Excerpt: "Dismissed only a couple months ago as a fringe candidate, the
self-described democratic socialist senator from Vermont has proven in
recent weeks that he is a contender to win the Iowa caucuses and New
Hampshire primary. Now Sanders is plotting his path to the nomination in
what he anticipates will be a long race for delegates."
Senator Bernie Sanders holds a press conference after a town hall meeting at
the Treasure Island Casino in Las Vegas on June 19th, 2015. (photo: Arun
Chaudhary)
How Bernie Sanders Is Plotting His Path to the Democratic Nomination
By Philip Rucker and John Wagner, The Washington Post
13 September 15
Bernie Sanders is fast expanding his political staff, crafting a delegate
strategy and cultivating a vast volunteer corps and digital fundraising
network that he believes can seriously challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton for
the Democratic presidential nomination.
Dismissed only a couple months ago as a fringe candidate, the self-described
democratic socialist senator from Vermont has proven in recent weeks that he
is a contender to win the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Now
Sanders is plotting his path to the nomination in what he anticipates will
be a long race for delegates.
With Clinton falling in the polls and top Democrats increasingly concerned
about her electability, Sanders is trying to take advantage by assembling a
grass-roots machine modeled in part after Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Yet
many serious obstacles stand between him and the nomination - and Sanders's
advisers acknowledge that their calculations would be complicated further if
Vice President Biden enters the race.
The growing Sanders operation in the early states now nearly rivals the
Clinton campaign. He has 54 paid staffers in Iowa and 38 in New Hampshire
and dozens more coming on elsewhere, compared with 78 field staffers in Iowa
and 50 in New Hampshire for Clinton. Both are far larger than any Republican
campaign.
Sanders is also moving swiftly to expand his presence in South Carolina and
Nevada and boost his standing among black and Latino voters. He is
organizing in four states - Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont -
with primaries or caucuses on March 1 that his team considers opportunities
for victory. He also is targeting Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, which vote
later in March and where his advisers think his appeal to working-class
whites can be decisive.
The Sanders campaign is training tens of thousands of volunteers to organize
in their communities, expanding its social media presence and erecting an
online fundraising apparatus to fully exploit every spurt of excitement. The
senator is preparing to make major policy announcements - as Clinton has
done this summer - designed to go deeper than the insurgent agenda he lays
out in his stump speech.
Sanders also is beginning to press the case to Democratic leaders that he,
not Clinton, would be the strongest nominee because of the enthusiasm his
populist message generates. His advisers have been encouraged by recent
polls showing Sanders trouncing Clinton among voters under 30 years old or
whose annual family incomes are less than $30,000; both demographics
traditionally vote in low numbers.
"He's the base expander," said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver.
"You start communicating his message with people who haven't heard it yet,
it will resonate. We have a lot of crawl space here," added Tad Devine,
Sanders's top strategist.
Weaver and Devine laid out the Sanders playbook in a nearly 90-minute,
on-the-record interview with The Washington Post this week at the campaign's
office on Capitol Hill. A key part of their calculation, as for Obama in
2008, is amassing delegates in populous states like Texas even if Clinton
wins. According to Democratic rules, delegates are allocated proportionately
based on vote totals by congressional district.
Sanders's swift rise - the latest public polls show him leading Clinton in
New Hampshire, statistically tied with her in Iowa and gaining on her
nationally - has startled the political establishment. His unabashedly
progressive message of taking on "the billionaire class" has drawn thousands
of people - in some cases tens of thousands - to his rallies. Clinton, by
contrast, generally campaigns in smaller venues and has sometimes struggled
to fill them.
"He has already surpassed expectations," said David Axelrod, a former top
adviser to President Obama. "Bernie has been very effective. He's completely
authentic, he is earnest, and he's been talking about these issues all his
life. But the challenge now is to transform excitement and energy into
delegates and palpable progress."
Weaver and Devine were candid about the hurdles for Sanders. One of the
biggest is his low standing with minority voters, especially African
Americans, relative to Clinton. She and her husband, former president Bill
Clinton, have spent decades cultivating relationships with blacks and other
key Democratic constituencies.
"Bernie's not well known in the African American community - period. That's
an issue," Weaver said.
