Democrats 2020

Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Want His Delegates Attacking Biden on Twitter

The Sanders campaign is asking delegates to sign agreements governing their social media use and convention conduct to avoid a repeat of 2016.

By Alison Durkee

May 20, 2020

Bernie Sanders waves at the 2016 Democratic National Convention

Though Senator Bernie Sanders has officially suspended his presidential campaign, the Vermont senator has made clear that he intends to continue amassing delegates to influence the Democratic platform and push the party further left. But in a sharp shift from 2016, those delegates are expected to be on their best behavior. The Washington Post reports that the Sanders campaign has asked its delegates to sign an agreement regarding their social media use and conduct at the convention, which bars the supporters from making unauthorized comments to the media, confronting people online, and, most importantly, attacking other candidates—like former Vice President and presumptive nominee Joe Biden.

The social media policy in the five-page agreement specifically asks delegates to “refrain from making negative statements about other candidates, party leaders, Campaigns, Campaign staffers, supporters, news organizations or journalists.” “This Campaign is about the issues and finding solutions to America’s problems,” the policy continues. “Our job is to differentiate the senator from his opponents on the issues—not through personal attacks.” Delegates are also directed to “do [their] best to avoid online arguments or confrontations” and assume all their comments are “on the record” and could be attributed to the campaign. “Before tweeting or posting from your personal social media accounts,” the policy states, “ask yourself these questions: If this appeared on the front page of The New York Times, would it compromise Bernie Sanders’s message, credibility, or reputation? Could it potentially risk your standing as a delegate? When re-tweeting or sharing information from others, are you applying necessary skepticism?”

Though the fate of the in-person Democratic convention this summer remains deeply uncertain, delegates are also nevertheless being asked to sign a code of conduct laying out how they’re expected to behave—whether in Milwaukee or virtually. “Engage with other delegates, superdelegates, party leadership, and elected officials with respect and a spirit of cooperativeness, even if I disagree with them,” the code of conduct dictates, along with tenets like acting with integrity, practicing self-care, and “conduct[ing] myself as if I was working in the White House for the American people.” Delegates are also not authorized to “engage with the media” without explicit permission from the campaign, which the Post notes could be particularly important if a virtual convention results in the media and online discourse becoming “the main venues for delegates to express themselves.” Should candidates violate either the social media policy or code of conduct, the agreements warn they will face “disciplinary action, including but not limited to your removal from the delegation.”

The delegate agreements reportedly weren’t received well by many of the delegates themselves, the Post reports, and the campaign is now working with delegates to modify the documents. “Some of the intent and some of the wording was really not agreeable to some of our Colorado delegation,” Colorado Sanders delegate Lori Boydston told the Post, though she noted that the campaign did accept proposed changes. “Some of the wording was really stifling what to say.” Heather Stockwell, a delegate from New Hampshire, told the Post she hadn't personally received the agreements, but heard about their flaws from others. “I did hear about it from other delegates in other states that they were trying to work with the campaign to change some of the wording because it was kind of offensive,” Stockwell said. “Some people were really upset.”

By mandating that delegates hold themselves to this high standard, the Sanders campaign seems to be preemptively trying to stave off the kind of hyper-public dissent that occurred in 2016, when delegates openly booed Hillary Clinton at the convention and walked out when she was named the nominee as expected. “I think the campaign is trying to avoid, you know, a walkout or some really bad optics a la 2016,” Chris Liquori, a Sanders delegate from New Hampshire, told the Post. While that 2016 behavior came from the top to a certain extent—though Sanders ultimately backed Clinton, he was still fighting for the nomination and trying to secure the nomination via superdelegates—the Vermont senator has decidedly changed his tune this time around. Sanders suspended his campaign in April and formally endorsed Biden, with whom the Post notes Sanders has a much better personal relationship than Clinton. In a move to build a bridge between his progressivism and Biden’s more moderate views, the two former rivals also recently launched six Unity Task Forces covering various policy issues, which will make recommendations to the platform committee at the convention.

Despite Sanders’ confidence in Biden, however, many of his progressive supporters still remain unconvinced. A USA Today/Suffolk poll released in late April found that nearly one in four Sanders supporters—22%—were either undecided about supporting Biden or resolved not to support him, whether by voting for another candidate or skipping the polls altogether. And many more are, at a minimum, not exactly thrilled about casting their ballot for the former vice president, with former Sanders campaign adviser Jeff Weaver noting in a memo last week that Sanders voters are “currently unsupportive and unenthusiastic” about Biden. “If I happen to be at my polling place, I would vote for Biden,” 24-year-old Sanders supporter Te’wuan Thorne told the New York Times, “but I’m not very enthusiastic about him whatsoever.”

Though the Sanders campaign policy may prevent some of this anti-Biden sentiment from coming out on social media or at the convention, it obviously won’t be able to change the views that delegates or other Sanders supporters actually hold. Biden, to his credit, has been making an effort to appease the Sanders wing of the party, including forming the task forces with Sanders and announcing policy positions that move further to the left. But in an interview Sunday on ABC News’ This Week, Sanders acknowledged that Biden still has to do more to earn his supporters’ trust. “Look, I think at the end of the day, the vast majority of the people who voted for me, who supported me, will understand and do understand that Donald Trump is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country. ... And I think, at the end of day, they will be voting for Joe Biden,” Sanders said. “But I think what Joe is going to have do, and he’s beginning to move in that direction, is to say that those working class people, say to those young people, say to those minorities, ‘Listen, I understand your situation.’”