CBS News: What Went Wrong and Right for Bernie Sanders

[ehrnst]

The landslide New Hampshire victory finally put the campaign in a different frame of mind. "It gave us confidence that we could fight," says Jane Sanders. She calls the New Hampshire blowout "humbling, moving and surprising."

But then came Nevada, where a harsh reality set in: the Sanders campaign had not scaled up with talented teams beyond the first two states. The campaign had fired the original state director, and replacement Joan Kato was no better. With three weeks to go before the caucuses, the campaign still did not yet have chairs for every precinct.


There were other signs Kato was overmatched. At one point shortly before the caucuses, she instructed staff to buy double-sided coins -- in case coin-flips were needed to decide any of the caucuses in the event of a tie, according to staffers. In the end, Sanders lost Nevada by about a 5 percent
-----
And there was a certain irony at the very heart of the campaign: Sanders' inner-circle primarily consisted older white men who, like Weaver, had known him for decades, while his real support base was among the young, a group they had trouble relating to.margin. Although the campaign felt Kato had run a faulty field operation, she was not let go, instead staying on with the campaign as the national delegate director."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-went-wrong-and-right-for-bernie-sanders/

[tonyt53]

1. As Sanders advisors said after the CA vote, Bernie called the shots.

He also picked advisers that looked just like he did.

[ehrnst]

2. The ability to choose advisors and campaign staff well is critical to a candidates' success. (nt)

[MaggieD]

6. I see that mistake made in the business world all the time

I am a business consultant and I see leaders make the mistake of hiring people just like themselves all the time, when what they should be doing is hiring people that bring a diverse set of skills, strengths, and viewpoints to the leadership team.

It's a big mistake (and frankly one made mostly by men). I think it's born of an inability to realize and accept ones own weaknesses. Just my opinion.

[bravenak]

34. I see the same thing

[LiberalFighter]

40. At the least a business or organization should have personnel that matches

their market or members. Even then the need for employees that have experience in the process is in important.

In the automotive world they have engineers that know how to design vehicles and employees that know how to assemble the vehicles. And then there are the IE's and mgmt that think they know what it takes for assemblers to do their work. Many times they have never had experience working on the line but think they know better than everyone else because they have a college degree.

[brush]

3. Double-sided coins for coin flips?

[unc70]

4. That was probably a joke

Remember it was after the Iowa coin flips.

[MohRokTah]

11. Yeah, that one demonstrate complete ignorance about Nevada Caucuses.

Nevada always has a draw of cards in a tie.

[calimary]

39. What does that mean, "double-sided coin"?

Curious. I hope it doesn't mean what I think it does.

[Cali_Democrat]

42. They wanted to cheat. nt

[calimary]

52. I was afraid of that.

Didn't want to believe it but that was my first thought. Amazing how that little tidbit didn't get out til now.

[GeorgiaPeanuts]

53. Its called a joke...

In regards to the coin flips from Iowa where Hillary had won a large number of them.

[synergie]

60. Sure it was. By the way Bernie actually won a large number in IA.

[calimary]

61. Well okay, I guess. But it's not very funny.

[brush]

49. It does. A phony coin with two tails or two heads to win coin flips.

[KittyWampus]

5. He relied on large rallies and had no ground game and failed miserably to organize his supporters

and get them to the polls.

[MaggieD]

9. He didn't use his resources well

Large rallies are expensive. He may have preferred the adoration but the money would have been better spent on staffing and a good ground game. Cornell West as a surrogate was a major mistake as well. Bernie must not have realized how much the AA community dislikes West.

Obviously I am a huge Clinton supporter so I have to admit I was secretly pleased to see him make those mistakes. He had a ton of money so it could have been dicey for Clinton without those self inflicted wounds.

Again, just my opinion as a long time political activist and observer.

[geek tragedy]

7. easy to critique his hiring choices, but realistically Clinton had already locked up

the vast majority of organizational talent--he didn't have that many options.

[MaggieD]

10. That's a good point

But on the other hand with only 2 viable candidates he did have some choices. Tad Devine was an exceptionally bad one IMO. Bad track record. And Weaver just lacked experience.

[geek tragedy]

13. I dunno, that campaign overachieved all things considered nt

[MaggieD]

16. Also true nt

[Adrahil]

18. It did surprisingly well, all things considered....

though in the end he still lost, and there were some choices made that affected this. He did spend a LOT of resources on big rallies that in the end probably did not help him all that much, especially late in the race. Ground game wins, which Trump is going to find out.

[ehrnst]

29. He way outspent Hillary

mostly on Ads, and skimped into staff salaries instead. That really showed when his CA organizer quit less than a month before the primaries.