Conceding the difficulty in persuading black political leaders to switch
their allegiances from Clinton to Sanders, Devine said Sanders is targeting
celebrities, pastors and community figures for support.
Sanders, 74, will try to share his personal story with black voters this
fall, including on a four-day southern swing starting Saturday: He grew up
poor in a Brooklyn tenement, fought for civil rights as a college student
and has advocated loudly for economic and social justice through three
decades in elected office. He also hopes his calls for a $15-an-hour
national minimum wage and free college tuition will resonate.
Asked if there was a strategy to "humanize" Sanders like the Clinton
campaign has, Devine burst out laughing. "Is he going to change to earth
tones?" Devine said. "Is he going to take the pens out of his pocket? No.
This is it. Nothing's changing."
Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama, said Sanders has performed
"phenomenally" but identified a vulnerability with his core message.
"The existential challenge is his campaign to date has been an inherent
critique of the Democratic Party leadership, including President Obama, and
the voters he has to win over are those most loyal to President Obama,"
Pfeiffer said. "How he squares that circle will determine his fate."
Many Democratic leaders have doubts about Sanders's viability. Of the
roughly 700 superdelegates, who have a say in the nominating contest, more
than 400 are supporting Clinton, her campaign says. None has publicly
pledged to Sanders so far. Superdelegates are free to change their
allegiances, however.
The Sanders candidacy is built to be fueled by momentum. Without it, he
could wither; Weaver and Devine acknowledged that he probably must win Iowa
or New Hampshire or both.
By contrast, Clinton has a stronger foundation to withstand early tumult.
Her campaign sees a series of Southern states with March contests as a
firewall - an idea the Sanders team scoffed at.
"If you have a firewall, that means you need a firewall," Devine said.
Weaver chimed in: "We're going to show that prairie fire beats firewall."
Yet another obstacle is more personal: Sanders has not faced the kind of
media scrutiny, let alone attacks from opponents, that leading candidates
eventually experience. Sure to follow his summer surge is an autumn of
investigations that could reveal new details about his personal background
and record.
"These campaigns run in phases, from the phase where people are expressing
themselves passionately about issues to where they're drilling down and
asking tough questions about, 'Okay, is this person equipped to be president
of the United States?'?" Axelrod said. "The tests become more exacting."
A 'bottom-up structure'
This summer, the enthusiasm Sanders stirred overwhelmed his minimalist
campaign infrastructure. To catch up, officials are building what Weaver
called a "cutting-edge distributive organizing program" for the more than
140,000 people who have signed up to volunteer. National field staffers are
being hired to direct volunteer leaders in a state-by-state tiered network,
who in turn will manage other volunteers in their regions.
Roughly 47,000 volunteers have hosted a house party, canvassed
neighborhoods, written computer code for the campaign or other activities.
At Sanders rallies, volunteers armed with clipboards work the perimeters,
gathering contact information from attendees. The campaign hits them up for
contributions. Weaver was circumspect about detailing the campaign's
fundraising - Sanders says he has more than 400,000 contributors, with an
average of about $31 - but the campaign expects to post an eye-popping total
after the quarter ends Sept. 30.
"The Clinton people are trying to max people out," Devine, noting the legal
maximum donation of $2,700 per person. "Our approach to the fundraising is
the exact opposite. The money needs to come bottom-up, not top-down. .?.?.
The bottom-up structure, if it's exploited properly, can provide a whole new
wave of resources."
Unlike Clinton, Sanders has not begun airing costly television
advertisements. On Aug. 4, when Clinton went on the air in Iowa and New
Hampshire, Sanders huddled with Weaver and Devine at the Capitol Hill office
to weigh whether to match her on TV.
They decided not to. Instead, they husbanded most of their resources and
made what Devine called an aggressive digital ad buy in the same markets -
Manchester, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and others. The effort targeted voters
with a short ad that clicked through to a long biographical video about
Sanders.
"People are not watching 5-and-a-half seconds of it; they're watching
5-and-a-half minutes of it, from beginning to end - the whole thing," Devine
said. "If I pay a few cents for that while our opponent is paying several
million dollars [for TV ads], we are gaining a significant tactical
advantage."
