Outsider in the White House (19 page)

And what is the right thing to do? Cut welfare. Cut food stamps and nutrition programs. Cut affordable housing. Cut health care. Cut education. Cut fuel assistance. Are these things not harmful acts? Is this not selfish, cruel, and immoral? No. Increasing hunger, homelessness, and human misery is how we
help
the poor.

The Republicans get away with this absurd argument, the Democrats collapse before it, and the American people swallow it because there is virtually no organized opposition. The Children's Defense Fund, the National Council of Catholic Bishops, and a few other organizations stand up for kids and the poor. But overall, the silence is deafening.

A further reason that the Republicans can mount this assault on the poor is because they understand an obvious social fact: the vast majority of poor people do not make campaign contributions, do not vote, and do not participate in the political process. In fact, the poor are almost totally irrelevant to contemporary politics, except when being using as scapegoats.

Poor people are a good target for the Republicans. Exhausted by an increasingly difficult struggle for survival, they are not organized and can't fight back. Seventy percent of welfare recipients are children, a constituency that cannot vote and has few civil rights. What a target. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. You can't miss.

Here is the great catch-22 of American politics: as long as low-income people do not vote or participate politically, they will be scapegoated. But as long as both major parties continue to ignore the problems of low-income citizens, the poor will see politics as irrelevant and won't vote or join the political process. The politicians who get elected will continue to ignore their needs.

How many times have I knocked on doors at low-income housing projects and heard people say, with pride in their voice, “I don't vote. What difference does it make? Nobody's going to represent my interests.”

Let me digress here to share a few observations.

When I was mayor of Burlington, we came close to
doubling
voter turnout. Why? Because we made it clear that we would stand up and fight for low- and moderate-income people—and we did. Many low-income people understood that and, as a result, they supported us. If poor people believe that voting will make a difference, they will vote.

The ruling class of this country knows perfectly well how important it is for them to keep voter turnout
down
. The United States has, by far, the lowest rate of electoral participation in the industrialized world. In 1994, when Gingrich and friends took power, only 38 percent of Americans voted. The vast majority of poor people stayed away from the polls. For the Republicans it was a great election. Almost nobody voted, and rich people contributed huge amounts of money. This is the kind of “democracy” the ruling class likes.

In Third World countries, when political organizations want to protest against what they consider an illegitimate government, they organize voter boycotts. In this country, it would be impossible to
organize
a voter boycott, because we already have an
unorganized
one. In the 1994 elections, 62 percent of the people boycotted.

In 1993, President Clinton signed the Motor Voter bill, which makes voter registration easier for low-income people. Registration forms can be filled out when applying for a driver's license, at the welfare office, at the unemployment office, at the public library, at various government office buildings. It's a good bill, but only a tiny step forward in terms of where we ought to go in improving people's access to the voting booth. Nonetheless, the Republicans went berserk at the passage of the bill, and a number of Republican governors flatly refused to implement the law. How terrible! Imagine that. Poor people are registering to vote. What next?

Yet, when the next war comes, who will be returning home in body bags, or without legs or arms? Who, as a result of their wartime experience, will be unemployed and end up sleeping in the streets? It will be the sons and daughters of the people who don't vote, and who the Republicans don't want to vote ever.

If voter turnout in this country reached the levels of Canada or Europe—70 to 80 percent—American society would change substantially. Most importantly, if poor people would utilize their leverage at the polls, they would realize the great principle that in a democratic society they, as much as anyone else, have the right to determine the future of this country and shape its social contract. That sense of empowerment, in itself, would transform the lives of millions of people and, ultimately, the entire nation.

If poor people voted, the government would pay far more attention to economic injustice, health care, education, and other issues largely ignored today. At the very least, legislation like the recently passed welfare “reform” bill would never be enacted, would just be a dim dream of the far right fringe. The Republicans agree with me on this point. They fully understand the implications of expanded participation by low-income citizens in the electoral and political process. That is why they work so hard, in so many ways, to prevent it from happening.

Welfare, gay and immigrant bashing, increasing military expenditures, and cuts in Medicaid and education are scarcely all I have to deal with. Back in Vermont I have to juggle these painful realities with trying to figure out what to do with the campaign. On that front, I'm not sure where things are heading.

It's May 21, and I'm in Washington. Jane gives me the bad news that Susan Sweetser has begun her television advertising. This is an unexpected development that catches us completely by surprise. By Vermont standards, going on television in May is almost unprecedented. In the last three elections, we began our TV advertising in October. Her ad is a high-quality thirty-second spot. In the trade, it's called an “intro piece,” designed to familiarize viewers with her life and her views. The ad has been produced by Dresner and Wickers, a big-time Republican media company.

While we try to figure out how we should respond to this major campaign development, one thing is clear—if Sweetser is already putting substantial sums into TV, she must be confident of raising a very significant amount of money. Could she raise a million dollars? Is corporate America that anxious to get rid of me? And what about the additional help that she will almost certainly get via “independent expenditures” from the NRA and other organizations? My first thought concerning Sweetser's TV ads is that we'd better accelerate our own fundraising efforts. We're in for a tough and expensive race, and we'd better get moving.

Should we go on television early ourselves or just wait? It's a big question. In the 1994 campaign, my Republican opponent, John Carroll, went on TV in late August, which we considered “early,” and we made a mistake by not responding. We gave him a full month to get his message out without any reply from our side. I don't intend to make that mistake again, but it's strange to think about going on TV with the election five months away. Not only did we have no intention of going on the air this early, but we are not financially prepared to do so.