If you don't have good staff, or you brush them off when they have a different POV, then anything you try to do will suffer, and you won't get anything done, no matter the ideals.

[politicaljunkie41910]

46. I thought that the reason the guy in CA quite was because he wanted to focus on the ground game and

the campaign wanted to spend the money elsewhere. I believe the campaign wanted to spend it on advertising and even the media said that was a poor decision because advertising was very costly in a diverse state like California.

[ehrnst]

56. Yes, that's correct. I also think that if he had hired enough staff for

the field in CA, he may have done better, and would have kept his CA guy.

[LiberalFighter]

43. I'm sure there was no shortage of good campaign people.

With Sanders not being considered a serious candidate that might had been the issue. Along with Sanders not campaigning early on to win. At least the latter I perceived was the case.

[ehrnst]

15. Interesting that you say "Locked up."

However people are free to leave the campaign, as we saw with Sanders' CA director.

[democrattotheend]

50. That's what I was thinking

Nobody took him seriously at first, so few top tier Democratic campaign pros were willing to take a risk on him.

[brooklynite]

8. I thought about posting this...and then thought I'd be accused of "revisiting" the Primary

[FSogol]

12. "Lessons Learned" is a positive activity, otherwise mistakes will be repeated.

[RobertEarl]

17. And of course the media bias

The media hated Bernie. How dare he run for president! How dare someone challenge the status quo by talking about how screwed up this country is.

[ehrnst]

19. If you want to talk about media "bias"....

"The Harvard researchers’ findings match those of Crimson Hexagon, a social media analytics firm in Boston. As we reported in April, Crimson Hexagon, when looking at top-tier news outlets, also found that the media had slammed Clinton more than any other candidate.

The methodology of the Harvard study is different. But it also supports the notion that, if the media has been biased against Sanders, it’s not because they’ve been particularly kind to Clinton.

"Sanders’ media coverage during the pre-primary period was a sore spot with his followers, who complained the media was biased against his candidacy. In relative terms at least, their complaint lacks substance," writes Harvard government professor Thomas E. Patterson in the report."


http://www.vox.com/2016/6/20/11949860/media-coverage-hillary-clinton

[demwing]

23. The only bad press is no press at all

if Bernie got slammed less it was only because he was dismissed and ignored

[ehrnst]

24. No. Not really.

Negative press outweighs less press.

[demwing]

26. Yes. Really.

being talked about - even negatively - gives a campaign an air of legitimacy, and beats being ignored.

[ehrnst]

27. Well, then we disagree.

The sheer amount of negative press, both reliable and not reliable, has been posted and shared by people who don't back Hillary as reasons not to vote for her.

[stevenleser]

37. It's an outdated concept that wasn't ever really true. These days with social media and

the rest of the internet, the press is much less important in terms of non-coverage than it used to be.

A small twitter campaign can easily reach 100,000 people.

On the other hand, negative coverage can easily overwhelm and destroy a campaign.

"The only bad press is no press" maxim is true for Hollywood actors, not politicians.

[stevenleser]

36. That is true for a Hollywood actor, not a politician. nt

[Adrahil]

20. I honestly did not see that.

Maybe it was a matter of perspective, but I saw him on TV all the time, and the vast majority of time, his coverage was pretty positive.

[Armstead]

41. There was a critical month or two late 2015.

..when he was basically invisible. His campaign had very little coverage aND it was already cast as Clinton vs the GOP

Only after New Year did they start paying attention again, when he got too big to ignore

[Jitter65]

21. I didn't get that impression at all from viewing coverage.

Bernie received more positive coverage than negative and I saw him more often on cable shows than Hillary. It was almost as though the media was giving him every opportunity get his message out while mostly reporting on what the GOP and Trump was saying about Hillary.

[ehrnst]

28. Absolutely. (nt)

[LiberalFighter]

44. That is the way I saw it. I saw Sanders on more than I did Clinton.

And when Clinton was on it was mostly negative coverage.

[MaggieD]

51. Ditto

My perception as well.

[apcalc]

35. Never once felt the media hated Bernie...

[Orsino]

22. Not being Hillary Clinton.

He deliberately hamstrung his campaign by not taking the easy money; this, however, was paradoxically one of his big draws.

Mainly, he began his campaign as a relative unknown opposing the default nominee, who enjoyed huge advantages in name recognition, connections and nostalgia. Not pkaying the same game is what Sanders "did wrong," but what he did was so very right that for a while there, he looked like more than a long shot.

"Wrong" here ultimately parses to "not Establishment."

[ehrnst]

25. However, Bernie outspent Hillary

and most of that went to ads, rather than quality staffers. I think that was a huge miscalculation, and showed a lack of ability to take counsel.

