Sanders' email list and party unity

Last week, someone in class asked about Bernie Sanders’ email list. The famed email list, that campaign operatives debated over before Sanders even left the race, will not be given to the Clinton campaign. The list is enviable. In 2008 and 2012, Obama’s built a groundbreaking grassroots political campaign that put social media on the radar as a must-win realm and demonstrated its enormous potential to raise money. This time around Republicans have taken note.

Bernie Sanders’ list helped him raise $222 million in small contributions (that’s huge!) and is estimated to contain approximately 5 million email addresses of the most liberal voters and activists in the country. The list is a potential gold mine for anyone who has access to it – not only does it have fundraising potential, but it offers a virtual highway into a populist section of the Democratic Party that Clinton has trouble engaging.

But Bernie is keeping it to himself. The list is now the base of his political organization, Our Revolution, that promises to “reclaim democracy for the working people of our country.” (Similar to Obama’s OFA). A quick perusal of the website reads like a script of his platform: a $15 minimum wage, free college tuition, and dramatic revisions to Wall Street that will dampen income inequality. He mentions candidates – lots of them – but one name is dramatically absent: Hillary Clinton.

It’s not a surprise to anyone that Sanders’ exit from the race included particularly tough negotiations with the Clinton organization over national platform. Large swaths of the Sanders doctrine were included over the objections of more centrist Democrats. Nevertheless, it seems that the candidate has been less than enthusiastic in his support for Clinton. A quick perusal of recent news results shows that Saunders has been quite active: he was in Washington today to join protestors of the Dakota Access Pipeline, he will join Teachout in New Paltz on Friday and has spent time campaigning of behalf of Democratic candidates for Senate.  Many have noted that he spends more time disparaging Donald Trump than actually supporting the Democratic candidate.

What gives?

Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat. He wasn’t before he ran and has publicly stated that he will remain independent in the Senate. (Al Sharpton had something to say about that).

Becoming a Democrat in order to run for president was an opportunistic move -  and an incredibly effective one.  Sanders should be spending more time supporting the candidate of the party under whose auspices he ran. Unfortunately, I don’t see that in the near future. So much for party unity.