As I hope you will have already seen, yesterday Bernie Sanders won the Nevada caucus. But as we’ve been saying to each other here, he didn’t merely win it – he destroyed it; he smashed it; he ended it; RIP Nevada caucus: you have felt the Bern.
We did it!!! Wooooo!!! I came to Nevada 10 days ago with the thought that I would like to help out knock some doors and secure a victory, however narrow, for Bernie Sanders. What has happened since has been beyond my wildest dreams. I have got to witness and participate in a movement that has, through sheer love, will and organising, delivered a result so overwhelming that it may come to be seen as a decisive turning point in the 2020 presidential elections, and indeed the history of the United States.
Let’s break down the result for a moment. We actually only have 50% of precincts reporting so far, due to yet more phone problems with the State Democratic Party. But let’s take a look at what those 50% are saying.
Bernie Sanders currently holds 46.6% of county delegates (what is traditionally used to measure the result). Biden at 19%, Buttigieg at 15, Warren at 10.
47%!!! In a field of 7 candidates, including the former vice president!! Now, that doesn’t mean he will necessarily be on this percentage when 100% of the results are in – it may be that the precincts left out there are more conservative (I have no idea); but his chances of getting over 40% are very very high, and he will sweep the actual pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, currently leading 13 to Biden’s 2 on that count. This is a stunning victory: this is a landslide.
40% was what he got in the popular vote on the second round. Turnout is massively up, with 60,000 having voted in the 50% of precincts – 84,000 voted in total in 2016. That is of course not a separate phenomenon to Sanders’ victory.
No candidate in a competitive (no incumbent) presidential primary had ever won the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Bernie Sanders is the first.
At this point all we have are entrance and exit polls to break down the result, so take these with a pinch of salt – but:
By race:
White:
Sanders 31%
Buttigieg 18%
Klobuchar 13%
Warren 13%
Biden 12%
Black:
Biden 36%
Sanders 25%
Steyer 13%
Warren 13%
Klobuchar 3%
Buttigieg 2%
Latinx:
Sanders 51% (!!!)
Biden 13%
Buttigieg 10%
Steyer 9%
Warren 8%
Klobuchar 6%
Other:
Sanders 42%
Buttigieg 12%
Biden 11%
Warren 9%
And in fact, @UCLAlatino, actually analysing the 50% of results so far, puts the Latinx vote at currently 70% for Sanders. Seventy.
By age group:
17-29:
Sanders 66% (!)
Buttigieg 10%
Biden 9%
Warren 6%
30-44:
Sanders 48%
Warren 17%
Buttigieg 15%
Biden 7%
44-64:
Sanders 26%
Buttigieg 17%
Biden 16%
Warren 14%
65+:
Biden 29%
Klobuchar 19%
Buttigieg 15%
Sanders 11%
Warren 10%
By gender:
Women:
Sanders 30%
Biden: 17%
Buttigieg: 15%
Warren 15%
Men:
Sanders 38%
Biden: 17%
Buttigieg: 16%
Warren: 10%
And get this one:
By political persuasion:
Liberals, Bernie obviously smashes it.
Moderate/Conservative:
Sanders 24%
Biden 22%
Electability, huh.
Here’s another to note. 37% of Bernie’s supporters were first-time caucus-goers. This is it. This is how we win. For every 1 white mom in Connecticut who votes Trump over Bernie despite saying #Resistance for four years, we turn out 2 Latinx gen-Zers in Texas, we turn out 2 union workers in Michigan who didn’t show up last time, we turn out 2 black students in Pennsylvania.
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But there’s more to this story than just numbers. Do you remember the Strip Caucus? The caucuses held in the casinos for the service workers, whose union bosses had been lobbying against Sanders? Bernie won 5.5 out of 7 of these. We won at the Rio, we won at Mandalay Bay, we won at the Wynn, we won at Park MGM – hell, we just built some socialism at the Bellagio.
The rank and file of the union members turned out for Bernie. And they did so on their terms, with their power. We gave them a helping hand organising, and we told them the truth about healthcare. But it was them. They talked to their colleagues. They gave up their time. They gave persuasive speeches at the realignment. And it’s because it was them in their workplace and inside the caucus rooms, because their undecided workers could trust them as fellow workers, that we all won.
In the interviews afterwards, the mainstream media struggled to understand why they would defy their union’s instructions. The same answers kept coming up: ‘Yes I have good healthcare – but I want it for my family too. I want it for my husband, my daughter. And I want it if I get fired from my job.’
The last few days the strip caucus team had been organising cab drivers at the hotels. Just walking up to them as they were parked outside waiting and knocking on their window.
At the afterparty, Kyle (the great Kyle: construction worker, first-time political participant, ‘these are my people’ Kyle) told a story about Jamaal, an immigrant taxi driver who had showed up at the caucus Kyle was at. Do you know how much it costs a taxi driver to give up 3 hours work in Las Vegas? Present at this caucus was the billionaire Tom Steyer’s daughter. At the realignment, Jamaal stood up, unprompted, and gave a speech attacking the greed of the billionaire class, and advocating a vision of a more just and equal society free of exploitation. Virtually all of the remaining workers came over and stood with the Sanders crowd. Tom Steyer’s daughter witnessed it all.
