Report: Sanders opposed going after Clinton on speeches, advisors pushed him to do it

[geek tragedy]

The first pre-mortem is out, in the NY Times:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton.html

Despite the urging of some advisers, Mr. Sanders refused last fall and early winter to criticize Mrs. Clinton over her $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, an issue that he now targets almost daily. He also gave her a pass on her use of private email as secretary of state, even though some allies wanted him to exploit it. And he insisted on devoting time to his job as a senator from Vermont last year rather than matching Mrs. Clinton’s all-out effort to capture the nomination. Some advisers now say that if he had campaigned more in Iowa, he might have avoided his critical loss there.

...
In October, as they gathered at a hotel outside Las Vegas to prepare for the first Democratic debate, Mr. Sanders’s advisers urged him to challenge Mrs. Clinton over accepting $675,000 from Goldman Sachs for delivering three speeches, according to two Sanders advisers. They thought the speaking fees meshed with the senator’s message about Wall Street excess and a rigged America. But Mr. Sanders, hunched over a U-shaped conference table, rejected it as a personal attack on Mrs. Clinton’s income — the sort of character assault he has long opposed. She has the right to make money, he offered.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton.html

The article also shows the campaign advisors blaming Sanders for not working hard enough on the campaign trail and doing too many big rallies. Devine and Weaver are poison.

Mr. Devine said the senator might have won Iowa’s caucuses if he had spent a few more days wooing voters in the western and rural parts of the state. “In retrospect, it would have been better to have spent a little less time in New Hampshire and some more time in Iowa, but New Hampshire was our flank, and he had to defend it,” Mr. Devine said.

The senator won New Hampshire by more than 20 percentage points.

Mr. Sanders also resisted pleas to do the kind of retail-style campaigning that Iowa voters like. He wanted to do more large rallies instead, even though many Iowans like politicians winning them over face-to-face.

“Bernie would say, ‘If I’m at a diner having a cup of coffee, I don’t want candidates coming up talking to me,’ ” Mr. Devine said.

[Skwmom]

1. I still think the speeches will end up being an orchestrated whitewash. They should have went AFTER

all speech transcripts, not just Goldman Sachs.

[HumanityExperiment]

2. Simple HRC optics...

[geek tragedy]

3. Congratulations on hating Hillary Clinton.

You have a lot of illustrious company.

[HumanityExperiment]

4. Yep, all of us actual liberals / progressives

We actually support a candidate that embodies DEM foundational principles... and one that embraces the liberal / progressive label, and that's Bernie

[geek tragedy]

5. Congratulations on your empty sanctimony. nt

[HumanityExperiment]

8. Empty...

You would know best... your candidate embodies empty, she lives and breathes political expediency and portrayed in the video I linked

[virtualobserver]

7. We hate her policies.....Democrats shouldn't advocate policies like that, and certainly should not..

be taking money hand over fist from giant corporation.

[CalvinballPro]

6. You know, I previously thought that Sanders' campaign would be staffed with the kind of young people

that his message attracts. Instead, I've seen over and over how the Sanders campaign is a pet project of a bunch of middle-aged white dudes. Campaign disclosures reveal that his core team is all men; how "progressive" of him, right? Tad Devine is a Democratic Party insider who has worked on 5 presidential campaigns so far. Jeff Weaver sounds like this is his first time speaking in public sometimes. Both men are an embarrassment to the campaign and the candidate they represent. Theirs is the politics of resentment.

Meanwhile, Hillary's staff is much more diverse, on both race and gender, and her campaign efforts are being run by people like Robby Mook, who's only a year older than I am. Pictures from her campaign headquarters routinely reveal a staff that's nowhere near as gray as the one running the Sanders show.

The only reason that Sanders is winning the youth vote is that he did a bunch of pre-campaign poll testing to see what was popular with them, and then made those things the center of his platform. Maybe he should have poll-tested what issues matter to older voters, and consistent voters, rather than unreliable Millennials who use politics as just another temporary hobby at which they play sometimes.

[HumanityExperiment]

9. Shorter...

Bernie's campaign on ideas is winning hearts and minds, how are his staff encouraging younger voters to follow him and not HRC?

Tell HRC to become honest, to not take $$ from special interests that are counter to liberal / progressive ideals, then your 'point' would make sense...

Bernie having a better staff and smarter folks isn't a problem, it's your problem to figure out how to beat his message and the surge being created as this primary process moves along

Have a good day!

[JSup]

10. I still hold...

...some unreasonable hope that Bernie hasn't let the people that run his campaign corrupt him; but it really does seem like they're leading him through a cesspool.