Ronen Tivony/Sipa USA via AP Images
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders greets supporters during a campaign rally in Santa Ana, California, on February 21, 2020.
Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders is hoping to head into Super Tuesday with a movement at his back and Latinos in his corner. One place where that combination will make a big difference: California, a state whose primary will decide the allegiance of more than 400 Democratic delegates, nearly one-third of the national total available that day.
But more than a delegate count is at stake for the Golden State. After all, California also fancies itself the symbolic epicenter of the resistance to Trump; helping to crown the official opposition candidate would be a feather in its progressive cap.
What explains California’s likely fit with Sanders? With its current brand of solid-blue politics, it’s easy to forget that California once gave America Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, as well as political trends like the embrace of tax cuts and the rise of over-policing in black and brown communities.
Indeed, at its lowest political point in the early 1990s—when voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 187, a measure that sought to strip social and educational services from undocumented immigrants—California was much like America today: worried about economic change, wracked by demographic anxiety, and open to polarization for political gain.
The arc from that convulsive era to California today—a leader in adopting a $15 minimum wage, addressing climate change, and protecting immigrant rights—is remarkable. While there are many different factors behind the transformation, including shifts in the economy and new political rules affecting redistricting and term limits, one often overlooked element is the engagement of social movements with electoral politics.
Called “integrated voter engagement,” this California phenomenon is exactly the same mash-up of community organizing and more traditional “get out the vote” strategies that has been key to Sanders’s momentum. The model, developed by activists frustrated with moderate Democrats holding back change in California, combines high-touch (door-to-door relationship-building between elections) and high tech (predictive dialing and sophisticated tracking at turnout time) in an effort to engage new and occasional voters.
Sanders is lifting up issues of race but staying laser-focused on the economy, a mix with great appeal in a state where the Latino-labor alliance has been key to the revitalization of progressive politics.
The results have been impressive, including wins on ballot measures that raised taxes on millionaires and will allow up to one million Californians to remove a felony from their records and so better restart their lives in communities and the workplace. These efforts have pushed beyond the limits of what many traditional political figures deemed possible.
The notion of changing politics by changing the electorate is also Sanders’s strategy; like the California activists, he is betting that past dismal turnout among the young and people of color is no predictor of the future. He is also lifting up issues of race but staying laser-focused on the economy, a mix with great appeal in a state where the Latino-labor alliance has been key to the revitalization of progressive politics.
So how is Sanders likely to fare in California and what will it mean for the nation and the state?
Several polls have Sanders leading handily, with one of the state’s most reliable pollsters having him supported by nearly a third of all likely Democratic voters. Most important, he is supported by 53 percent of likely Latino voters, a number that will likely head upward in the wake of Sanders’s strong showing with Hispanics in Nevada.
Whether Sanders can win nationally is unclear. His brand of leftist politics is risky in both the Midwest and key swing states like Florida. But it is a winner in a Golden State eager to play the role of resister-in-chief. Moreover, a Sanders candidacy in the general election could help support down-ballot issues dear to the hearts of California activists—such as a proposition aimed at making corporate landowners pay higher taxes to fund enhanced spending on education.
The battle between California’s vision of the future and Trump’s celebration of the past has been brewing for some time. The Sanders showdown is the next chapter in this ongoing saga, and the outcome will matter not just for determining the Democratic candidate but also for what it tells us about the long-term impact of mixing social movements and electoral politics.