The story of the strip caucus is one I find incredibly powerful. It deserves to resonate across the whole world as a demonstration of the power of organised labour to win even within the greatest and most heady totems of capitalist power.
The team of strip caucus organisers, led by the superb Kelvin, deserve great credit. I only helped them out a couple of times, but it was an honour to be anywhere near the operation. Kyle says he’s going straight on to another state, probably Texas. He’d go anywhere, he’d do anything, he says, to keep organising.
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The story of the Latinx community’s organisation is equally extraordinary. At the highest level, it is the work of (my new friend) Chuck Rocha, who has been planning this for many years, and was trusted by the campaign despite having a felony conviction. In his own tweet:
“Just for the record this is NOT even close to what we spent on PAID spanish communications. We started PAID communication to Latinos 8 months ago and had over 76 Latino staffers and 11 offices. The key to our strategy was spending money that folks would not track #sneakattack.”
But it’s not just Chuck. It’s not even especially Chuck. I’ve spent so much time with so many amazing Latinx organisers and the spirit that has been built in this community has been jawdropping. Everyone is united in joy and love and an unflinching pursuit of justice. They really have each other’s back. Of course it can be unhelpful to erase differences within demographics and homogenise them, but the unity around Bernie amongst Latinx makes it basically possible to say that as a demographic they’ve completely transformed the state of the Democratic Primary, and may yet in California and Texas almost literally clinch Tio Bernie the nomination.
Again, this is an exemplarary demonstration of the kind of deep, long-term, community-led organising that we must do (and fund) in the UK if we are to win back power post-2019.
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My caucus day was not quite so dramatic. It began with a clearly well-rehearsed breakfast motivational speech from our host Shaun:
I got stationed as Site Lead (along with my British friends and Lion, our best bud) at a retirement home in Henderson, a suburb of Vegas. There were four precincts on my site, in rooms next to each other. I was welcoming Bernie supporters to the site, making sure they were fed and watered, and liaising with the Democratic Party to make sure everything ran smoothly. I had plenty of chats too with supporters of other candidates. One old Biden woman slapped my arm a little too hard as she said ‘I don’t want young people to have free healthcare; they should have to work for it.’
In fact, there were very few Bernie supporters here. This was an old, white, rich neighbourhood. Not really our territory. It was only in one of the precincts that anyone showed up for Bernie.
But, in that precinct, they showed up. We had the largest numbers in the room, and the largest numbers of early voters. At realignment, Herman, who had run for congress here before dropping out to make Knock Down The House, gave a speech which persuaded all the Warren supporters to come over to Bernie.
I met one of those first-time caucus-goers Bernie had turned out. She was maybe about 19, she’d come on her own, in the rain. How scary! But we looked after her, and she caucused, and she was part of something that will change the future of this planet. In a way I think that precinct, although we lost the other 3, was emblematic of whole Nevada caucus. We won even in an upper-class white neighbourhood, because we turned out everyone on a lower income, and a large section of the black and latinx community there, largely through early voting efforts.
I’m glad I experienced a caucus in all its chaotic 19th century glory. When it was over, I looked at my phone, and it was pretty clear from Twitter: we were going to win Nevada. We had done it.
And I did I mention that it rained? Biblically. At one point on the way in we were on the freeway and everyone was driving at 20mph, so dangerous was it. And then the sun came out just as reports started coming in of the results. It was like washing away the old order, to create a new rainbow nation in America, is what a lesser writer would write.
And then we headed to the afterparty. What a night it was too. It was like living a highlight reel of the trip, as I bumped into everyone I’d met along the way. My soccer tournament teammates, my fellow strip caucusers, my rally detail buddies, my canvass partners, the Las Vegas DSA, Derek and North-West gang, Amy Vilela, Jose, Herman, literally everyone. The vibe was so beautiful and so loving and so victorious. I’d forgotten what it felt like to win an election.
Amy got up and spoke in triumph but also in sadness. ‘Justice for Shalynne,’ we cried: Amy’s daughter. It was clearly difficulty for her to make it through the speech, but she knew that we had her back.
And then guess who came and closed out. The inimitable Nina Turner.
‘It is so decisive that the haters don’t know what to say.’
‘Senator Sanders is the type of leader who is willing to go ham on the system.’
‘VP!’ ‘VP!’ we shouted, and she blushed. I’m fully on board with that. I’ll let her speak for herself:
I’m about to have goodbye dinner with Shaun and then get a bus to San Francisco.
What a journey it’s been in Las Vegas. I’ve loved every minute here. It’s been mostly surreal. Thank you anyone who’s reading this who was involved, really from the bottom of my heart. We’ve felt so welcomed and honoured to be part of your movement. Shoutout especially Shaun and his grandma for letting us stay in their home for free!
And we won. We’re going to take that momentum into South Carolina, into Super Tuesday, into the general election in November. They can’t stop us.
It really has felt like the future of the world is happening right here, right now, in Las Vegas.
mini moralia 