I don't take that as quite a conspiracy theory, although I understand why you would. I view it as a link to his campaign message about the influence of money in politics. Questioning the motives of others is healthy, especially corporations who do things only in their best interest, even charity. Not to vilify the people who run companies, since I'm sure most do it for good reasons, but the corporate underlying motive (money) is always there. Corporations are more than the sum of its parts, like most things.
I agree with you, these sentiments can be taken too far and the campaign has been defensive. I don't feel he has great people in charge, which I know is the sentiment here. I would argue though only the people out-of-state flooding the caucuses is a real conspiracy theory. It was deprived from Weaver not knowing how the system works, which as I said before is bad, even if he's not likely responsible for that aspect. Bureaucracy exists within campaigns and with this one even staffers get annoyed by it.
Just like Bernie I don't think his staffers always consider the ramifications of statements. You're right, it's all about management.
He was allowing people to fill in the blanks on their own, but the subtext is definitely there. Microsoft is giving the software away for free because they're corporate and want Bernie to lose. That's what he was wink-wink-nudge-nudging, and a lot of Bernie's people ran with it.
I've always been critical of Bernie's people more than Bernie. I don't agree with him on specific policy, but that's something we could debate on and he could smooth over. The conspiracy theory, the Berniebro stuff, his ridiculously poor campaign management...that's the stuff that gets me. The latter I find most worrying, because it shows me that he would be a hands off President on nearly everything that wasn't income inequality. He hasn't shown he can lead anything at all, let alone his campaign.
I'm glad to see that a Hillbot and a Berniestan can agree on things, though!
I'm also annoyed at this "virtual tie" nonsense. Hillary won. Period. She had more state delegate equivalents, and she is projected to have more state delegates. (23 to 21, and when we add her soft delegates who would support her because she won the state's caucus, she's up to 29). By every measure we have ever used in the history of politics, she won....but because it was Bernie she beat (albeit way too slightly for my tastes) it's a virtual tie.
The other thing that I think should concern some Bernie folks, and this is not me attacking him, is that Iowa should have been better for him, especially if his "revolution" is a real thing that's really happening. To be frank, I believe it is happening, but it's only happening among the 18-30 year old liberals who were ready to put their throat on the capitalist neck to begin with. If there was this huge movement, we should have seen it. He killed it among the under 30s, no question at all. But, his revolution wasn't strong enough to overcome a better, more organized, better trained and (probably) better funded ground game. That doesn't bode well for his GE chances, in my opinion.
