Bernie makes moves

Bernie makes moves pointing to 2020 run

The Vermont senator is taking aggressive steps to address long-running political weaknesses, like his lack of foreign policy bona fides.

By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI

Bernie Sanders is taking steps to address longstanding political shortcomings that were exposed in 2016, ahead of another possible presidential bid in 2020.

From forging closer ties to the labor movement to shoring up his once-flimsy foreign policy credentials, the moves have provided the senator inroads into party power structures that largely shunned him in favor of Hillary Clinton last year. They've also empowered the progressive icon to harness his newfound political power and help Democrats fight President Donald Trump's administration.

Sanders has been working closely with figures who are close to the party establishment he's long railed against, like American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. And he's been meeting with international affairs experts such as Bill Perry, a defense secretary in the administration of President Bill Clinton, around a series of speeches designed to define his international vision, one year after running a campaign heavy on domestic policy and light on the rest of the world.

The Vermont independent hasn't decided whether to run for president again in 2020. To his closest allies, his efforts represent a natural next step in his role as "outreach chairman" for Senate Democrats, a new position created for him late last year by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Yet the maneuvers could form an important part of a Sanders 2020 effort, a dozen of those allies acknowledged to POLITICO — one that looks markedly different from his surprise 2016 bid, which often suffered from a lack of mainstream political support.

"He is now in a very different position than he’s ever been in before. He’s just stepping into the role,” said senior adviser Ari Rabin-Havt, insisting he doesn't see the changes as prep for 2020. “Let’s be clear: He’s in charge of outreach for the caucus. So when people say he’s doing a better job of reaching out? Well, yeah, he’s doing his job. This is a new phase of his career.”

Much of Sanders’ time is now spent fighting Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and helping organize a constellation of outside liberal groups against GOP tax proposals. But while Sanders himself bristles at questions about 2020, multiple operatives in his political orbits have been gaming out how such a campaign might look.

Constantly reminding themselves and others that the senator is now the country's most popular active elected official, they believe other candidates will have to build their campaigns around him — the unparalleled center of gravity on the left. Their prep now includes game-planning for a handful of other progressives trying to chip into his political lane.

As Sanders monitors his post-2016 political group Our Revolution and the Democratic National Committee's reform efforts, he has also slightly expanded his tight circle of 2016 aides. Campaign manager Jeff Weaver has returned to the senator's political payroll after helping build Our Revolution — which still hosts Sanders' campaign email list and provides him a nationwide foothold.

In contrast to the run-up to 2016, the group of counselors also now includes pollster Ben Tulchin, who joined that year's campaign only after Sanders was persuaded that hiring a pollster was worth it. A pair of senior advisers in Sanders' Senate office have also joined. Rabin-Havt, a former Harry Reid aide, has been directing political outreach, and Matt Duss, former president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, is working on foreign policy.

Recognizing the senator’s post-campaign national platform and 99 percent name ID across the country — and aware that his status as a potential 2020 front-runner draws further eyeballs — his team has stopped sticking to just a few pet issues. Now it tries to inject him into as many productive national conversations as possible, sometimes with the support of his wife's new Sanders Institute think tank.

Sanders has often stated his wish to win over other lawmakers to his theory of grass-roots change, and his new Facebook Live show and podcast are largely designed to amplify his voice and grow his audience, in pursuit of that goal.

At times, his team has also tried smoothing over potentially controversial situations that could turn into the kind of political headaches a 2020 hopeful would prefer to avoid, but which would not likely have bothered Sanders four years ago. For example, he ditched a speaking gig at the Detroit Women’s Convention in October after his expected presence ignited a firestorm, instead opting to visit storm damaged areas of Puerto Rico.

To allies on the outer rings of Sanders’ political circles, the flurry of moves looks like the beginnings of a full-fledged political operation, in contrast to last year's relatively bare-bones organization. But it’s a complex balance for someone who hates any perception that he could be an insider.

“Does he do as much politics as we’d like him to? No, but now he’s actually playing the game,” said one of Sanders’ close political advisers. “Before, he’d say he was going to play by his own rules.”

Nonetheless, one year after running an anti-establishment campaign that had the support of just one other senator, Sanders is clearly aiming to improve his standing inside the party. He has worked closely with Schumer and others on defending Obamacare. He has traveled in conjunction with giant liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org to hold health care-focused rallies.

And he has headlined events and conference calls back in Washington with progressive organizations like the Working Families Party.

"I see him taking more responsibility," said Weingarten, one of Hillary Clinton's most prominent labor supporters in 2016, who backed Sanders' pick to lead the Democratic National Committee after that election. The pair have worked together on Puerto Rico recovery efforts and on a community college unionization drive in Vermont, and Weingarten backed Sanders' signature health care proposal this fall.

"That's why you saw so many 'mainstream Democrats' sign onto his Medicare-for-all bill," she said.

After resisting advisers’ pleas to give more foreign policy-oriented speeches during his campaign, Sanders has also now been working with Duss to build a public record on international affairs. That work has entailed more than just his trio of major public speeches on the topic this year — a February address to J-Street on Trump, Israel and anti-Semitism; a speech on authoritarianism, in June, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and a September talk at Missouri’s Westminster College to stress the importance of partnerships “not just between governments, but between peoples.”

He has also been meeting with veteran policymakers — including Perry; former Obama administration National Security Council Middle East official Robert Malley; and Sarah Chayes, a former special adviser to retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to discuss foreign developments.

Sanders' moves to bolster his political presence have largely been confined to Washington. He inherited a political infrastructure in the early-voting primary states in 2015 after Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren decided not to run. Now, however, he has refrained from dispatching aides to such states, and he has yet to order up polling there.

He has visited Iowa and New Hampshire twice each this year, in addition to other politically important states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, to talk health care and other policy issues. But his traditional political outreach in early voting states is largely limited to occasional check-ins with local leaders like former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, according to Democrats familiar with the discussions.

Instead, his in-state supporters have maintained their own networks. In New Hampshire, his roughly 75-person steering committee still meets monthly behind closed doors, but the tightly organized group refuses to let local allies know even the location or timing of their meetings, Democrats in the state told POLITICO.

To even some of Sanders’ biggest cheerleaders, that dynamic reveals an operation that’s revving up but still far from a fully fledged campaign. Yet to the allies dedicated to converting his newfound popularity into results in Washington, it’s significant progress.

After all, the party needs the 13 million voters who enthusiastically backed Sanders last year to show up again in 2018 and 2020, said Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the DNC deputy chairman and Sanders’ most prominent ally on Capitol Hill.

“Anything that makes Bernie more effective at reaching that movement, and continuing to build a powerful progressive base of engaged Americans," Ellison said, "is good for the Democratic Party."