We Asked Pete and Bernie Fans if They’ll Team Up to Beat Trump

When all is said and done, will Pete voters back Bernie and vice versa?

Following former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s narrow win over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in last week’s Iowa Democratic caucuses, the two presidential candidates are duking it out in New Hampshire: Sanders slammed Buttigieg for accepting campaign contributions from billionaires, and Buttigieg said Sanders’ policies skew too far to the left.

Mother Jones digital producer Mark Helenowski caught up with Buttigieg and Sanders supporters on the trail this week to find out what pushed them to support one candidate over the other—and whether they’d vote for their candidate’s opponent. One common theme emerged, no matter what the voter’s current predilections: the need to unify the Democratic party to take on President Donald Trump in November.

Thomas Angell, a 21-year-old student and Sanders supporter, said that the senator alone had the support base to win. “To actually beat Trump, we can’t just be opposed to Trump,” he said. “We have to offer something else. He actually believes in something incredibly concrete that we can all get around.” Multiple Sanders supporters—some sporting “Bernie Beats Trump” pins—pointed out that the senator tends to perform well in polls that pit him against Trump. 

But others Mother Jones spoke to, including Phillip Benkert, a 65-year-old retiree, think Sanders’ policies would do more to divide than to unify. “This country’s splitting into pieces, and you need to bring the suckers together and not go over there,” he said, gesturing to his right, “or over there,” he added, gesturing to his left.

“You’ve gotta have a centrist candidate,” Donald Marcus, a 73-year-old retired veterinarian, agreed. “I don’t see why the Democratic Party can’t figure that out.”

But to unseat the president, Democrats will have to rally around their nominee, even if he or she isn’t their first choice in the primaries. Most of the New Hampshire Democrats we spoke to said they would do just that.

“I don’t care if it’s somebody who just got out of an insane asylum,” Marcus said. “Anybody but 45.”

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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