Looking for Early Victories, Sanders Lost Chance to Expand Base
This is something much discussed and agreed upon.........---"ceding the Southern states"--was not a good move for the Sanders camp.
Looking for Early Victories, Sanders Lost Chance to Expand Base
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-08/looking-for-early-victories-sanders-lost-chance-to-expand-base
A decision after his Nevada loss set up a dynamic that would haunt the campaign for the rest of the race.
June 8, 2016 — 4:00 AM CDT
Updated on June 8, 2016 — 9:14 AM CDT
Bernie Sanders’ senior advisers were still in Las Vegas the day after the Nevada caucuses when they convened a conference call to plot their path ahead.
Over the previous 10 months, they had focused establishing Sanders as a credible challenger to Hillary Clinton, the overwhelming early favorite in the race. Sanders was drawing thousands of enthusiastic supporters to rallies. As his populist message resonated among restive voters eager for change, he turned a 50-point gap in the polls in Iowa into a narrow loss in the caucuses. Eight days later, he followed up with a come-from-behind landslide win in the New Hampshire primary.
But after the Feb. 20 loss in Nevada, the third contest in the race, Sanders’ team concluded they needed some definitive, and sure, wins. That meant ceding the Southern states that dominated the next round of contests to Clinton and focusing on five primaries and caucuses in states where minority voters wouldn't be as much of a factor.
“The alternative was to spread the resources over more states, like Texas and Tennessee and Georgia and try to accumulate as many delegates as possible,” Tad Devine, one of the advisers who took part in the strategy session, said in an interview. “If we did that we had a very good chance of maybe winning only Vermont, and maybe one other state, but we would not be able to sustain the campaign and we would not be able to relaunch it.”
That early decision set up a dynamic that would haunt the campaign for the rest of the race. While Sanders’ success with white liberals, independents, and young voters led to huge crowds and a flood of small-dollar donations, he would never overcome his crippling deficit with black and Hispanic voters and long-time Democrats. Momentum wasn't a substitute for votes and delegates......................
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