I couldn’t agree more with my friend Atif Qarni, who has run twice for the Virginia General Assembly (for House of Delegates in 2013 and State Senate in 2015) on this (see particularly starting at 5 minutes, 30 seconds in). In Atif’s view, we need to bring the enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders to the local level. “…folks I saw at our local library who were Bernie supporters, I’ve never seen those people before; I mean, where were you guys when I was running for office? You can’t just keep getting excited about presidential elections; all politics is local…but we don’t see a lot of these folks who volunteer for presidential years, they go away, a lot of these people were not around when local elections were going on.” Eric Byler puts forth a scenario in which the Sanders movement transfers its energy and enthusiasm to local races – and local, progressive, grassroots candidates like Atif Qarni – across the country. Atif responds that Sanders “can really preserve his legacy by creating an organization that focuses on local races,” congressional and state-level races. Again, I couldn’t agree more.
