Post-mortem: Did Sanders run a good campaign?

[Lyin' Steve]

I think his astroturfing operation was spectacular and led to his breaking out of the pack and convincing young people that his socialist message was the future.  Other than that, though, after Iowa it was just one mistake after another and he never really came as close to Hillary as someone with his advantages and her disadvantages probably should have.  I feel like Hillary didn't have to try very hard to beat him.  Overall, mixed feelings.  In 2015 he ran a very good campaign, but once the primaries started 2016 was quite poor.  This is, of course, discounting the fact that many of his problems in 2016 were born of mistakes made in 2015, in particular his decision to not make any attempt to attract superdelegate support or endorsements from within the party.  The extra 4-5% he would have gotten from some smarter investments in infrastructure and party support in 2015 would have netted him the Iowa/NH/Nevada trifecta start, helped him avoid being crushed on March 15 and ACELA, and maybe helped him appeal beyond his big base.  He would still have gotten murdered in the south and in most of the big Clinton states though, even if she still had gone easy on him.

Overall, Bernie needed black voters, his biggest mistake was letting Hillary get that 200 delegate margin set up early, that really locked the inevitability narrative into place, and rightfully so since one month into the race she had already practically wrapped it up, even without counting the superdelegates.

[Lyin' Steve]

Hell no.

Have friends inside the campaign, it was an absolute nightmare.

There were tight operations on the state level, and the field staff were top notch. Digital obviously did a good job fundraising. A lot of the younger folks hired on to run states etc were VERY good.

But the upper levels of the campaign, especially in Comms, and the ambiguous Political/Mucky Muck/inner circle staff were a mess of backbiting, outdated strategy, and micromanagement.

I buy that, and part of that blame lies on the Captain of the ship, but it's not like any top notch folks were dashing to work for Sanders.  Clinton locked all of the experienced veterans up way early.

Yeah I could see this.  There were a LOT of young people who were very skilled at social media, online presence and fundraising, hype building and image appeal to other young people, and they obviously didn't like Clinton, so they signed up with the most interesting rival.  But the top levels of the campaign, and Bernie himself, were a train wreck, and I'm not sure they even understand what they had or how they got it.  Contrast with Obama, who had a similar gift handed to him but also had the skill and surrounded himself with the expertise to be able to channel it into a successful campaign operation that not only won him two relatively easy elections but also helped engineer a congressional sweep that same year (2008).

[Lyin' Steve]

A bullet has been dodged. There is no real reason to disbelieve the thrust of the Politico article. Much of it, in retrospect, was hidden in plain sight; people and groups with a history of working and knowing both Clinton and Sanders (Planned Parenthood for example) endorsed Clinton no doubt on similar understanding. There may indeed be a hint of the internal sabotage of Edwards’ campaign in 2008 and certainly the mess of all this will be fascinating reading.

I've been saying it forever.  Nearly every congressman endorsed Clinton, even though most of them have never even worked with her and they've all worked with Bernie Sanders.  It's the same deal as with Ted Cruz -- these are the people who know you best and they've overwhelmingly rejected you.  Then you go look up his record and find out that his two contributions over the last thirty years have been to 1) reintroduce the exact same boilerplate legislation for far-left causes every single year and claim each time that it's a revolution, and 2) tack on amendments to other people's work and then take credit for their work.  And what are those amendments?  If you read them, they're just ideological statements that reinstate what is already widely accepted or law without actually doing anything.  And then apparently he refuses to vote for a bill unless they put his amendment in so he can pretend he's an author of the actual bill.