Everything. A book about how Bernie melted down in 2020 should be required reading for every person working on campaigns. I have some thoughts about some highlights. https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates/status/1285638551221280768

1) Bernie the figure in the eyes of his most fervent supporters became increasingly unmoored from Bernie the actual person and politician after 2016. He is extremely charismatic and gives a great speech. He believes what he says. I respect him and his time in government.

Bernie the figure is created from the dreams of leftist activists. He was spoken of as a messianic figure who is going to single-handedly end capitalism and roll out a healthcare overhaul. He never compromises.

The figure is who the campaign tried running.

2) The inability to read the room after both 2016 and 2018. Bernie's 2016 strength was read as "secret rural socialists" instead of "not HRC." White college educated suburban wine moms swung the house with moderate candidates. Neither of these boded well for the campaign.

3) The campaign made some terrible hires that shot them in the foot. Briahna Joy Gray and David Sirota made things harder for the campaign to move the ball.

4) Attacking Obama and his legacy was a boneheaded move.

5) Besides some very public figures, the staff and policy shop of the official Sanders campaign seemed to be high quality and really wanted to win. The problem was that Bernie had a shadow campaign of podcasters, Twitter personalities, and writers.

The shadow campaign was filled with people who, looking back, undermined the official campaign at every turn. They did a good job at creating hype, but, also made it hard for the tent to expand when candidates dropped out.

Bombing mentions with and wasn't encouraged or condoned by the official campaign, but the shadow campaign pushed them. The purity testing wasn't pushed nearly as hard by the official campaign as it was by the shadow campaign.

6) The refusal to play nice with the big labor unions did a part in sinking the ship. The endorsements of all of the major unions should have been ironed out in 2017. That probably would have required some amount of compromise.

7) Black voters, especially Black voters in SC, were HRC's and Biden's firewall. I never saw a plan to build the relationships between 2016 and 2020 to bring those crucial voters into the fold.