Bad news for Bernie has his backers getting antsy [View all]

[DonViejo]

His campaign says his organization will win out and that predictions of his demise are way premature.

By HOLLY OTTERBEIN 07/04/2019 08:02 AM EDT

Bernie Sanders keeps getting bad news.

After Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren seized the spotlight in the first primary debate, the Vermont senator dropped to fourth place in two polls in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa. In some national surveys, Sanders fared just as poorly. And though he raised an impressive $18 million over the last three months, former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg posted bigger hauls in the same period.

Inside the campaign, though, Sanders’ aides are defiant: They believe that Washington journalists are getting the presidential election wrong all over again, underestimating Sanders’ large volunteer base and mistaking temporary changes in surveys as permanent shifts in the race.They see the up-and-down polling — some of which has shown him gaining ground after the debates — as proof the primary is wide open. And they think that if Biden continues to lose support, as he did after Harris landed a blow on him in the first debate, Sanders is best positioned to win over his voters.

“When he announced in 2016, a lot of people in the elite class said that he stood no chance and couldn’t win. Over the course of his campaign, he proved a lot of people wrong,” said Faiz Shakir, Sanders' campaign manager. “Fast forward to 2019, and you have some of the same skeptics saying it’s dead, it’s all over. I think they will be similarly proven wrong.”

Still, even though the Sanders team would never call it a “reset,” his aides are sharpening a new line of attack against his rivals and experimenting with different ways to connect with hard-to-reach voters as the race heats up. They’re also continuing to shift from big rallies to more intimate events in the nation’s early states, such as ice cream socials and selfie lines — an acknowledgment that Sanders needs to adopt a more personal approach and participate in additional retail politicking to win.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/04/bernie-sanders-2020-election-campaign-1397850