Rachel Maddow: Bernie Sanders Campaign Rewrites History Of Losses

[Her Sister]

Even Rachel Maddow thinks the Bernie Sanders campaign has gone off the deep end
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/even-rachel-maddow-thinks-the-bernie-sanders-campaign-has-gone-off-the-deep-end/24296/

With as much time as respected MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has spent cheering on the various aspects of the Bernie Sanders campaign over the past few months, it’s caused many within her audience to question if she’s lost her focus, and some have told us they’ve tuned her out entirely. But that may be about to become a moot point, because Maddow now appears to be losing patience for Sanders as he shifts his tone from idealistic to nihilistic and absurd. In fact Rachel took the Sanders campaign to task for its (false) claim this week that it wasn’t even trying to win in certain states.

The claim, which came from Bernie Sanders senior strategist Tad Devine, was that Sanders has won states in which he invested time and resources, and has lost eight key states because he wasn’t bothering to compete there to begin with. It’s not clear why such a claim was supposed to help the Sanders campaign or make him look good, but as it turns out, the claim is factually and numerically false. Rachel Maddow took particular objection to the claim and tore it apart on-air last night.

Maddow walked through the numbers demonstrating that the Bernie Sanders campaign invested more time and resources than Hillary Clinton in states like Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Virginia – yet Clinton won all of those states in whopping blowouts. That left Maddow to conclude that the Sanders campaign will have to “walk back” Devine’s comments for being false. She also suggested that if Sanders continues with his new strategy of trying to pressure superdelegates to hand him the nomination even though he’s far behind in regular delegates, even his own supporters may not follow him down that path.

Generally speaking, Rachel Maddow sounded borderline fed up with the direction the Bernie Sanders campaign has begun taking of late. Considering that she has been one of his biggest on-air allies in all of cable news , this can’t be a positive development for him. Her full nine minute MSNBC segment is available online, but the above referenced commentary begins at about the six minute mark.

[Her Sister]

1. Bernie Sanders’ campaign offers awkward take on state of the race

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/bernie-sanders-campaign-offers-awkward-take-state-the-race

long take from MSNBC...

At its root, Devine’s argument is that Team Sanders identified a series of early, delegate-rich states, but they chose not to bother with them. That’s not just a bad argument; it’s the kind of message that’s probably going to irritate quite a few Sanders supporters who expect more from their team.

Making matters slightly worse, Tad Devine’s pitch isn’t altogether accurate. In Virginia, for example – one of the eight primaries in which he says Team Sanders chose not to compete – plenty of campaign watchers know the senator actually made an effort in the commonwealth and lost anyway. The senator also campaigned in Texas, which is another one of the states Devine said the campaign wrote off.

As for the argument that Sanders wins “in every place that we compete with her,” even taken at face value, it’s not an especially compelling argument: Team Sanders made a real effort to win in states like Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, and Massachusetts, but he lost in each of them.

Don’t be too surprised if Devine walks back his comments today. It’s just not a message that does Team Sanders any favors.

Update: Devine also said the Sanders campaign chose to compete for state victories, rather than compete for delegate victories. I have no idea why the campaign would deliberately choose to compete by the wrong metric that would lead to defeat, but if I were a die-hard Sanders backer, this kind of rhetoric would be incredibly frustrating.

[stopbush]

4. Devine knows that it's hopeless to think Bernie will catch Hillary in the popular vote,

in pledged delegates and super delegates. Devine may be a lousy campaign manager, but he's been around long enough and failed enough to recognize failure when it is staring him in the face.

His only hope is that Bernie carries enough states - no matter their size or importance - to make the highly specious argument that because Sanders is CLOSE to Hillary in the number of states he won, and because - as they will aver, rightly or wrongly - he has the late-season momentum on his side, that the super delegates should defect to Sanders en masse and give him the nomination because he has the best chance of beating Trump or whoever.

That's Plan A, and it's a very bad plan.

Plan B? That involves Hillary quitting the race for one reason or another.

I'm pretty sure Devine knew it was over when Bernie's win in NH didn't translate into a win in NV. The Bernie wipe-out in SC confirmed his worst fears. Since then, he's been trying desperately to control the narrative...which he's also failing at because Hillary continues to win where it's important, while Bernie only wins where it doesn't really help him.

[Thinkingabout]

2. This may be some preparation for the outcome to at least admit the road to victory has passed.

[TexasTowelie]

3. But we aren't supposed to follow MSNBC according to a DUer

that I had an exchange with last night because all they do is bash Bernie.

[FloridaBlues]

6. What? Bash Bernie on MSNBC prime time hardly does that

[Tarheel_Dem]

5. Why can't Devine be honest? They win the small caucuses, Hillary wins the big primaries. One only

has to look at the popular vote count to know that's true. Devine is a slime bucket, who's making a buttload of money off of willful ignorance on the part of people who can't deal with basic math. Hopefully, this will all be over soon.

[George II]

7. Sounds almost like a Trumpism: "we really didn't want to win anyway!"

[CalvinballPro]

8. Maddow reported their campaign activity in those states as fact. The Sanders campaign basically

called Rachel Maddow a liar in regards to the information she published on her show. I don't know Rachel Maddow personally, but I do know most people don't like being called a liar. And they especially don't like being thrown under the bus by someone they've been supportive towards. Sanders or his campaign staff shot themselves in the foot on this one.

Although, have we actually seen the "walking it back" happen yet from the Sanders campaign? Or are they mostly getting away with it?

[Gothmog]

9. Bernie Sanders’ campaign offers awkward take on state of the race

This is a good report on the silliness of the Sanders campaign claim http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/bernie-sanders-campaign-offers-awkward-take-state-the-race

But as a rule, presidential campaigns don’t get to lose a whole bunch of key primaries by wide margins and then declare, “Yeah, but we weren’t really trying.” If these eight nominating contests have left the Sanders campaign at a disadvantage they’re unlikely to overcome, it’s actually incumbent on his top aides and strategists to explainwhy they didn’t make more of an effort in these states.

It’s easy to imagine folks from Team Clinton saying they weren’t exactly going all out to win in Idaho and Utah – states Sanders won easily – but competitive candidates for national office don’t get to use that as an excuse when things aren’t going as well as they’d like.

At its root, Devine’s argument is that Team Sanders identified a series of early, delegate-rich states, but they chose not to bother with them. That’s not just a bad argument; it’s the kind of message that’s probably going to irritate quite a few Sanders supporters who expect more from their team.

Making matters slightly worse, Tad Devine’s pitch isn’t altogether accurate. In Virginia, for example – one of the eight primaries in which he says Team Sanders chose not to compete – plenty of campaign watchers know the senator actually made an effort in the commonwealth and lost anyway. The senator also campaigned in Texas, which is another one of the states Devine said the campaign wrote off.

As for the argument that Sanders wins “in every place that we compete with her,” even taken at face value, it’s not an especially compelling argument: Team Sanders made a real effort to win in states like Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, and Massachusetts, but he lost in each of them.

Don’t be too surprised if Devine walks back his comments today. It’s just not a message that does Team Sanders any favors.

Update: Devine also said the Sanders campaign chose to compete for state victories, rather than compete for delegate victories. I have no idea why the campaign would deliberately choose to compete by the wrong metric that would lead to defeat, but if I were a die-hard Sanders backer, this kind of rhetoric would be incredibly frustrating.

This excuse is so very weak

[Cha]

10. This is golden.. Mahalo, Her Sister! Stupiest campaign strategy Ever and I'm so glad Devine

is running the damn show.

[LAS14]

11. Kick!