After Winning on June 7th Bernie Sanders Should Suspend his Campaign 
and Launch an Independent Organization to Defeat Donald Trump 
 
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On June 7 , riding a wave of victories in May, Bernie Sanders will win California.  Not only is California by far the 
largest and most diverse state in the continental United States, it is the epicenter of young and working class 
America’s demand for economic justice; a demand that is capturing our political consciousness.  While Senator 
Sander’s campaign has given voice to the emerging economic justice movement, the votes needed to secure the 
2016 nomination will not have been won and the dream victory by enticing pro-Clinton super delegates to 
repudiate both delegate and popular majorities is quietly abandoned.  Senator Sanders may graciously concede 
and enthusiastically endorse Hillary Clinton’s bid to defeat the threatened right wing takeover of our country by 
Donald Trump at this time or may withhold that final step in anticipation of discussions with the Clinton camp 
before the convention.  In any case, while DC may still vote, the point at which the Democratic nomination is the 
central focus of the movement inspired by Bernie Sanders ends here.   
After that brief preamble Senator Sanders should proceed to lay out his plan to build an organization, completely 
independent of the Clinton campaign that will single mindedly devote itself to educating Americans about the 
threat of right wing (some say fascist) takeover and the task of identifying and mobilizing voters to defend our 
democracy in November 2016 and beyond.   Call it Revolution 2016 or another name that best speaks to base and 
message and its focused task over the next 5 months might be to mobilize voters under 30 (with likely positive 
impacts on Senate and Congressional races).  This initiative will transcend the electoral cycle.   
July will bring Hillary supporters and party stalwarts to Philadelphia, where traditional Democrats will launch her as 
the presidential candidate (and Senator Sanders will use the opportunity to speak to the nation while his delegates 
on the floor will fight for a variety of progressive positions).  Meanwhile, Senator Sanders and his team will have 
also convened a wildly enthusiastic gathering, representative of his electoral base, to educate themselves on the 
issues facing our people and commit to the long-term transformation of politics in America - beginning with the 
defeat of the immediate right wing threat.  Coming out of their own convention the goal will be to launch the best 
organized independent expenditure organization in history and give the vast (and deeply anti-establishment) base 
a vehicle into which they will whole heartedly pour their energy.  
Thoughts on why this would be a good idea followed by some potential obstacles: 
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Translating Sanders’ base support into defeating Donald Trump will be a challenge.  With extensive direct 
experience in this campaign and that of Obama in ’08 we know that there is a great difference between 
the two bases of support.  In ‘08 our supporters had some antipathy towards Hillary.  By contrast, a large 
cadre of young, newly political Sanders supporters sees rejection of Hillary and the Democratic Party 
establishment as core to their identity.  In this year, perhaps more than in any since Hubert Humphrey’s 
candidacy, it would be foolish to assume that these people will easily merge into the voter base of the 
nominee.   The creation of an independent vehicle would afford them a low threshold for entry into the 
election as well as the promise of carrying forward the momentum of the movement. 
 
Perhaps the central paradox of the Sanders campaign has been the promise of ‘revolution’ in contrast to 
the inability to effectively apply the tools of movement building.  Message discipline, crowd mobilization, 
personal example, wildly successful broad-based fundraising and good use of distributed engagement 

  

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tools have characterized Bernie Sanders and his campaign.  Conversely, it has struggled with the 
elementary tools of building volunteer leadership and infrastructure or, frankly, most of the voter 
contact/volunteer techniques mastered by the ’08 Obama campaign (with devastating consequences in 
voter ID and GOTV in several key states).  The inexperience and limitations of the national campaign team 
is addressed below, but an independent organization would enable the rapid creation of a new entity 
blending the best elements of the old and new movement building methods, allow the organization to 
grow, energize the support base, and enhance the underdeveloped volunteer leadership and 
infrastructure that can be a remarkable incubator for activist leaders of the next generation.  Significantly, 
it could get through a lot of the growing pains and pitfalls associated with new entities while still in a 
period of single minded focus – the defeat of Trump.  
 
