Editor’s note: “Bernie Briefing” is a weekly campaign-season look at how Vermont U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is playing in the national media.
[B]ernie Sanders may have won contests in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington this weekend, but can he snag enough victories in other states to stay viable in the coming months?
The political press and pundits agree Sanders must keep generating money and momentum to continue his campaign against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton until the party’s national convention in July.
“Any hope he has of catching Clinton runs through Wisconsin on April 5, a large state with favorable conditions for the underdog,” reporter Gabriel Debenedetti writes in a Politico story headlined “Sanders Scrambles To Keep Pace With Clinton.” “Then comes the delegate-packed April 19 New York primary — where Sanders and his aides believe they can surprise Clinton in her home state.”
“Sanders would then need to over-perform in the five Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic primaries on April 26 and remain competitive through May’s slow trickle of contests,” Debenedetti continues. “Sanders’ aides believe if they can do that, he’ll have a shot at yet another big win, in the biggest delegate pool of them all, California’s June 7 primary.”
Sanders, appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press,” vowed to continue on, even with Clinton leading nationally by nearly 300 delegates.
He said on CNN: “We’ve won the last five out of six contests, all of them in landslide victories. We are in this race to win.”
And NBC: “Our calculations are that, in fact, we can win the pledged delegates, and I think a lot of the super-delegates are now beginning to look at which Democratic candidate is in the best place to defeat Donald Trump. I think some of them are beginning to understand that it’s Bernie Sanders.”
And ABC: “I will not deny for one second that we still remain the underdogs. But we have come a long, long way, you will have to concede, in the last 10 months. We do have a path toward victory.”
In other news:
— In a story headlined “Democrats To Sanders: Time To Wind It Down,” Politico reports the candidate’s Senate colleagues are impressed with — yet insistent he end — his insurgent campaign.
“Not a single Democratic senator has endorsed Sanders,” reporter Burgess Everett writes. “And beneath their deference, there’s growing irritation among the lawmakers that the longer his campaign continues, the more he will undermine Clinton in the fall.”
Asked how long Sanders should remain in the race, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told Politico, “That’s something he’s going to have to decide” before adding, “She’s going to be the nominee.”
— What’s a reporter to do after hearing the same stump speech again and again? New York Times’ Jason Horowitz offers a story headlined “Bernie Sanders Consistent Over Decades in His Call for ‘Revolution.’”
“Asked if Mr. Sanders had ever been forced to change his thinking, his campaign said that he had cast a vote for the war in Afghanistan, but then called for the withdrawal of American troops when the war seemed to become a quagmire,” Horowitz notes. “Other than that, said Michael Briggs, his spokesman, the senator had been ‘remarkably consistent.’”
— Then again, for those wanting something different, Curbed LA promises a photo package headlined “Here’s Bernie Sanders Trying to Squeeze Down Hollywood Boulevard.”
“Sanders took a stroll through the most nightmarish part of town,” senior editor Adrian Glick Kudler writes alongside proof, “looking just as irritated as every other person who finds themselves having to make their way through the crowds.”
— In “Sanders’ Big Rallies Cost Big Money,” Politico reports the campaign spent $1.6 million this past month alone on site rentals, tickets, staging, sound and lighting at ever-larger venues, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“I would say it’s more like what you would be spending in a general election because of the size of your crowds,” Bob Shrum, a former senior adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign, told Politico. “But he’s getting crowds of that size in the primary. So you’ve gotta have those venues and you gotta do the lighting and the stagecraft so that people in a place where there are eight or 10 or 12,000 people can actually see the stage and the candidate.”
— Yet perhaps the best things in life are free, as seen in the more than 1 million video views and counting of a sparrow perching on the candidate’s podium Friday in Portland, Oregon — sending the story flying to such places as Austria (“Birdie und Bernie: Kleiner Vogel stiehlt Sanders die Show”), Mexico (“‘Birdie’ Sanders Causa Furor En Eu”) and Sweden (“Här stjäl fågeln showen – från ‘Birdie’ Sanders”).
“The bird did not say whether it thought we need a political revolution in this country or whether he supported breaking up the big banks,” Time reporter Charlotte Alter writes, “but he did seem to understand the power of tweeting.”
