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There’s no strategist pulling the strings, and no collection of burn-it-all-down aides egging him on. At the heart of the rage against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the campaign aides closest to him say, is Bernie Sanders.
It was the Vermont senator who personally rewrote his campaign manager’s shorter statement after the chaos at the Nevada state party convention and blamed the political establishment for inciting the violence.
He was the one who made the choice to go after Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz after his wife read him a transcript of her blasting him on television.
He chose the knife fight over calling Clinton unqualified, which aides blame for pulling the bottom out of any hopes they had of winning in New York and their last real chance of turning a losing primary run around.
And when Jimmy Kimmel’s producers asked Sanders’ campaign for a question to ask Donald Trump, Sanders himself wrote the one challenging the Republican nominee to a debate.
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Convinced as Sanders is that he’s realizing his lifelong dream of being the catalyst for remaking American politics—aides say he takes credit for a Harvard Kennedy School study in April showing young people getting more liberal, and he takes personal offense every time Clinton just dismisses the possibility of picking him as her running mate—his guiding principle under attack has basically boiled down to a feeling that multiple aides sum up as: “Screw me? No, screw you.”
Take the combative statement after the Nevada showdown.
“I don’t know who advised him that this was the right route to take, but we are now actively destroying what Bernie worked so hard to build over the last year just to pick up two fucking delegates in a state he lost,” rapid response director Mike Casca complained to Weaver in an internal campaign email obtained by POLITICO.
“Thank you for your views. I’ll relay them to the senator, as he is driving this train,” Weaver wrote back.
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Sanders owns nearly every major decision, right down to the bills. A conversation with former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin about getting left in personal debt from his own 1992 presidential campaign has stayed at the top of Sanders’ mind.
He demanded that the campaign bank account never go under $10 million, even when that’s meant decisions Weaver and campaign architect Tad Devine have protested -- like making the call in the final days before Kentucky to go with digital director Kenneth Pennington’s plan to focus on data and field, instead of $300,000 to match Clinton on TV.
Sanders ultimately lost there by just 1,924 votes.
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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s call was part advice, part asking a favor, urging Sanders to use his now massive email list to help Democratic Senate candidates. Russ Feingold in Wisconsin was the most obvious prospect, and Reid wanted to make introductions to Iowa’s Patty Judge and North Carolina’s Deborah Ross—to help Democrats win the majority, but also to give Sanders allies in making himself the leader of the Senate progressives come next year.
Reid, according to people familiar with the conversation, ended the discussion thinking Sanders was on board. He backed Feingold. But that’s the last anyone heard.
Word got back to Reid’s team that Weaver had nixed the idea, ruling out backing anyone who hadn’t endorsed Sanders. Weaver says it’s because the Senate hopefuls had to get in line for Sanders’ support behind top backers like Gabbard and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.)—though neither has a competitive race this year.
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Top Sanders aides admit that it’s been weeks, if not months, since they themselves realized he wasn’t going to win, and they’ve been operating with a Trump’s-got-no-real-shot safety net. They debate whether Sanders’ role in the fall should be a full vote-for-Clinton campaign, or whether he should just campaign hard against Trump without signing up to do much for her directly.
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Aides say they’re going to discourage people from booing Wasserman Schultz, who’s emerged as public enemy number one among Sanders supporters, when she takes the stage at the convention. But they think it’s going to happen anyway.
Meanwhile, they’re looking into trying to replace the Florida congresswoman as the convention chair with Gabbard, and force Wasserman Schultz to resign as DNC chair the day after the convention.
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There’s also the issue of payback. Campaign aides say that whatever else happens, Sanders wants former Congressman Barney Frank and Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy out of their spots as co-chairs of the convention rules committee. It’s become a priority fight for him.
Sanders, the aides say, believes Frank has hated him for years, but the former Massachusetts congressman’s calling him a “McCarthyite” pushed him over the edge. He never really registered who Malloy was, despite his being from a neighboring home state and his status as one of the most liberal governors in the country, but Sanders was enraged to hear the governor say he had blood on his hands for not supporting the gun manufacturer liability law.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/bernie-sanders-campaign-last-days-224041#ixzz4B1DMlkJS
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What a shit show. Article is really dense. There's more at the link.
