Is Tuesday’s Florida primary the last stand for Bernie Sanders?

Miami Shores -- Juan Diaz, a 37-year-old insurance claims investigator voted for Barack Obama twice, but says he was never politically active.

“Bernie is the first candidate who inspired me,” he said, referring to the Democratic party’s progressive candidate, Bernie Sanders.

Diaz showed up last weekend at the home of a Sanders campaign activist to volunteer for canvassing duties, knocking on doors in his north Miami district.

“I’m here to talk to people and spread the word,” he said, dressed in a black t-shirt and baseball cap and equipped with a clipboard and special canvassing phone app to direct him to the homes of potential Sanders voters.

“We’re digital now. We’re getting more sophisticated and support for Bernie is growing,” he said, adding that he was “super optimistic,” about the prospects for victory despite what he reads in the media and sees on TV. “I feel the mainstream media is never going to be fair to Bernie,” he said. “The corporate narratives they push are not the narratives I see when I knock on doors,” he added.

The Sanders campaign for the Democratic primary is heading into what could be a decisive battle on Tuesday, the third successive week of voting in multiple states.
Don’t call it Custer’s Last Stand, as that legendary battle didn’t turn out too well for the U.S. 7 ^th Cavalry regiment facing overwhelming odds in 1876.

Trailing in polls

But there’s no escaping the dire reality. Trailing badly in the delegate count, Sanders needs a massive victory on Tuesday when four key states are up for grabs: Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, and the biggest prize of all Florida’s 248 delegates.

The four states account for 15 percent of all delegates in the Democratic primary. And by the time the night is done, more than 60 percent of all the delegates in the Democratic race – from more than 30 states and territories - will have been awarded.

But unless something dramatic happens, it seems unlikely he’s going to get the win he needs in Florida. Polls show former vice president Joe Biden in a commanding double-digit lead.

That doesn’t deter Allan Nichols, or ‘A.J.’ as he’s known, a dedicated and enthusiastic Sanders activist or ‘Victory Captain,’ who welcomed Univision into his Miami Shores home to meet volunteers and watch him train some of them over the last couple of weeks.

Dubbed the ‘Bernie Barn’ his garden outside has several yard signs declaring ‘Bernie 2020’ and ‘Unidos con Bernie,’ as well as a photo of the Vermont senator’s face.

Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the campaign cancelled all canvassing events in the last few days and switched to phone banking, or having volunteers make phone calls, as well as digital and virtual outreach, like social media posts and videos.

"We still have a shot"

“I'm posting like a Madman,” said Nichols, a 58-year-old, New Jersey-born, director of a local government TV channel, who was off work with a cold for part of the week, not coronavirus-related, he stressed. “I hate to have a cold at this time. We still have a shot and we MUST make the most of it,” he wrote via text messaging on Friday. “With a President like Bernie, we could not only handle this pandemic, but PREVENT IT. The World Needs Bernie NOW. These fools in charge are going to kill us one way or the other,” he added.

Nichols, and many of his volunteer team became Sanders supporters in 2015, helping found the People’s Progressive Caucus of Miami-Dade. “There was a group of us that stayed connected. We really didn’t stop,” he said.

Unless there is a massive youth vote, which hasn’t shown up yet in other states, Sanders has a generational problem in Florida.

Florida has an older electorate of retired voters and large African American communities, both of whom lean heavily for Biden, polls show. Nearly one third of Florida Democrats are 65 and older. Black voters make up more than 28 percent of registered Democrats.

Hispanics make up nearly 18 percent, but unlike other states where Sanders has performed well with Latinos, they are more conservative in Florida.

Sanders may have hurt his chances in South Florida a few weeks ago when he defended Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba. One-third of the Miami-Dade county’s electorate is made up of Cuban exiles who fled the island over the course of the last 60 years to escape communist rule.

Super Tuesday at the 'Bernie Barn'

But that wasn’t much on the minds of the 30 volunteers gathered at the Bernie Barn on Super Tuesday for a watch party with wine, beer and pizza.

