June 14, 2016

MEETING WITH HILLARY CLINTON

My campaign was over. With the completion of the DC primary on June 14, 2016, the Democratic presidential primary process had finally come to an end. Starting from nowhere, with a relatively unknown senator from a small state, our campaign had taken on virtually the entire Democratic establishment, shocked the political world, and helped transform American politics.

Starting off at about 3 percent in the polls, we ended up winning twenty-two states and received over 13 million votes. We showed that working people all over this country were prepared to support an agenda that stood up to the billionaire class and that called for the transformation of our economic and political life.

Most significantly, we had won overwhelming support from the young people of our country — black, white, Latino, Asian American, and Native American. This was the future of our country, and we ended up winning more votes from people under forty than Clinton and Trump combined. Young people had shown very clearly that they were tired of status quo politics and were prepared to accept a very new vision of what our country could become.

I was extremely proud that a poll conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics suggested that our campaign had fundamentally changed the way that millennials think about politics. John Della Volpe, who conducted the poll, stated, "He's not moving a party to the left. He's moving a generation to the left."

Despite losing 95 percent of the establishment superdelegates to Clinton, we won 1,846 delegates to the Democratic Convention.

With no super PAC or dependence on wealthy donors, we had also revolutionized campaign fund-raising. We received some 8 million individual contributions, from over 2 million people, more than any candidate in American history, averaging $27. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers played an active role in our grassroots campaign in every state, and we drew to our rallies some of the largest crowds in recent political history.

On the night of June 14, with the primary process over, Hillary Clinton and her key advisers John Podesta and Robby Mook sat down in a Washington, DC, hotel with my campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, my wife, Jane, and me. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the best way forward and to determine how we could most effectively work together to defeat Trump.

Coming into the meeting, I had a number of questions on my mind. In order to gain the support and enthusiasm of people who had voted for me, was Secretary Clinton willing to move closer to some of the popular positions that I had advocated during the campaign? Could we work together to write a progressive Democratic Party platform that made it crystal clear that we stood with the working families of our country? Could we begin the process of changing some of the archaic and antidemocratic rules of the Democratic Party and open the party up to working people and young people who currently felt little or no allegiance to it?

Those were some of my concerns. Clinton, legitimately enough, had other and more immediate interests. She wanted to know what kind of role I was prepared to play in the general election. When and how should I endorse her? What states would be best for me to focus on? How could we best work together at the convention in Philadelphia?

As is always the case, the devil was in the details. After reaching a general agreement at the meeting as to the best path forward, we trusted our staffs to work out the particulars over the next several weeks.

July 9, 2016

THE MOST PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL PLATFORM IN U.S. HISTORY

I have said it a million times, but I think it bears repeating. The campaign that I ran for president was never about me. It wasn't about political gossip, campaign strategy, the horse race, or fund-raising.

The campaign was about creating a government and an economy that works for all of us, not just the top 1 percent. While the primaries were over, the fight for economic, racial, social, environmental, and political justice was not — not by a long shot.

As part of the political revolution, our next mission was to write the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party: a platform that would live on beyond the campaign, and, more importantly, a platform that would serve as a beacon for Democratic candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. This would be a document that stated loudly and proudly what the Democratic Party was supposed to stand for.

Historically, the Democratic Party's platform has been crafted largely behind closed doors, deep inside the corridors of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), by the staff of the presidential nominee. The final product is usually heavy on empty rhetoric but light on specific policy solutions. After the convention, the platform is forgotten about — and sits on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust.

We set out to change all of that, in terms of both process and content. After all, the 13 million Americans who voted for our campaign did not do so because...