Bouie noted at Slate, marks the first time in a century that a socialist has managed to build a movement with real mass appeal, not to mention an actual shot at the presidency. Whatever shape the Democratic Party takes in the coming years, it will owe something to that phenomenon – which is to say, to Sanders, and not just because of how he influences Clinton.
If Sanders had lost definitively in Iowa (as almost everyone once predicted) his campaign would effectively be over before New Hampshire voters hit the booths next week. Well he didn’t and it’s not – and Clinton’s staff had better get to shoring up that vaunted Southern firewall before South Carolinians feel the Bern, too.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders touted his Iowa caucuses performance as proof he had started a political revolution, praising the young people who turned out to support him for fueling his dead heat finish with Hillary Clinton.
"We're revitalizing American democracy and if we're going to change America, that's what we've got to do," Sanders told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day" on Tuesday, just after landing in New Hampshire. "In the last election -- the midterm election -- 80% of young people didn't vote. I am very proud we're bringing young people all over this country into the political process."
According to entrance poll data, more than 80% of voters aged between 17-29 years old supported Sanders. Clinton won about 60% of voters aged 50 and older.
In Iowa, only 9% of the caucusgoers were not white, according to entrance poll data. Of those, Clinton won nearly 6-in-10 voters.
"We lost (the non-white vote), but that gap is growing slimmer and slimmer between the secretary and myself. I think you'll find as we get to South Carolina and other states, that when the African-American community, the Latino community, looks at our record, looks at our agenda, we're going to get more and more support," Sanders said.
Bernie Sanders finally got his political revolution.
It wasn't an outright victory. But, for Sanders, who started this race as more stalking horse than viable candidate, fighting Hillary Clinton in a razor-thin contest in Iowa was more than enough.
"We had no money, we had no name recognition and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America," Sanders said Monday from Des Moines. "And tonight while the results are still not known it looks like we are in a virtual tie. And that is why what Iowa has begun tonight is a political revolution."
Without being a clear loss or win, it still gives Sanders momentum and the likely money boost that he will need for a long, drawn-out battle with Clinton that could stretch well into the spring.
"Whether we lose by a fraction of a point or we win or whatever, we're very proud of the campaign that we won and I think the significance is, for folks who did not think Bernie Sanders could win, that we could compete against Hillary Clinton, I hope that that thought is now gone," Sanders told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day" on Tuesday morning.
"We're going to fight really hard in New Hampshire and then we're going to Nevada, to South Carolina, we're doing well around the country," he said shortly after his campaign plane landed n New Hampshire.
The closeness of the Democratic outcome offers concrete electoral proof of the power of Sanders’s anti-establishment appeal. Between Sanders and Clinton, tie goes to the underdog. If you have any question about this, ask yourself: Which campaign was celebrating Monday night, and which was trying to figure out what went wrong?
Eight years ago, Iowa dealt a terrible blow to Hillary Clinton. This year it did not so much harm her as prevent her from harming Sanders by stemming his momentum heading into the even-friendlier territory of New Hampshire.
On the Democratic side, the prospect of a functional tie in Iowa and Sanders win in New Hampshire does not augur the end of Clinton’s candidacy — far from it. This was not the start she wanted, but post-New Hampshire calendar is far more favorable to her demographically.
Yet Iowa proved Sanders’s ability to compete on a par with Clinton, whose organization had far more time and resources on the ground in Iowa. His fund-raising prowess is significant, and with a huge upside of donors who have not come close to giving the maximum amount allowed.
After a remarkable night in Iowa, one that served as a rebuke to Donald Trump and to the opinion pollsters, the Democratic Party was faced with the prospect of being forced to confront a youthful and articulate Republican candidate come November: Senator Marco Rubio, who finished a strong third in the G.O.P. caucus, behind Ted Cruz and Trump. Before then, though, Democrats have some messy internal business to deal with: Bernie Sanders, promoting an American version of People Power, has confirmed his capture of the Party’s under-forty wing, which means trouble for Hillary Clinton.
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At eleven-forty-five, Sanders addressed his supporters, who were cheering even more wildly than Clinton’s crowd had been. “Iowa, thank you,” he began, his voice hoarse. “Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state. We had no political organization, we had no money, we had no name recognition, and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America. And tonight, while the results are still not known, it looks like we are in a virtual tie.”
That history explains why Sanders emerged as the big winner of the night on the Democratic side. Not only has he pulled off a rags-to-riches story, he has done it on the basis of a message that is more radical than anything Presidential politics has seen in decades—a message that he repeats with such regularity and relentlessness that his stump speech has become familiar to many Americans.
As he looked ahead to carrying on the fight in New Hampshire, he used many of his favorite lines. “It is just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics.” “We do not represent the interests of the billionaire class, Wall Street, or corporate America. We don’t want their money.” “The American people are saying no to a rigged economy.” “We are going to create an economy that works for working families, not just the billionaire class.”
