LA Convention Center Feels the Bern

Presidential Canidate Bernie Sanders addresses supporters during his campaign rally held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 1, 2020. (Anthony Mayen / The Corsair)

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the independent senator of Vermont, held a rally in the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 1, two days before the crucial California vote on Super Tuesday. The rally, which had well over 15,000 attendees, featured several acts and speeches from various musicians and activists such as Dick Van Dyke, Public Enemy, and Ana Tijoux.

Several speeches were focused on energizing and appealing to the Latin-American communities, which make up around 35 percent of California’s population, yet only 19 percent of California’s likely voters, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Speeches by Marisa Franco, the founder of Mijente, a Latino advocacy group, and Ana Tijoux, a French-Chilean activist and musician, frequently slipped into Spanish, jokingly apologizing for their “Spanglish”, to the delight of the crowd.

Many of the speakers chose to interject political statements about subjects rarely touched in the Sanders stump speech. Tijoux took a moment to denounce far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and to attack patriarchy in her song “Antipatriarchal”, which she dedicated to the people of Palestine. Marisa Franco took the opportunity to talk about local issues by endorsing Los Angeles County Measure R, a measure also endorsed by the Los Angeles Times for “sheriff accountability and smarter criminal justice”, which passed with 71% of the vote on voting day. 

Other speakers and performances emphasized the importance of voting, regardless of who they actually voted for. “Voting is as important as wiping your ass in the morning,” said Chuck D of Public Enemy.

Dick van Dyke, one of the headlining acts, also urged people to vote, even if it wasn’t for Senator Sanders. Dyke also cited President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential farewell speech, which warned Americans about the development of a military-industrial complex. "We heard [Eisenhower], but we didn’t listen. And now we understand,” Dyke said.

Rally attendies browse a Bernie "Merch shop" for Bernie Sanders memerobelia inside the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 1, 2020. (Anthony Mayen/The Corsair)

Other speakers, including Sanders, took the opportunity to emphasize the anti-war movement, something Sanders has championed since his lone-wolf vote as a member of the House of Representatives, against the Gulf War in 1991. Guests also equated the high price tag for “endless and pointless war” with the costs expected for several of Sanders’ policies including Medicare for All, free public tuition, and the Green New Deal, which add up to a price tag of over $60 trillion over ten years. They argued that if the United States was able to pay for such wars, they could pay for his plans. Despite being frequently argued by Sanders supporters, the actual cost of the war on terror totals to $6.4 trillion over the course of 20 years, according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, one twentieth of the cost of Senator Sanders’ plan. 

The price of many of Sanders’ plans has been used frequently to attack the Senator, citing already soaring national debt, which reached a record $22 trillion in February of 2019, and is expected to top $36 trillion by the year 2030. Some, such as comedian Sarah Silverman, chose to brush off the cost, branding it as a necessity to be taken care of regardless of price.

“Here’s how to explain to your loved ones when they have fallen prey to the fear mongers who count on them to not understand," said Silverman, “Ask them: Do you like calling the fire department when there’s a fire? Do you like sending your kids off to school in the morning? Do you like driving on roads?... These are socialist programs!”

Whilst running through his stump speech on criminal justice, raising the minimum wage, and several attacks against incumbent President Donald Trump, Sanders also chose to emphasize the mobilization of people around his campaign.

“The political establishment… You are making them very nervous!” Sanders exclaimed to the roar of the crowd’s approval, only a week after an overwhelming number of superdelegates interviewed by the New York Times said that they would not vote for the Vermont senator even if he had the plurality of delegates and raw vote count in the case of a brokered convention.

Sanders has changed his position on superdelegates since his last presidential bid in 2016, when he implored superdelegates to vote for him despite being over 300 delegates behind Hillary Clinton in May. “At the end of the day the responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for the country and what is best for the Democratic Party,” he told a group of reporters in May of 2016.

Now faced with the likely scenario of him carrying the highest raw number of delegates, Sanders has advocated that the candidate with the plurality of delegates should get the nomination automatically, skipping over the national convention process.

Bernie Sanders supporters stand in a long que to purchase merchandise from a concession stand inside the Los Angeles Convention on March 1, 2020. (Anthony Mayen/The Corsair)

The message of Sanders’ tour-de-force, and his emphasis on his own populism has moved from proving himself to superdelegates to ensuring that he rallies his supporters into action. This is crucial to the Sanders campaign strategy, particularly after a disappointing turnout from young voters during Super Tuesday, which failed to see a single state with more than 20 percent of the voter population under the age of 30.

The need for turnout, volunteering, and voter participation within the Sanders campaign has also increased significantly in the wake of exits from the remaining moderates including Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar, all of whom have endorsed Joe Biden in an effort to unify the moderate sector of the Democratic party.

In a press conference following Super Tuesday, Sanders continued to emphasize the anti-establishment nature of his campaign, “There has never been a campaign in recent history that has taken on the entire corporate establishment. There has never been a campaign in recent history which has taken on the entire political establishment,” he said. When asked about turnout on Super Tuesday, he responded “Have we been as successful as I would have hoped? The answer is no… We have not done as well in bringing young people into the process. But we’re making some progress.”