And I think his progressive peers in the Senate refusing to endorse him was a big issue in his loss.

If the people who have worked with you in your 25 year career as a politician don't endorse you, that sends a message.

[Orsino]

31. The built-in connections and fan base of the Clintons would certainly have been a big help.

Sanders has played a different game. No, it is not the sort calculated to win the same old sort of primary, and an awful lot of money was laid out from the beginning to ensure that only the same old sort of primary was on.

What Sanders has shown us is a path toward something bigger and better, betting on us and our numbers to poss8bly win. Not enough of us were interested, and that much is something Sanders has to own, too. Had he been more photogenic, or more at ease, or more something, his message--the only part of his campaign that ultimately matters--might have caught on bigger and across more demographics.

What I can't fault him for is his startling success in giving us something to build on, and getting penetration with his platform into that of a major party. Those are enormous wins potentially much bigger than one election.

[ehrnst]

32. Agreed. I was always a fan of his issues.

However, I have worked with several Progressive orgs, and people I respect and admire all had that same things to say about him - lots of great ideas, but he alienates people with his refusal to compromise, his inability to take counsel, his assumption that he is the most intelligent person in the room, and his lack of willingness to support fellow progressives if it didn't further his interests.

His dogged insistence that single-payer is the only path to universal coverage, despite what the best non-partisan, self funded think tanks on the issue said proved to me that he didn't listen to anyone who doesn't agree with him.

That was a big appeal to many people, who thought of it as strength, but it made me think that he didn't have the people skills, or the diplomacy to work in the Oval Office.

However, I think that he'll get far more done in the Senate, pulling the conversation to the left as he has been doing successfully for the vast majority of his career in politics.

[Orsino]

54. Single-payer is the most cost-effective way to cover everyone...

...but health care doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not as simple as waving a magic wand, because so much other work has to be done in advance and concurrently: namely, employing peopke who now work for private insurers.

Sanders never promised to eliminate an industry overnight, but he does insist that we keep talking about it.

[ehrnst]

55. Yes, however, it's not really possible at this point.

I go into the reasons why in this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2224969

[Orsino]

59. "Possible" and "feasible" are defeatist framing.

We need to be working yesterday to get coverage more affordable and closer to universal. It's already possible and feasible...we just lack the will.

[ehrnst]

62. There are other ways to achieve universal coverage than Single Payer

Incremental changes to the ACA are possible - such as allowing people to buy into medicare earlier, and getting all kids covered.

Did you read the link in my post?

[Orsino]

63. I believe I just said all that.

I'm for whatever gets us closer to universal, affordable coverage. We'll eventually discover that single-payer is the most efficient way (even if there are multiple single-payer systems), but we're stuck with it until we figure out a safe way to delete the insurance industry.

[charlyvi]

45. I think he also started too late. eom

[Renew Deal]

30. Nevada was where the race ended

It took a few more weeks to become clear, but that was it.

[calimary]

38. I felt that way, too.

[stevenleser]

47. I thought it ended in Iowa. It was obvious to me that if Bernie didnt win big victories in all the

first three states, he wouldn't have the momentum he needed to get the money and support for the upcoming contests in the south. Hillary opened up her big lead in the south and never relinquished it.

As this notes, Bernie and his campaign could only put together serious efforts in Iowa and New Hampshire. Everything else had to come as a result of his performance in those states.

[forjusticethunders]

33. Any progressive insurgency needs to

1: Have a powerful ground game which takes years to set up, with the staffing and organization to match. PREFERABLY, this ground game is either drawing from, organizing with, or otherwise acting as allies to local struggles.
2: Have strong appeal to POC (40% is your absolute minimum (and this is if you're killing it with white voters) taking all non-white groups as a whole he got like 30%).
3: Remember LGBT are something like 15% of the Democratic Party and Bernie lost them.
4: Be a fairly reliable Democrat and don't get sucked into the fever swamps of populist "leftism"; the mainstream Democrat may want a more progressive option but they truly don't buy into the "both sides are the same" shit, certainly the groups mentioned in 2 and 3.


The problem wasn't big rallies per se - the problem was that was the only tool in the toolbox for the Sanders campaign, and the candidate himself didn't have much street cred except with white populists who are only a small part of the left coalition.

[brooklynite]

57. My assessment is that Sanders ran a remarkably conventional campaign.

Rallies to generate earned media and LOTS of TV ads. The early talk about uniquely tapping into social media never seemed to materialize.

[forjusticethunders]

58. It was there but

It failed to translate into boots on the ground. Exciting people and organizing people is two different things.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

48. Bernie Sanders?