My thoughts on why the Sanders' campaign is in meltdown [View all]

[Moderateguy]

There was never a Plan 'B': They knew that Sanders's support had a very hard ceiling. They were never under the impression that they would have a majority of the delegates. The plan always was to walk into the convention with a plurality of delegates and DEMAND the nomination. Problem is it needed a fractured moderate wing to be able to succeed. They, like most of us, assumed that most of the moderates would not drop out before Super Tuesday. The idea being that Bernie would concentrate heavily on CA, all the moderates would cancel each other out, and Bernie would be the only one viable statewide and walk away with a massive (insurmountable) delegate haul. That is why he skipped Selma for events in CA. They knew they had no AA support but could mine the biggest delegate rich state to make up for it. They never expected the moderate lane to come together before ST.

The misread the results in NV: The campaign mistook the massive win in NV and a majority of voters being tired of the "establishment" and doubled down on the attacks on the Democratic Party-which spectacularly backfired. The vote in NV was more of a protest vote against Union bosses thinking that they could tell members how to vote and they would vote accordingly.

Current attacks on Biden: They know full well that they won't get moderate support but the hope is that Biden falters enough so that another moderate (possibly Bloomberg) panics and re-enters the race. The new candidate would win in the states going forward and there is a very good chance that Sanders ends up with a plurality-back to Plan 'A'.

Sanders' has VERY WEAK surrogates: All of his high level campaign staff come from a very liberal bubble and are at best an echo chamber. They cannot deal with Moderate and Conservative Democrats as they have no experience in doing so. That is why they are all lashing out-they are very, very angry and frustrated and do not know what to do. They are unprepared and unable to re-tool the messaging to appeal outside their base. This is killing them-they have been outmaneuvered by the 'establishment' they so love to hate and can't really do anything about it.

These are the main reasons, IMO, the campaign is in full meltdown mode. They know that the nomination is pretty much gone and are lashing out trying to pit democrats against each other-the only thing they know how to do successfully.