Bernie Sanders has called on the Democratic party to release a raw vote count in Iowa after a nail-biting finish left lingering doubts over the first, much tighter-than-expected, clash with Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination
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“Tonight is a wonderful start to the national campaign,” Sanders said in a packed gangway on the late-night flight heading east to beat an incoming snowstorm. “Tonight shows the American people that this is a campaign that can win.”
He threw little light on an unfolding controversy over certain Iowa precincts that did not have enough Democratic party volunteers to report delegate totals for each candidate but did call on officials to take the unusual step of revealing underlying voter totals. Delegates are awarded in the Iowa Democratic contest on a precinct-by-precinct basis, irrespective of the state-wide vote for each candidate.
“I honestly don’t know what happened. I know there are some precincts that have still not reported. I can only hope and expect that the count will be honest,” he said. “I have no idea. Did we win the popular vote? I don’t know, but as much information as possible should be made available.”
Sanders’ campaign director, Jeff Weaver, told reporters he did not “anticipate we are going to contest” specific results but hoped there would be an investigation into what happened.
The results of the Democratic Party’s Iowa Caucus may have been a “virtual tie” – but there was a clear winner in the contest among young people.
Bernie Sanders, the self-described “democratic socialist” senator from Vermont who has surprised pundits by giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money, swept the board in younger demographics.
According to figures published by the US’s New York Times newspaper, Mr Sanders won 84 per cent of the vote of people aged between 17 and 29 – a huge landslide.
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The senator also did well amongst voters making less than $50,000 a year and amongst voters who described themselves as “very liberal”, the NYT reports.
Voters aged 17 were polled because people aged 17 are allowed to vote in primary elections in Iowa if they are set to be aged 18 when the presidential election occurs.
It may be too close to call between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucus on Monday, but the senator from Vermont was the clear winner on social media.
Mr Sanders maintained his strong social media presence during the caucuses, commanding more Twitter mentions than Ms Clinton. Mr Sanders was mentioned more than 77,000 times on Twitter during the caucus, while Ms Clinton was mentioned 52,000 times, according to social media sentiment analytics firm Brandwatch.
Mr Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, amassed the largest number of new Facebook followers of any candidate in the race during Monday, the social network said, topping Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump by 15,695 to 10,704.
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Mr Sanders resonated with Millennial social media users as well. Social media platform Yik Yak, which is particularly popular among younger social media users, said Mr Sanders was mentioned in 60% of all yaks that discussed a Democratic candidate during the caucuses.
While social media buzz does not necessarily translate into votes, it is a good indication of the interest level surrounding a candidate.
Whether it was the socialist left in the 1950s and ’60s, the New Left in the 1970s, or the labor left in the 1980s, Democrats have always kept their left flank at arms length. This became principle (or, for critics, pathology) in the late 1980s and 1990s, when centrist reformers marginalized the left in a drive to—in their narrative—save liberalism from itself. Led by President Bill Clinton, and backed by a phalanx of Democratic lawmakers, Democrats built ties to Wall Street, embraced the conservative “war on crime,” and reshaped the safety net, scrapping programs like Aid to Families With Dependent Children in favor of more limited, market-friendly alternatives.
For a generation of Democrats who cut their teeth in the age of white racial backlash, the Moral Majority, and Ronald Reagan—where “liberal” was a slur and conservatives controlled the zeitgeist—this was the only option. “The era of big government” had to be over if liberalism was going to survive.
For Sanders and others in the remnants of the old left, this wasn’t just wrong, it was ruinous. For them, Democrats would only flourish when they embraced the left. Twenty years after Bill Clinton won re-election on a centrist platform, and at the twilight of an administration that spurned the left as much as it embraced it, Sanders and his allies have all but confirmed their hypothesis. With uncomplicated language and simple sincerity, Sanders has rallied millions of Democrats under the banner of “democratic socialism”—a kind of neo–New Deal liberalism, set against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s attempted synthesis of Great Society policies and Third Way politics—and moved “socialist” from the realm of epithet to legitimate label.
Win or lose, that counts. It’s the Democratic analogue to Reagan’s 1976 primary against Gerald Ford—a sign of the times and of the future. If Sanders wins Iowa, New Hampshire, and the nomination, then he’ll bring (or drag) the Democratic Party to the left. If he loses, then he’ll represent the largest faction in the party, with the power to hold a President Hillary Clinton accountable and even shape her administration, from appointments and nominations to regulatory policy.
With that said, the impact of Sanders goes beyond presidential politics. I am skeptical that any “political revolution” can change American politics in the short term. But if Sanders inspires supporters to delve deeper into Democratic Party politics, then it could change the long term. His supporters—his workers and volunteers and activists—are (potentially) the next generation of Democratic operatives, who will bring the lessons of this effort to future campaigns.
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