If you go to Bernie Sanders's website right now, it says, in huge letters: "The political revolution continues." On the page where you can Pledge to Continue the Political Revolution, the first sentence is: "This movement of ours—this political revolution—must continue." But, uh, revolutions are always messier than expected, and there's currently a revolution within Bernie Sanders's campaign for revolution.
Details are spilling out in the pages of the New York Times today, in a piece headlined "Bernie Sanders’s New Political Group Is Met by Staff Revolt."
Several people familiar with the organization said eight core staff members have stepped down. The group’s entire organizing department quit this week, along with people working in digital and data positions.
After the resignations, Mr. Sanders spoke to some who had quit and asked them to reconsider, but the staff members refused.
Essentially, what it comes down to is the young people on staff of Our Revolution think Jeff Weaver, the older guy chosen to lead Our Revolution—the same guy who managed Bernie Sanders's campaign—should not be allowed to be in charge.
At the heart of the issue, according to several people who left, was deep distrust of and frustration with Mr. Weaver, whom they accused of wasting money on television advertising during Mr. Sanders’s campaign; mismanaging campaign funds by failing to hire staff or effectively target voters; and creating a hostile work environment by threatening to criticize staff members if they quit.
There's also a technical concern about how fundraising will be done (one of the quitters said Our Revolution was going to "betray its core purpose by accepting money from billionaires and not remaining grass-roots funded and plowing that billionaire cash into TV instead of investing it in building a genuine movement"), a concern that not enough emphasis will be placed on reaching young voters online (versus older voters through TV), a concern that Mr. Sanders himself won't be involved because he legally can't be (501(c)(4) organizations "are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates"), and probably some other concerns I'm forgetting.
Basically, it's a concern souffle, collapsing in on itself. At least that's how it looks from afar.
Politico beat the New York Times on this story, publishing a piece yesterday that began: "The revolution is already tearing itself apart."
It includes the detail that Our Revolution will be working with Revolution Messaging, and contains paragraphs like this:
Also coming back aboard is Revolution Messaging, the firm that was the backbone of the Sanders campaign’s fundraising and outreach operation. Pennington [one of the people who just quit] had often sparred with Revolution Messaging during the campaign, with the person deeply involved in Sanders world describing Pennington as trying to hog credit. That came to a head, according to several sources, when, under Pennington’s direction, Revolution Messaging was not retained to be part of Our Revolution. The firm didn’t design the website or any of the emails that have gone out for Our Revolution to date.
Criticize Hillary Clinton all you want for being a middle-of-the-path bipartisan coalition robot, but at least she has stability and good old-fashioned "I'm the boss" management skills on her side. The Sanders diehards always emphasized revolution and righteousness, which made a lot of people familiar with their history books (cf. the Reign of Terror in France, Cuba after 1960, the Iran after 1979, Egypt after Arab Spring, etc., etc.) skeptical.
Full disclosure: I was one of those skeptics. Our Revolution is not precisely the same as Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, but after reading about the infighting and the credit-taking squabbling and the general distrust of management, I'm so relieved these folks are not organizing the campaign to prevent Donald Trump from the White House.