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Senator Bernie Sanders holds a press conference after a town hall meeting at
the Treasure Island Casino in Las Vegas on June 19th, 2015. (photo: Arun
Chaudhary)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bernie-sanders-is-plotting-his-pa
th-to-the-democratic-nomination/2015/09/11/08ddb472-573c-11e5-8bb1-b488d231b
ba2_story.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bernie-sanders-is-p
lotting-his-path-to-the-democratic-nomination/2015/09/11/08ddb472-573c-11e5-
8bb1-b488d231bba2_story.html
How Bernie Sanders Is Plotting His Path to the Democratic Nomination
By Philip Rucker and John Wagner, The Washington Post
13 September 15
ernie Sanders is fast expanding his political staff, crafting a delegate
strategy and cultivating a vast volunteer corps and digital fundraising
network that he believes can seriously challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton for
the Democratic presidential nomination.
Dismissed only a couple months ago as a fringe candidate, the self-described
democratic socialist senator from Vermont has proven in recent weeks that he
is a contender to win the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Now
Sanders is plotting his path to the nomination in what he anticipates will
be a long race for delegates.
With Clinton falling in the polls and top Democrats increasingly concerned
about her electability, Sanders is trying to take advantage by assembling a
grass-roots machine modeled in part after Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Yet
many serious obstacles stand between him and the nomination - and Sanders's
advisers acknowledge that their calculations would be complicated further if
Vice President Biden enters the race.
The growing Sanders operation in the early states now nearly rivals the
Clinton campaign. He has 54 paid staffers in Iowa and 38 in New Hampshire
and dozens more coming on elsewhere, compared with 78 field staffers in Iowa
and 50 in New Hampshire for Clinton. Both are far larger than any Republican
campaign.
Sanders is also moving swiftly to expand his presence in South Carolina and
Nevada and boost his standing among black and Latino voters. He is
organizing in four states - Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont -
with primaries or caucuses on March 1 that his team considers opportunities
for victory. He also is targeting Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, which vote
later in March and where his advisers think his appeal to working-class
whites can be decisive.
The Sanders campaign is training tens of thousands of volunteers to organize
in their communities, expanding its social media presence and erecting an
online fundraising apparatus to fully exploit every spurt of excitement. The
senator is preparing to make major policy announcements - as Clinton has
done this summer - designed to go deeper than the insurgent agenda he lays
out in his stump speech.
Sanders also is beginning to press the case to Democratic leaders that he,
not Clinton, would be the strongest nominee because of the enthusiasm his
populist message generates. His advisers have been encouraged by recent
polls showing Sanders trouncing Clinton among voters under 30 years old or
whose annual family incomes are less than $30,000; both demographics
traditionally vote in low numbers.
"He's the base expander," said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver.
"You start communicating his message with people who haven't heard it yet,
it will resonate. We have a lot of crawl space here," added Tad Devine,
Sanders's top strategist.
Weaver and Devine laid out the Sanders playbook in a nearly 90-minute,
on-the-record interview with The Washington Post this week at the campaign's
office on Capitol Hill. A key part of their calculation, as for Obama in
2008, is amassing delegates in populous states like Texas even if Clinton
wins. According to Democratic rules, delegates are allocated proportionately
based on vote totals by congressional district.
Sanders's swift rise - the latest public polls show him leading Clinton in
New Hampshire, statistically tied with her in Iowa and gaining on her
nationally - has startled the political establishment. His unabashedly
progressive message of taking on "the billionaire class" has drawn thousands
of people - in some cases tens of thousands - to his rallies. Clinton, by
contrast, generally campaigns in smaller venues and has sometimes struggled
to fill them.
"He has already surpassed expectations," said David Axelrod, a former top
adviser to President Obama. "Bernie has been very effective. He's completely
authentic, he is earnest, and he's been talking about these issues all his
life. But the challenge now is to transform excitement and energy into
delegates and palpable progress."
Weaver and Devine were candid about the hurdles for Sanders. One of the
biggest is his low standing with minority voters, especially African
Americans, relative to Clinton. She and her husband, former president Bill
Clinton, have spent decades cultivating relationships with blacks and other
key Democratic constituencies.
"Bernie's not well known in the African American community - period. That's
an issue," Weaver said.