“Everyone help yourself, this is a socialist house,” said Nichols, greeting his guests, a diverse group of mostly young professionals.

Sanders’ brand of ‘democratic socialism’ was a million miles from Cuba communism, said Nichols. “It’s nothing more than using tax money for the people and not bailing out banks and funding wars,” he said.

His Super Tuesday guests all said they were inspired by Sanders and felt they were part of a social movement to reform the United States, make it less beholden to corporate interests and more responsive to the needs of ordinary taxpayers.

During a group photo in the living room, they chanted “Not Me, Us,” a Sanders slogan that sums up their cause.

“I’m very lucky, I’m healthy. I’m not voting for me,” said Isabel Loaiza, a 38-year-old Montessori teacher and mother of two young boys, who said she moved to Miami in 1999, from Medellin, Colombia.

“I want a society for my children. We need to invest our money in those things and not more wars,” she added.

Loaiza said she was never interested in politics until being moved to tears seeing Sanders on TV. “I was one of those people who thought there is nothing I can do to change things,” she said. “Then, in 2015, I saw this guy online. I still get emotional thinking about it. It was 3am. I was in bed,” she added, saying Sanders still makes her cry.

Physical therapy assistant and massage therapist, Natalia Romagnoli, 43, said she left Argentina in 2003, and said she was drawn by Sanders’ radical message of wholesale reform of government. “We need a structural change from the base up, not a little here and a little there. Patches won't work,” she said.

Hounsh Munchi, a 26-year-old graduate research assistant from India studying computational science and artificial intelligence at the University of Miami, said healthcare reform was her main reason for supporting Sanders.

She had a hard time understanding why some people don’t like the idea of Medicare-for-All. “What is wrong with people?” she said, adding that maybe the coronavirus outbreak will help people realize the benefits.

“This is a system that forces you to spread the virus because you can’t afford to take the day off. We are the richest society in the world but at the same time we are the most vulnerable society in the world,” she said.

Businesswoman , Dawn Grayson, 46, who works for her family’s architecture sign company, said she backed Sanders because he refused to take large corporate donations. “I come from a family of means. I’m a capitalist with compassion. My family’s business has franchises all over the country. But I believe we need to get money out of politics,” she said.

Her father suffered from Parkinson’s disease and even with insurance he said her family is still paying his medical bills four years after he died. “We are still paying the debt from the nursing home. There were certain medications that weren’t covered,” she said.

At the results came in on Super Tuesday and it became apparent that the results were not going their way, the mood grew less cheerful at the ‘Bernie Barn.’

Juan Lanuza, a 28-year-old former U.S. Marine Corps who said he served in Afghanistan and is now studying computer programming and game developing, put on a brave face.

“Don’t worry. Tonight, doesn’t mean we should get down. We need to work harder and push through it,” he said. “I try to be very optimistic. It’s bad for your health if you are too cynical and nihilistic,” he added.

But like some in the room, he suspected the Democratic party wasn’t playing fair and was favoring Biden. “I hope they don’t steal it. If that happens it just shows our democracy doesn’t exist,” he said.

Nichols and others described their frustration as delegated to the party’s nominating convention in Philadelphia where they say they were rudely treated by party leaders and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Grayson said she voted for Clinton anyway in 2016, and will do the same for Biden if it comes to that. “I think people will vote but the hard part will be getting people to volunteer. Bernie inspires people to do more,” she said.

"Bernie or bust"

Nichols said he wasn’t giving up on Sanders and would vote for anybody over Trump, even though he considered Biden a weak candidate. “Biden’s time has gone, he’s not a winning horse,” he said, before switching metaphors. “You have to put your best fighter in the ring. You need Rocky, man! Because he’s going up against the Champ, Donald Trump,” he added.

But polls show a small percentage, maybe 10-15 percent of Sanders supporters are more hostile to that idea.

Loaiza, the school-teacher, recoiled at the suggestion of Biden being the Democratic party candidate in November.

“It’s Bernie or bust,” she said. “I might even vote for Trump because maybe that’s what it takes for everything to go to hell, so people wake up. Trump is not the problem. He’s a symptom,” she added.