2020: The logic of the war continues from Bernie Sanders against Clintonworld

Three years after a bitter confrontation with Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders still sees her political machine working against him.

Clinton may not be a presidential candidate, but the world of staff and institutions that boosted her presidency, Sanders said, has a new goal: to break her progressive vision of the president. America.

Over the weekend, Sanders sent to the Center of American Progress – a powerful Democratic group closely aligned with the Clintons – a scathing letter criticizing several negative articles and videos published by the group's press group, ThinkProgress, which will facilitate things. for President Trump to win in 2020.

"The other Democratic candidates and I lead campaigns based on principles and ideas and do not engage in personal attacks or attacks," wrote Sanders in a letter, first obtained by the New York Times. "Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress uses its resources to sully the senator [Cory] Booker, Senator [Elizabeth] Warren and myself, among others. This is not the way to build unity or win the general election. "

Now, some of Clinton's most prominent characters, like David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America, are already talking about launching an anti-Sanders campaign. before the senator's candidacy for presidential election is too advanced, the New York Times reported.

The Sanders campaign sent fundraising e-mails both to the letter addressed to CAP and Brock's anti-Sanders movement.

The animosity between Clinton's and Sanders' orbits is old news. But these latest moves show how much the party dynamics have changed. CAP, Brock and the Clinton world have exercised power over the establishment for a generation; they assumed key staffing roles, developed programs and selected leaders. Sanders has been largely outside. He is now the Democratic favorite of the president in a primary that has widely adopted his ideas.

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"This is the first race since 1992 that there has been no Clinton, Clinton message or Clinton presence," said Anita Dunn, Democratic strategist at SKDKnickerbocker who served the White House of Obama. "It's a radical change."

Sanders is no longer fighting with the Democratic Party. Instead, in his attempt to direct him, he defines his foil: what he sees as a corporatist wing that has a disproportionate hold on the politicians and the people who run the show in Washington.

The world of Clinton and the "democratic establishment"

There are many wrinkles to this story.

First of all, there is a personal complaint between former colleagues who have become opponents of the campaign. A number of Sanders advisers took the turn via CAP, including Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir, who helped found ThinkProgress and was its editor before leaving the organization in 2012.

The animus is well documented; In WikiLeaks e-mails, CAP President Neera Tanden called Shakir "fucker" and called him, along with many left-wing bloggers, "a monster after Hillary" in an exchange with Clinton's main assistant and CAP founder, John Podesta, in 2016. In another email of 2015, Tanden said that Shakir "hates me".

For some, that's all: baseball and bitter quarrels. This is not a fight that is played at the base as in 2016.

"They all know each other; they are all ensuring that each of them is financially supported, "said Ray Buckley, president of the Democratic Party of New Hampshire. "We use the word establishment because people can understand what it is. This is not the institution against non-establishment. It's everyone in the Beltway and all who are not. "

That said, the Center for American Progress is one of the largest and most powerful institutions in the Washington Belt that has been defining the democratic "institution" for a generation.

When John Podesta founded CAP in 2003, he introduced it as a "think tank on steroids" to compete with conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. Podesta, who has been Bill Clinton's chief of staff, Obama's advisor and campaign advisor to Hillary Clinton, is one of the most prolific Democratic agents in the sector. Tanden, who became president of CAP in 2011, comes from the same circle; she advised Obama and the two Clintons. They set up an organization that reflects their stature and organizes Clinton-style fundraisers.

The CAP receives money from big technology companies, big banks and big pharmaceutical companies. From 2016 to last year, the UAE has mobilized $ 2.5 million to fund its foreign policy initiative, reported the New York Times (they stopped taking UAE money in December 2018). In 2018, CAP indicated that corporate financing represented 2% of its annual budget of $ 60 million; foreign governments accounted for less than 1%.

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It has been a major resource for Democratic leaders, staffing authorities and campaigns. CAP staff members served in the Obama administration and for congressional party leaders. Even Shakir, for example, left CAP to work with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. During the Obama years, the CAP has been described as a "revolving door" of the administration.

And CAP researchers have shaped the Democratic Party's overall political agenda for more than a decade. This is where Sanders's critics come into play; As Tanden acknowledged, CAP sometimes had to exchange progressive political interests against the financial interests of the organization. In the era of Trump, the CAP joined the Resistance. Their political arm did not approve a lead candidate in 2020, and Tanden says his main goal is to elect a Democrat to the White House.

