My local Bernie group hosted a political training event Saturday. Here’s my take on it.
My local Bernie group has been working with a political consultant who is a Bernie supporter. They arranged to have a one day political training event. About 20 people participated in the training. What did we learn?
#1: You are Bernie Sanders to the people you meet. They will stick around if you display Bernie’s values.
#2: Negative campaigning takes a vote away. It does not gain a vote. Instead you need a positive message. You can use active listening techniques to achieve this.
#3: You can achieve a lot with a personal story. A personal story has 4 main components: you need to be in the story, there needs to be something personal that was a challenge, how you overcame it, and then a “hard ask” — something you ask the listener to do. Examples of this can be asking a volunteer to commit to phone banking, asking a friend to check out BernieSanders.com, asking a voter to vote for Bernie, etc. The optimal mix for the story is 20% facts, 80% emotion.
We then did a practical exercise on #3, where we went around the room and each person took a stab at it. This was really interesting, as we learned a lot about why our fellow attendees are supporting Bernie. Things that came up were student debt, how it limits what they can do in life, and how they believe that Bernie’s policies will give them opportunities. Another was growing up poor, with a parent with mental health issues. And that once the mental health issues were dealt with, and that parent could work, how the increased income made a lot of other things better. A third was a vet whose father grew up during the Depression, served in WWII and Korea, then how he came of age in the 50s and 60s, and today his son won’t have the benefits and the opportunities that Americans had during the 50s and 60s.
The coolest story was that of an Asian American couple. They are on a 6 month road trip, partly to see the country, partly to support Bernie Sanders. So far they have been to a debate watch party in Iowa and our training event in Alabama. They are able to do this road trip because of Obamacare — it lets them have health insurance while not working. He noted that in Korea, everybody is connected by family. That connection doesn’t exist in America; instead we are connected by ideas — happiness & freedom. And that Bernie, in the 1st debate, was the only candidate who didn’t talk about his/herself but about ideas.
#4: Canvassing: 75-80% of people who you register will vote and 83% of those will vote for the candidate you canvassed for. Related to this, Bernie brings voters to the polls and he’s been doing it for 30 years.
And finally, Bernie won his first election by 10 votes. So keep chipping away. One vote here, one vote there, and he wins.