Conceding the difficulty in persuading black political leaders to switch
their allegiances from Clinton to Sanders, Devine said Sanders is targeting
celebrities, pastors and community figures for support.
Sanders, 74, will try to share his personal story with black voters this
fall, including on a four-day southern swing starting Saturday: He grew up
poor in a Brooklyn tenement, fought for civil rights as a college student
and has advocated loudly for economic and social justice through three
decades in elected office. He also hopes his calls for a $15-an-hour
national minimum wage and free college tuition will resonate.
Asked if there was a strategy to "humanize" Sanders like the Clinton
campaign has, Devine burst out laughing. "Is he going to change to earth
tones?" Devine said. "Is he going to take the pens out of his pocket? No.
This is it. Nothing's changing."
Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama, said Sanders has performed
"phenomenally" but identified a vulnerability with his core message.
"The existential challenge is his campaign to date has been an inherent
critique of the Democratic Party leadership, including President Obama, and
the voters he has to win over are those most loyal to President Obama,"
Pfeiffer said. "How he squares that circle will determine his fate."
Many Democratic leaders have doubts about Sanders's viability. Of the
roughly 700 superdelegates, who have a say in the nominating contest, more
than 400 are supporting Clinton, her campaign says. None has publicly
pledged to Sanders so far. Superdelegates are free to change their
allegiances, however.
The Sanders candidacy is built to be fueled by momentum. Without it, he
could wither; Weaver and Devine acknowledged that he probably must win Iowa
or New Hampshire or both.
By contrast, Clinton has a stronger foundation to withstand early tumult.
Her campaign sees a series of Southern states with March contests as a
firewall - an idea the Sanders team scoffed at.
"If you have a firewall, that means you need a firewall," Devine said.
Weaver chimed in: "We're going to show that prairie fire beats firewall."
Yet another obstacle is more personal: Sanders has not faced the kind of
media scrutiny, let alone attacks from opponents, that leading candidates
eventually experience. Sure to follow his summer surge is an autumn of
investigations that could reveal new details about his personal background
and record.
"These campaigns run in phases, from the phase where people are expressing
themselves passionately about issues to where they're drilling down and
asking tough questions about, 'Okay, is this person equipped to be president
of the United States?'?" Axelrod said. "The tests become more exacting."
A 'bottom-up structure'
This summer, the enthusiasm Sanders stirred overwhelmed his minimalist
campaign infrastructure. To catch up, officials are building what Weaver
called a "cutting-edge distributive organizing program" for the more than
140,000 people who have signed up to volunteer. National field staffers are
being hired to direct volunteer leaders in a state-by-state tiered network,
who in turn will manage other volunteers in their regions.
Roughly 47,000 volunteers have hosted a house party, canvassed
neighborhoods, written computer code for the campaign or other activities.
At Sanders rallies, volunteers armed with clipboards work the perimeters,
gathering contact information from attendees. The campaign hits them up for
contributions. Weaver was circumspect about detailing the campaign's
fundraising - Sanders says he has more than 400,000 contributors, with an
average of about $31 - but the campaign expects to post an eye-popping total
after the quarter ends Sept. 30.
"The Clinton people are trying to max people out," Devine, noting the legal
maximum donation of $2,700 per person. "Our approach to the fundraising is
the exact opposite. The money needs to come bottom-up, not top-down. .?.?.
The bottom-up structure, if it's exploited properly, can provide a whole new
wave of resources."
Unlike Clinton, Sanders has not begun airing costly television
advertisements. On Aug. 4, when Clinton went on the air in Iowa and New
Hampshire, Sanders huddled with Weaver and Devine at the Capitol Hill office
to weigh whether to match her on TV.
They decided not to. Instead, they husbanded most of their resources and
made what Devine called an aggressive digital ad buy in the same markets -
Manchester, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and others. The effort targeted voters
with a short ad that clicked through to a long biographical video about
Sanders.
"People are not watching 5-and-a-half seconds of it; they're watching
5-and-a-half minutes of it, from beginning to end - the whole thing," Devine
said. "If I pay a few cents for that while our opponent is paying several
million dollars [for TV ads], we are gaining a significant tactical
advantage."
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