Sanders wonders what kind of Democrat.

The quarrel

For Sanders' team, a ThinkProgress video published on April 10 suggesting that Sanders had withdrawn from "millionaires" in his Millionaires and Billionaires campaign speech, because becoming a millionaire himself was as effective as an attack against Trump; They saw another article that challenged Senator Cory Booker's left-wing stance on the price of prescription drugs as an attack on progressivism. Sanders said that CAP was attacking progressives and their ideas. (ThinkProgress, at its true value, maintains its editorial independence from the CAP. has not always been the case in the pastwriters, largely because of the organizing drive of 2015, claim to have cemented a stronger culture of independence.)

Vox asked for an interview with Tanden, but his statement calling the Sandprogress video on Sanders "too hard" was referred, adding that it "does not reflect our approach to a constructive debate on these issues" .

But Sanders is not only angry at the negative press. He questions the influence of "corporate money" on the party's different political preferences. In fact, his criticism of the PAC is actually a continuation of his most prominent criticism of Clinton: The system is rigged for the elite.

"When [Sanders] said establishment, it says the elite, the elite conversation, the people who dictated the mechanics, and the agreements that are made, "Shakir told Vox. "They run the party, they also run politics. … Some of Sanders' concerns – on trade, on a fair foreign policy – The CAP has different postures. There is a concern: [Are corporate donors] a good part of why you are not as progressive on some issues?

There are clear ideological cleavages between Sanders and Clintonworld. Take a health care policy: CAP offers Medicare Extra For All, which, although bearing the same name as Medicare for Medic, is strongly opposed to the removal of private insurance. Instead, it offers a public option based on health insurance. And Sanders Health Policy Team and CAP Health Policy Team do not hear yourself.

The same goes for trade, where Sanders' ethic is much more restrictive, and for foreign policy, where he is more anti-interventionist.

But there is also a strategic logic for Sanders who is fighting against CAP.

Can Sanders be an anti-establishment favorite?

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Sanders 'relationship with the Democratic Party has changed dramatically since 2016. The Democratic Party has changed its rules in direct response to Sanders' concerns, limiting the power of "superdelegates" – party insiders who have the right to vote for whoever they want – at the 2020 primary, preventing voting in the first round of voting in a disputed national convention. He ended up on the Senate Democrats' Leadership Team as "President of External Relations".

Sanders has the most important fundraising list of the 2020 primary, the most bank money of all Democrats on the field, and a top candidate among the announced candidates.

But success has its own challenges. In 2016, Sanders was presented as an insurgent against a heroic Democratic party. This is the political style with which he is most comfortable. While he is fighting for the leadership of this party, he needs a new flagship, powerful enough to give energy to his followers, but with as little popularity as it alienates the electors.

CAP, still led by Clinton's allies, is a perfect proxy, and Sanders campaign manager Shakir announced a 48-hour fundraiser to "fight the potential campaign against the Sanders," Brock said. in the New York Times.

"Here's the kitchen sink. According to the New York Times, the financial institution of this country is gathering at "fundraisers filled with canapés", preparing campaigns to stop us, "said Shakir in an email." David Brock, who led a a multi-million dollar defamation campaign against us in 2016, seeks to lead the effort and hopes that an "anti-Sanders campaign" will be launched "sooner rather than later".

Another e-mail to supporters said: "CAP leaders have been frank enough about their disdain for Bernie – and for all of us" and said the organization's "real purpose" was to "put end to Medicare for all and to our progressive program ".

The rallying cry of Sanders is that together, the American people will face pharmaceutical companies, big banks, political party leaders and despotic world leaders. But for Sanders, the rhetoric of "them against" was much greater than today. He is less alien in the corridors of Congress than he was three years ago. He sympathized with Democratic leaders, even with the leader of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, with whom he co-sponsored a bill against the Republicans' tax reform package.

The Democratic National Committee, which Sanders has relentlessly imposed for supporting Clinton in the 2016 election, now communicates regularly with his campaign.

So for Sanders, the "them" is now institutions like the CAP. The "them" are Clinton's allies who serve as a substitute for Sanders' attack on the Democratic Party's political wing and against which his supporters are still furious from 2016 onwards.

"It's about the brand," Shakir said.