This is a populist year in American electoral politics with signs that it may mark the beginning of a populist 
era.  It would be very unwise for the decidedly un-populist Hillary Clinton to move with too much 
confidence towards a full-on confrontation with Donald Trump.  David Plouffe, noting Trump’s defiance of 
every prediction to date, has long cautioned Democrats about hoping for his nomination as the 
Republican candidate.  A Sanders led (as opposed to a Sanders-centered) independent entity could 
provide a much needed, articulate and energized economic populist voice to the anti-Trump effort 
without the intrinsic compromising effect posed by close association with Neoliberal Democratic elites, as 
well as weaning the volunteer base off total reliance on individual candidates during one-off election 
cycles.  

Why might an independent organization not happen? 
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“Money in Politics” has been a theme of the campaign since the beginning.  While correctly highlighting 
the danger of billionaire control of our system, the temptation to simplify talking points has resulted in a 
rhetorical box that might make taking money from wealthier progressives (this is one of the big benefits 
of an independent expenditure organization that could greatly assist the mission) contradictory to the 
self-image of our candidate or organization. Taking money from the wealthy is obviously not a question of 
principle (“No! I refuse to accept any help from the wealthy to defeat the Confederacy!”) but rather one 
of agendas and control. Bernie Sanders may either believe that it is a principle, even outside of a 
candidacy, or feel that he is boxed in by the rhetoric of the campaign.  Controls could easily be applied-such as an open process governed by a diverse panel of volunteers who could accept or reject large 
donations, e.g. in excess of $10,000--but in the end Bernie Sanders himself would have to decide where 
his priorities lie.  
  
“Struggle vs. Protest”:  Activists and movements tend to objectively fall into either categories of “protest” 
or “struggle”.  A union organizing campaign is more about struggle; the fight for $15 by the same people is 
more about protest.  Protest is more aimed at making powerful people and institutions (assumed to 
remain structurally unchanged) uncomfortable so that they modify positions or make accommodations 
while struggles for power aim to change the basic rules of the game and how and who writes those rules.   
That is not a normative judgement but a description that informs the need for tactics, strategies, styles, 
and considerations that are appropriate to the moment. Bernie Sanders, like most of us, has been an 
outsider looking in; a “witness to power” and source of discomfort to the powerful rather than a 
contender for power for much, but not all, of his political life (and I suspect that this campaign began on 
one path only to find itself swept onto another by a surprising wave of class and generational anger).  The 
path of an independent organization to carry the movement into November and beyond is clearly the 

  

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path of struggle. A strategy of restricted to raising hell at the Democratic convention in hope of extracting 
either some platform/process concessions or a temporary media platform is more the path of protest.  
The tenor of the times usually constrict our efforts to the path of protest but we should not hesitate to 
embrace the path of struggle when, as now, the opportunity presents itself. Bernie Sanders will have to 
decide these priorities. 
 
The national campaign organization and leadership built when Bernie Sanders was a 1,000 to 1 
longshot should be lauded as a having stepped forward and gotten the ball rolling when everyone 
dismissed this campaign as a fool’s errand. Now, however, it finds itself out of its depth and incapable of 
rising to the opportunity presented by this generational wave.  This criticism is easily validated (given the 
wave of recent campaign layoffs and ease of online communication this should be happening soon) and 
has a great deal to do with an apparent inability to master the best practices of prior national campaigns 
and manage their synergy with the tools and techniques ushered in by new social movements. In any 
case, Senator Sanders has avoided shaking up his campaign organization--perhaps for reasons of personal 
loyalty--at a heavy cost to his prospects as a viable candidate.  That approach would be fatal to any 
organizational effort going forward.  

 
 
In conclusion, we are at a crossroads.  Does Bernie Sanders and his campaign facilitate the growing voice of a new 
generation of activists who can rack up the defeat of Donald Trump as their first major achievement (a result that 
serves a strategy overlapping but far from identical with that of the Clinton campaign and the neoliberal wing of 
the party) or does he raise hell at a party convention and leave the remains of his organization to be picked over by 
the existing groups on the left that, to date, have been mostly marginal to the broad majority of Americans and 
Sanders supporters alike.   
 
Barack Obama had the opportunity to lead a two million strong organized volunteer base into a meaningful, 
organized role in fundamentally changing the distribution of power in this country and failed spectacularly.  It is 
nothing short of miraculous that two such opportunities should occur in the space of a single decade.  Let’s get this 
one right.