Politico has a story out tonight, Inside the bitter last days of Bernie’s revolution, that bodes ill for the future of Bernie’s movement. In it top staffers dish on the dysfunction in the campaign and blame Sanders himself:
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.
They appear to expect gratitude for not doing more to tear down the entire Democratic party:
Sanders and aides laugh at the idea that he’s damaging the party and hurting Clinton. They think they don’t get enough gratitude for how much they held back, from not targeting more Democratic members of the House and Senate who opposed him to not making more of an issue out of Clinton’s email server investigation and Bill Clinton’s sex scandals, all of which they discussed as possible lines of attack in the fall.
They even share damning internal emails:
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.
The article highlights a series of ridiculous demands on the Democratic convention and Hillary Clinton, including vetoing Sherrod Brown for VP and demanding “long term control over party operations.” This looks like campaign aides, hoping for a future in Democratic politics, jumping ship before Sanders burns the whole thing down around himself. Ezra Klein’s gloss on the article is:
the Sanders who appears in this article seems to be unnerving even his top aides, and any campaign that leaked this much to Politico is not in a functional place.
Maybe Barack Obama will explain to Bernie the reality of his situation on Thursday and save him from himself.