The question of how we should respond to Sweetser's TV campaign is largely answered by a “baseline” poll that we have commissioned. This year, for the first time in my life, and with great reluctance, we hired a professional Washington polling firm, Bennett, Petts & Blumenthal, to conduct an in-depth survey of my strengths and weaknesses among Vermont voters. For most politicians, this is pretty standard fare, but although we have done lots of polling within our progressive movement, we have never done anything this thorough before. The poll costs us $15,000, which seems to me a staggering amount.

We work with the pollster in helping to design questions for a thirty-minute interview with respondents. You are supposed to throw out all of the arguments your opponent will use against you, and see how people respond. In that way you learn where you're vulnerable and what your strengths are. We also include a “horserace” in the poll, to see how we are doing against Sweetser.

To make a long story short, the results of the baseline poll are very reassuring to us. In fact, the consultants who analyze the results with Dave Petts say they have never seen anything quite like it—and they have been looking at polls for many years. The bottom line is that Vermonters know me very well. Some of them agree with my views, and some do not, but they all know where I stand. The pollsters are surprised at the enormous numbers of respondents who believe that I am honest and straightforward with voters, and who see me as someone who fights for what I believe to be right. Few Vermonters, it turns out, regard me as a typical politician.

What most interested me was that the poll indicated that very few of the arguments and attacks that we anticipate Sweetser using against me will have a major impact on changing the views of voters. In the head-to-head “horserace,” we are ahead by 27 points. Although her feel-good television ads have been on the air for two months, Sweetser's negatives are unexpectedly high.

Frankly, I think the poll is too good to be true, even if these pollsters are professionals and come highly recommended. But it does convince me of one thing. We don't have to spend money putting ads on television yet. We'll husband our resources, and save them for the end of the campaign when we'll really need them.

At around this time the Becker Poll comes out, a major statewide poll commissioned by the business community and Vermont's largest television station. This poll has us up by 20 points, and also finds Sweetser's negatives to be high. No one quite knows why Sweetser seems not to be doing well. Even though she is pouring $80,000 into television ads, my lead remains wide and her negatives continue to go up. It's very strange, but we're not complaining.

Our immediate strategy is to keep things reasonably quiet, try not to make too many stupid mistakes, and then sprint hard toward the end of the campaign. It's likely that Sweetser will receive a huge amount of money from her wealthy supporters and buy up the airwaves, but there's not a lot that we can do about that. Everything being equal, I am now feeling more confident than I expected to be two or three months ago.

At the outset of the campaign I identified three areas in which we had to improve over past efforts. The first grew out of my dream of seeing a thousand politically knowledgeable people, part of our movement, canvassing all over Vermont. If a thousand people each knocked on two hundred doors, we would knock on every door in the state. Frankly, that ain't gonna happen now—and I know it. But it's a dream worth having.

Many people don't pay much attention to TV news, don't read the papers or listen to the radio. They are not actively involved in the political process—especially in trailer parks and low-income areas. The goal of a canvassing effort is to bring political ideas right to the front doors and, if possible, into the living rooms of thousands of Vermonters through face-to-face contact. In my view, all the TV ads in the world are not as effective as an intelligent and personable canvasser who is able to discuss the issues and listen to voters' concerns. I refuse to give up on the idea that a campaign in a democratic society should include a significant educational dimension.

A few months ago two young people, Peter Baker and Ashley Moore, walked into our campaign office looking for jobs. Both of them had extensive canvassing experience working for environmental organizations in Oregon. They were bright and energetic—just the sort of people I wanted. In the beginning, the two of them would just go to a town that we had selected and knock on doors by themselves. But after a while, Phil Fiermonte and Tom Smith were able to organize local volunteers in the various towns to go out with Peter and Ashley.

The canvassers take campaign material to every door in a community. If no one is home, they leave a leaflet. When they come across a supporter, they give him or her a “Bernie 96” bumper sticker—these are beginning to show up in large numbers on cars all over the state. They take addresses for lawn signs—we have over a thousand people who have indicated they want to put these up, a remarkable achievement for a campaign many months from election day. They are also signing up supporters to volunteer and are registering people to vote as well as bringing back questions from constituents to which we try to respond.

The canvassers have also asked supporters to write to newspapers, resulting in more letters supporting me on editorial pages than ever before. Occasionally, they even manage to sell a “Bernie for Congress” T-shirt. An added bonus is that some of our supporters are making campaign contributions. Five dollars here, twenty dollars there. It all adds up. Further, and very importantly, by knocking on doors every evening we are getting firsthand impressions of how people are feeling about the campaign and the issues.

In St. Albans last night, four local volunteers who know the community well went with Peter and Ashley and another staff person: that meant there were seven people canvassing for the evening in a small city. That gives you a real presence. The people of St. Albans will know that the Sanders campaign was in their town—and that's great. Tonight, five or six people will be going to the suburban community of Williston. Every day the effort continues in another city or town. In some of the smaller towns, three or four people can knock on every door in one night.

Canvassing gives people a chance to interact with the Sanders campaign in new ways. Even though I return from Washington each week to spend three or four days in the state and I make a concerted effort to visit every area of Vermont, tens of thousands of people have never met me personally. So while we are handing out literature, registering voters, giving out bumper stickers, obtaining signatures to get on the ballot, raising money, we are doing what is most important of all: talking directly with people. If you are serious about building a movement, you have to go out and talk politics. We haven't done enough of that in the past, but we are doing better now. The canvassing effort is something I am very excited about.