Primary election 2020: Bernie Sanders draws major crowd in Boston

More than 10K turn out for Bernie Sanders rally in Elizabeth Warren's backyard

BOSTON – Four miles from the Cambridge home of Elizabeth Warren, more than 10,000 people turned out in freezing temperatures Saturday for an outdoor Bernie Sanders rally at Boston Common, three days before Massachusetts’ 91 delegates are up for grabs on Super Tuesday.

With former Vice President Joe Biden the favorite to win Saturday's South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, Sanders looked ahead to Super Tuesday, where he has an opportunity to build a significant overall delegate lead. He was in Springfield, Massachusetts, Friday night and will be in Virginia on Saturday evening before heading to Los Angeles on Sunday.

“As some of you may know, the establishment is getting very nervous about our campaign,” said Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, taking the stage after musician Béla Fleck warmed up the crowd with the banjo. “And tonight, they’re going to turn on the TV and they’re going to find that 10,000 people came out to the Boston Common, and they’re going to become even more nervous.”

The Sanders campaign later said more than 13,000 people attended.

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In Massachusetts, Sanders is going for a knockout punch against Warren, a U.S. senator from the state, and delegates that once seemed improbable given her home-state advantage. But Sanders, the national Democratic frontrunner, has surged into first place in recent Massachusetts polls, topping Warren 25% to 17% in a survey released Friday by WBUR. They were followed by Pete Buttigeig, 14%; Mike Bloomberg, 13%; and Biden, 9%.

Sanders, a democratic socialist, did not mention Warren during his speech, railing instead on President Donald Trump, the “1 percent” and billionaires in his usual populist pitch. “This is not just a campaign. We are a movement,” Sanders said.

“Here we are a few days before the Massachusetts primary in the most consequential election in the modern history of America. And we are assembled to tell Donald Trump he’s not going to destroy democracy in America.

“I know I am in a city of great learning with great universities,” he added. “And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t have a Ph.D. in mathematics, but this I do know: 99% is a hell of a lot bigger than 1%.”

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Sanders' rise has come at the expense of Warren, who is also running in the party's progressive lane and shares several policy positions as Sanders.

The Warren campaign this week released a list of 147 Massachusetts elected officials – local, state and federal – supporting her campaign. Backers include Sen. Ed Markey, U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Joe Kennedy III, Katherine Clark and Lori Trahan, as well as state Speaker Robert DeLeo, state Senate President Karen Spilka and Attorney General Maura Healey.

But Warren has not campaigned in Massachusetts in recent days. She will be in Houston on Saturday night.

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Among those in the Sanders crowd, Thomas Simpson, a 29-year-old nonprofit worker from Allston, Massachusetts, said he originally supported Warren but switched and voted for Sanders during the early-voting period after her struggles in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

“Just the trends in the polls seemed to indicate that it’s a race between Bernie, Bloomberg and maybe Biden as well,” Simpson said, describing himself as “much more aligned with Bernie’s policies” than the others.

“In general, I don’t necessarily gravitate toward Bernie’s outright advocacy of socialism,” he said, applauding Warren’s support of progressive taxation. “I’m not as far left as Bernie’s politics, but I think that we definitely need to nominate somebody who’s going to offer a clear choice to Donald Trump and his policies.”

Simpson said Bloomberg would be a “disaster” and that he’s concerned with the possibility of a brokered convention at the Democratic National Convention if Sanders doesn’t reach a majority of delegates.

“I would hope the party and the superdelegates would do the right thing at that point and realize there’s a movement going on in the Democratic Party. There’s a movement toward progressive positions,” Simpson said.

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Brian Willis, 56, a union stage handle from Scituate, Massachusetts, said he voted for Warren for Senate in both 2012 and 2018 but is backing Sanders for president. He proposed that Warren serve as Sanders’ vice president if he’s elected.

“I think they’d make a great team, but I’ve been a Bernie supporter for a while and I think that she has less electability, in my opinion,” Willis said. “If Bernie wasn’t in the race, she’d be my top choice.”

Willis touted Sanders’ “years and years of fighting for the underdog.”

“He’s stood up for what was right. And so has Elizabeth Warren,” he said, but added: “I believe the Democratic establishment stole his opportunity last cycle.”

Massachusetts state Rep. Mike Connolly, D-Cambridge, was among a handful of Democrats to speak before Sanders.

“This Common has hosted revolutionaries from John Adams to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.," Connolly said. "So, it’s very fitting that we are in here today in support of Sen. Sanders, for Bernie is a revolutionary and a true champion for public good.”

Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison.