Sanders allies launch super PAC to rally progressives behind Biden

Former senior aides to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign are launching a new super PAC aimed at rallying progressives behind former Vice President Joe Biden in his battle against President Trump in November.

The group, which will be called Future to Believe In, will be led by Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders 2020 campaign.

“Because of the strength of the progressive movement, we together have moved the Democratic Party and the national debate,” Weaver said. “All that success, however, means little to the people whose interests we seek to represent – working families, the poor, and marginalized communities – if we don’t elect the candidates we have pushed, and continue to push, to be more progressive. Electing Joe Biden as President of the United States will allow some of those gains to be institutionalized so that our movement can focus on pushing the debate even further in years to come.”

Sanders has an enthusiastic base of young progressive supporters. However, in 2016, some establishment Democrats blamed Sanders for not doing enough to rally his supporters behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the eventual nominee. Sanders and his allies feel that criticism is unfair.

But this time around, Sanders dropped out of the race earlier than expected once it became clear that Biden had built an insurmountable lead in delegates. Sanders quickly announced his support for Biden, and now his top lieutenants are launching this super PAC to boost Biden in the general election.

In addition to Weaver, the group will include Chuck Rocha, a senior Sanders adviser who led the campaign’s Latino outreach, Tim Tagaris, who was in charge of Sanders’s digital fundraising operations, and Shelli Jackson, the Sanders campaign’s deputy director in California.

The Sanders allies said that Biden has shown a willingness to move in a more progressive direction on labor rights, higher education and health care by agreeing to include Sanders’s advisers on a policy task force.

“At this moment we can lock in political gains progressives have made possible through our collective work,” Weaver said. “We believe it is wrong to abandon the gains earned by the hard-working people who supported Bernie Sanders’ two presidential [bids] and who will continue to support economic and social progress through electoral action and non-electoral organizing long into the future.”