Presidential races

MoveOn endorses Bernie Sanders

by Ben Kamisar

MoveOn is endorsing Bernie Sanders for president after the liberal challenger to Hillary Clinton won 78 percent of votes cast by its membership.

Ilya Sheyman, MoveOn Political Action’s executive director, lauded Sanders for his run-away win and promised to help turn out voters in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, where the group has 43,000 members and 30,000 members respectively. 

{mosads}“This is a massive vote in favor of Bernie Sanders, showing that grassroots progressives across the country are excited and inspired by his message and track record of standing up to big money and corporate interests to reclaim our democracy for the American people,” Sheyman said. 

“We will mobilize aggressively to add our collective people power to the growing movement behind the Sanders campaign, starting with a focus on voter turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire.” 

Clinton won a paltry 14.6 percent of the 340,665 votes cast by members of the liberal group, which nearly a decade ago opposed Clinton’s record on the Iraq war.

The group endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008 after he won 70 percent of the vote in the endorsement survey. 

MoveOn had started the presidential cycle trying to goad Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) into a presidential bid with its “Run Warren Run” campaign but ultimately abandoned that effort after she repeatedly declined to mount a bid.

Sheyman called MoveOn’s endorsement “a natural progression from the Run Warren Run campaign,” more proof of Sanders’s popularity with the party’s progressive base.

Democracy for America, another major progressive group that joined with MoveOn on the “Run Warren Run” bid, endorsed Sanders last year. 
 
MoveOn started as a group offering support for former Presient Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
 
The name of the group was taken from their original petition, which called on members of Congress to censure Clinton and “move on” from the controversy.