The Sanders Brain Trust's Plan to Beat Hillary Clinton

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-10-28/bernie-sanders-brain-trust-says-he-can-beat-hillary-clinton

...his comments were telling: about both the darkening assessment of Clinton among Sanders's people and their heady confidence that they can beat her. Though Sanders's top advisers concede that the past two weeks—from the first debate to Joe Biden's decision not to run to the Benghazi hearing—have provided Clinton with a boost, they contend that the fundamentals of the race remain unchanged. That Clinton is still a markedly weak candidate, far less in tune with the Democratic nominating electorate than Sanders. That their operation is stronger financially and organizationally than the establishment grasps. And that if Sanders can prevail in Iowa (where he is currently trailing) and New Hampshire (where he leads), the nomination will be within their grasp... Sanders's lieutenants provided me with a wide-ranging and at times detailed account of their strategy for the three-month sprint to the first two must-win contests. That strategy is premised on the notion that their campaign has shifted into a new gear, moving from what Weaver calls “the introductory phase” into “the persuasion phase.” This new phase will be more aggressive, hard-edged, and focused on driving home contrasts between Sanders and Clinton. In other words, it will be more negative. Just how nasty things will get remains one of two central questions that will define the battle ahead. The other is whether Sanders, with his deep aversion to negative campaigning, is willing and able to do what is required to take down Clinton without tarnishing his brand as a different kind of politician.

It's worth recalling that a similar set of questions confronted Barack Obama eight years ago. In using the J-J as a pivot point, Sanders was mimicking Obama, who famously did the same thing in November 2007 with a speech that eviscerated the then-front-runner (“Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we're worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won't do”) without ever uttering the word “Clinton.”

But unlike Obama's assault on Clinton then, says Sanders's chief strategist, Tad Devine, his boss's attack last weekend was in part a defensive measure: a response to Clinton having gone after Sanders at the debate on guns and afterwards for suggesting that Sanders's comment that “all the shouting in the world” wouldn't fix the problem with gun violence was at once directed at Clinton and in some way sexist. (“I've been told to stop shouting about guns,” she declared at a rally last Friday in Virginia and again at the J-J. “Actually, I haven't been shouting, but sometimes when a woman talks, some people think it's shouting.”)

“We had to fire a shot across their bow, because they were going to start to have their way with us,” Devine told me. “I pushed [Sanders] hard to do what he did to let them know, if they're going to do this stuff that two of the 12,000 votes he cast in Congress about guns are the definitive votes of the election—and oh, by the way, she is yelling because she's a woman. If they are going to start going down that road, we are not going to take it. And it is going to be about a lot of issues where she's gone from one place to another. We did five of them [at the J-J] and we could do 15 more.”

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