By Marc Bochner January 15, 2019
To understand how I know the NY Times is smearing Sanders with their claims of sexism in his 2016 campaign and not championing any causes, we need to as our jumping off point to understand that they know the difference between populist grassroots campaigns and establishment/ corporately backed campaigns. Many others have already covered how they are ignoring how commonplace harassment is in campaigns and chosen to solely focus on the guy who has a near perfect record on women's issues to turn a strength into a weakness (the Karl Rove strategy). This story has it all for the smear merchants. They can pin sexism on Bernie (which was Hillary's #1 strategy in 2016). They can also recycle their long debunked Bernie Bro narrative as well that Bernie's supporters are also a bunch of sexist/ hostile men.
For the sake of this take, I'm not going to rehash those points nor am I going to make any judgment whatsoever about the allegations of harassment made by the courageous women who came forward. Instead, I'm going to talk about how the smear merchants are weaponizing the claims and how we know this is a calculated smear, and in no way intended as a defense of the women who came forward. If it were we would be hearing about the other campaigns where similar things have and continue to play out and they would be focusing not on that these things happened, but on how Sanders set up a model to protect staff and volunteers in campaigns moving forward.
My take will be calling on my experience working on a national populist grassroots campaign very similar to the one Bernie ran in 2016. I was on staff, even heading up various tasks within the '92 primary campaign of then progressive Jerry Brown against Bill Clinton. Just like in 2016, Bill Clinton had all of the media behind him, had the party insiders behind him and had all the corporate money going into the campaign. He staffed his campaign largely on day one with political insiders who had been vetted and largely had worked on many campaigns before along with Democratic party insiders.
By contrast Jerry Brown although a successful former governor of California, he was painted as a fringe candidate against the former governor of Arkansas (let that sink in, the former governor of California was the fringe candidate, not the embattled former Governor of Arkansas). The media ignored Gov. Brown, the party mocked him and in the early states, he was getting about 1% of the vote. But we broke through the media blackout with large rallies, lots of radio and alternative media coverage that went largely unnoticed by the insiders. Running on a progressive message and policy positions he connected with voters and started surging at one point running off a bunch of wins and polling ahead of Clinton in nearly every remaining state (before the wheels came off and handed the nomination to Clinton, but that's a story for another time). Since the money wasn't there on day one but came in in bunches as small donor contributions through an 800 number, staffing was done on the fly to keep up with the surging campaign. People who were largely political novices but community activists or newly engaged citizens were being hired without much vetting and the management of us was pretty loose. We weren't running a traditional campaign, it was a people-powered campaign and thus the campaign structure and campaign strategies were more fluid. This empowered the people whether staff or volunteers but also decentralized authority.
I personally walked into the campaign headquarters as a volunteer. The volunteer coordinator and most of the campaign staff was gone when I went in since they had a big event the night before. That left me alone with the national fundraising director Christine for about an hour. At the end of that hour, I was made her assistant rather than tossed to the volunteer coordinator. I was really young and inexperienced in political campaigns, but I had a background in entertainment and concert production so she kept me to help oversee the large events. Within a couple of weeks, they asked if they could put me on staff and asked me what I needed to make to continue working full time on the campaign. I had another income which pulled me away weekend nights so I only asked for a minimal salary. I believed in the cause, the candidate and the movement so my pay wasn't based on my role or the crazy hours I worked, it was what I asked for. As my role continued to grow heading up college outreach, being one of the key planners of the campaign events, setting up radio interviews and stories in independent publications/ college papers and even heading up some of the advance teams in California while still keeping one foot in National fundraising my salary never grew. While I never asked or cared what others were making I'm certain people with lesser roles made more than me. It wasn't the campaign taking advantage of my youth, it was what I asked for as someone who would have done it as a volunteer.
I was allowed to keep volunteers to assist me and even allowed to put some on staff. There was no vetting that I was aware of. The campaign was struggling to keep up with the growth. If any of them were harassing each other I was never made aware of it, but it could have happened I suppose. And many of them really only answered to me. Remember I was young and sexism or harassment wasn't something I even thought about at that point. I saw each person for their skill set and passion, not their age, race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. If anybody had been mistreated not only was I never made aware of it, but since most of them only worked on my projects, its likely nobody else on the campaign would have been made aware either.
While this loosely organized and impassioned chaos was common in nearly all the departments we kept exceeding expectations by letting people do what they did best without over-managing them. I barely had contact with the campaign manager and even less with Governor Brown and the people who worked with and beneath me had even less if any contact with either. Governor Brown spent most of the time on the road and was rarely in town let alone in the headquarters. When he was, as far as I know, he was largely meeting with policy advisors, the campaign manager, the press secretary, and the scheduling department. Had there been any staff complaints or staffing issues, none of that was something that would be brought to him, it was dealt with generally farther down the pecking order.
I hope in telling my story you can see all the attack lines of the NY Times hit piece and how none of that is a reflection on the candidate who likely would have known none the staffing issues or interactions. Not only wasn't that his role on the campaign, he was gone nearly all the time (Sanders just like Brown). Also the attack line about how women were getting paid less than the men as if that was a calculated decision. if we all negotiated our own salaries, we were being paid what we asked for, not what we or the campaign thought we were worth. There didn't appear to be any set salaries for each position. We largely got what we asked for if it was reasonable and most of us asked for far less than our worth because of the cause of stopping the Clintons from stealing the Democratic party from the people and handing it over to the highest corporate bidders (they actually campaigned on how they would get the big donors and create a permanent Democratic majority without consideration for what that would mean in policy. Governor Brown, of course, was not shy about pointing out the dangers of becoming the other corporate party and the Clintons hated him for it (even though he was right about nearly all of it).
The NY Times is well aware of how differently insider campaigns and populist grassroots campaigns are run. They know that none of what they are attempting to pin on Bernie or even Jeff Weaver would have been known by them. And even then after the fact when Bernie found out about what had happened, he did everything he could to prevent any of it from repeating in his 2018 campaign or moving forward into 2020 or beyond. He set up policies which go way beyond what most any other candidate or campaign has with a channel for filing complaints independent from the campaign. He also went in and gave raises to anyone who felt they were being underpaid because of their gender (even though they were likely getting what they asked for). He even apologized for something he knew nothing about because he cared about the people who were hurting. 
Huffington Post described sexual harassment claims in both Clinton and Sanders campaigns back in 2017. But you wouldn't know it from the current coverage by the people smearing Sanders and in so doing implying it's not a widespread problem that all campaigns need to deal with, even in the insider campaigns where the staffing is better vetted and some abusers should be known. If the purpose of these smear articles was to address the chronic issue going on in campaigns they would be giving more examples to make the point that campaigns like business settings and in life issues of sexism need to be addressed, they would also have focused on what Sanders had done to address the issues and what other campaigns had done after allegations came to light or to pre-empt such problems
The corporate media and party insiders will continue to punch left and smear all the progressive candidates. They will continue to bully and smear progressive voting blocks just as they have done for decades. We as progressives need to know its coming and push back everytime we see it. And we need to avoid circular firing squads were progressives are attacking other progressives. The corporate party insiders are counting on divide and conquer. They are showing no signs of having learned any of the lessons of 2016, let alone 2017 or 2018 and are still trying to fit all incidents and outcomes into their outdated and disingenuous world view.
