How Sanders Caught Fire in Iowa And Turned the Clinton Coronation Into A Real Race
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Source: Washington Post
DES MOINES — It was the first big strategy session between Hillary Clinton and the yet-to-be-announced manager of her yet-to-be-launched presidential campaign. As they huddled that day last March in the converted barn that serves as her home office in Chappaqua, N.Y., Robby Mook thought he ought to call the presumed front-runner’s attention to a rumor that was starting to go around. “Bernie Sanders is going to be a real contender if he gets in,” Mook recalls warning his new boss. Mook grew up in Vermont and knew what happened to those who underestimated Burlington’s onetime mayor. I’ve seen this guy in action,” he said. Clinton, he said, had the same uneasy feeling about her ex-colleague from the Senate. Sanders turned out to be more dire a threat than either could have anticipated. Not only did Sanders live up to Mook’s assessment of his political skills, but in Iowa, he fit the moment and the passions of a Democratic base that put him in position to pull off one of the biggest upsets in the history of the caucuses.
Clinton was determined not to repeat the mistakes of 2008, when her seeming inevitability melted in Iowa like a snowman in April. This time, she accepted the state and its quirky caucus system on their own terms, building a formidable army of operatives and volunteers. Staffers at the Brooklyn headquarters were instructed to cater to the needs of state-level organizers. The meticulous work proved crucial as Clinton’s wide lead began to evaporate over the summer. She had to grapple with a Republican onslaught over her handling of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. And she endured the controversy over her use of a private email server. In Sanders, Clinton came up against a challenger who lacked her organizational firepower but campaigned as a repudiation of the front-runner’s establishment credentials. Sanders’s vow to blow up the big banks effectively painted Clinton as an ally of Wall Street.
Sanders’s rise in Iowa exposed weaknesses that could haunt the Democratic front-runner. A self-described democratic socialist who was running 30 points behind her in the polls as recently as November, Sanders drew support from young people, liberals and independents. Building on a message. The reality of what was happening dawned on Sanders when he got stuck in traffic on a Sunday morning. The senator from Vermont had launched his long-shot bid five days before. He was headed to a May 31 rally at the American Indian Center in Minneapolis, his first big campaign event outside his New England home turf. But Sanders was still blocks away — and the car he was in was not moving “Is there a wreck ahead?” Sanders anxiously asked his field director, Phil Fiermonte. "No, Fiermonte replied, "they're here to see you." More than 3,000 of them, many standing outside because the hall was full. “It never occurred to me in a million years that line was for us,” Sanders recalled in a telephone interview Sunday, as his campaign bus chugged between Marshalltown and Ames on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. “I said, ‘Whoa.’
That was the first inkling that I had that this campaign was catching on.” And the crowds kept growing — in Denver, in Madison, even red-state bastions like Dallas and Houston. At the Phoenix Convention Center in mid-July, he drew upward of 11,000, more than double the number who had shown up there for Donald Trump the week before. The biggest was in Portland, Ore., where 28,000 came to hear him in August. Still, Sanders barely registered in the national polls. His organization was starting from nothing. Clinton had hired most of the name-brand political talent and had all the big endorsements. Many of those who hadn’t joined her were leery of crossing her. In the early days of the Sanders campaign, “there was a guy. There was a message. That was it,” said political consultant Tad Devine, who had worked for a couple of Sanders’s congressional campaigns and signed on for his presidential one.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-sanders-caught-fire-in-iowa-and-turned-the-clinton-coronation-into-a-real-race/2016/02/02/83b08d22-c79a-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html
Included in the article:
-PHOTOS, What It Looks Like on the Ground in IOWA for the Caucuses.
-VIDEOS,
- 'Why Bernie Won Over This First-Time Caucus-Goer'.
- Clinton: 'I'm Breathing A Big Sigh of Relief' After Iowa.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Explains the strange odor. 
of Bernie's campaigns I think. A gaming and comic book shop sounds right, and fun. He does very well in interviews, sharp and even, and the same in person. Wouldn't want to get on his bad side. 
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