Some talk today of the Sanders campaign doing a “reassessment” after tonight. Here’s Tad Devine via the New York Times:
“If we are sitting here and there’s no sort of mathematical way to do it, we will be upfront about that,” Tad Devine, Mr. Sanders’s senior strategist, said in an interview. “If we have a really good day, we are going to continue to talk about winning most of the pledged delegates because we will be on a path toward it. If we don’t get enough today to make it clear that we can do it by the end, it’s going to be hard to talk about it. That’s not going to be a credible path. Instead, we will talk about what we intend to do between now and the end and how we can get there.”
Sanders is not going to get enough today to make it clear that he can do it by the end. There’s not going to be a credible path toward winning the most pledged delegates. It’s time for reassessment.
Here’s an idea about what they can do between now and the end:
“What’s The Matter With Kansas: The Campaign”. Take the thesis of Thomas Frank’s famous book, invert it with Sanders’ policy set and talking points, and run on that for the next 3 months.
Kansas has been driven hard into the ditch by orthodox GOP policies, for a while now but recently it’s been a spectacular failed experiment. Kansans might be willing to take a second look at the vision of their main mainstream party, given the effects it’s had on them.
Kansas Democrats also voted for Sanders rather heavily, and it appears that Kansas is a region fairly friendly to Sanders and open to his message. He has a mandate to talk about it, to some degree.
Why does Kansas vote for the Sam Brownbacks of the world, and for his terrible policies that have only bankrupted and wrecked the state? Why do the heavily pro-Sanders Kansan Democrats not have more success, there, statewide?
Without a path forward toward the nomination, Sanders can easily look backward to where he dominated the race, and magnify that element of his appeal and campaign on a public exegesis of why he did so well there (and why the GOP shouldn’t do so well there).
There’s nothing about this focus — whether it’s all about Kansas or uses the same general idea in the many different states that Sanders has already won — that will detract from Clinton.
It will do nothing but strengthen Sanders and weaken the GOP. And thus help Clinton...in November, while still helping Sanders for the rest of the campaign and beyond.
And there’s nothing the matter with any of that!