By A. Shaw

The Bernie Sanders announcement of his candidacy for the DP presidential nomination attracted over 175,000 volunteers in the first three days. Over 100,000 volunteers were attracted during the first 24 hours following announcement.

These results have shocked the billionaire class, that is, the 440 billionaires who belong to and make-up the financial and political elite of the US bourgeoisie. These results have shocked the whole US bourgeoisie which consists of about 10,000,000 millionaires. These results have stunned the bourgeois media and the political establishment in both of the major bourgeois parties, the DP and GOP.

Using the line that these results  are a fluke and Bernie will cool off in a week or two, the bourgeoisie rode out the panic that the results excited.

Now, Bernie’s campaign has to decide how it will train and use 175,000 volunteers before they scatter from disinterest.

Perhaps, the best model is Obama’s 2008 race.

Obama in 2007 and 2008 gave some degree of training and made used of the services of  over a million volunteers.

Tad Devine, senior adviser for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, wrote a chapter on how Obama won the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination in the book Campaigning for President (Routledge 2009).

But Devine’s area of specialization is paid media in which he is reputed, in the U.S. and internationally, to be very talented. As a rule, paid media guys want to take all the money and the credit for a win. So, volunteers and other sides of the campaign must beg hard for money and resources if these other sides really want them. It will be a huge blunder if Bernie’s campaign falls into this hole.

As a matter of practicality and, more important, as matter ideological principle, Bernie detests the idea of falling into this hole that comforts the paid media guys. From the April 2014, the second month of the campaign, Bernie emphasized that the campaign can’t win without the support of a mass movement and if it somehow won without a mass movement, the progeny of the campaign can not govern without a mass movement.

In 2007- 2008, Obama assembled, during his campaign, a mass movement of over a million people, then, upon election, he disbanded his mass movement as quickly as he could.

What is a mass movement?

The hundred of thousands of volunteers ready to struugle for a political end are the mass movement.

But to be effective, the campaign must train volunteers in the art of political struggle on the basic, intermediate, and advanced levels. And, either during or after the training, the campaign must be managerially up to the task of deploying this political force on the field of political combat.

For God’s sake, let the mass movement get loose!

Nothing said here is intended to diminish the importance of the paid media crowd in any degree or in any way.