Yes. It is that simple.
The largest political party in America is the None of the Above Party, which garners more support than either the Democrats or the Republicans: that means that motivating eligible voters to go to the polls matters more than anything else when it comes to determining the outcome of federal elections.
By far the largest group of eligible voters in the None of the Above Party is young people, and Bernie Sanders polls higher among young eligible voters than any other candidate, by a huge margin. In 2016, Sanders commanded more support from young voters than Clinton and Trump combined.
Since then, Sanders has only increased his support among young potential voters — even as younger voters have, in turn, increased their turnout. In the 2018 midterms, turnout from young people flipped many seats, and the organizations that represent young people are predicting even bigger turnouts in 2020.
One of these organizations, the Dream Defenders Fight PAC, sums up the power of Sanders: “Bernie is not our political savior. It is the movement behind him that will change this country. We are not electing a savior; we are electing a political opponent who we will hold accountable to meet our demands.”
This represents an important contrast with Obama in 2008: Obama was a once-in-a-generation orator whose soaring rhetoric inspired a movement that changed the voter turnout numbers and took him into office. But Obama was deeply mistrustful of political movements and literally switched off the servers that ran his grassroots organizer network when he took office.
