'This Is Not a Find-a-Friend Contest': Bernie Sanders's Resolute Campaign Style

[brooklynite]

New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Senator Bernie Sanders brought his presidential campaign to Pittsburgh earlier this year, he quietly added a poignant stop to his schedule: a visit to the Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 congregants were killed in an anti-Semitic shooting last fall.

But his appearance also came with explicit instructions to his campaign aides, according to two Democrats familiar with the conversation: They were not to tell the news media about his conversation with the rabbi there.

Some aides dissented, believing there was a graceful way to disclose the visit. But Mr. Sanders, the only Jewish candidate among the leading Democratic contenders, did not want the visit to be perceived as a publicity grab. His impulse illustrated a deeper challenge confronting his aides and supporters: After nearly four decades of running, and usually winning, iconoclastic campaigns on his own terms, he is deeply reluctant to change his approach.

Mr. Sanders has been unwilling to regularly talk about his personal history of growing up poor in a Brooklyn neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors, and until recently he resisted letting his campaign poll voters in Iowa, the first nominating state. He has largely defied his staff’s urging that he go on the offensive against Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic front-runner.

[SidDithers]

1. "We're not going to talk about it...

...and here's an article in NYT about how we're not going to talk about it."

Sid

[NYMinute]

2. shhhhhhhhhh

It should be all hush hush or it will look like trying to get publicity.

I mean getting publicity is ok as long as it doesn't look like getting publicity.

[HerbChestnut]

3. Did staffers of Bernie's campaign write the article?

Don't you think the NYT has resources to find stories like this even when it was supposed to be kept quiet?

[ecstatic]

9. That was my first thought. How the hell are we

hearing about it if he was adamant about not turning it into a publicity stunt?

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread brooklynite.

[CentralMass]

5. K&R

[crazytown]

6. And it is for that reason he would fail as a president

He is set in his ways. He does not the advice. He listens to aides until they run up against his prejudices then shuts them off. He would end up as an angry isolated old man, sitting in the Oval Office, railing against congress, the media, oligarchs and all his other perceived enemies, to anyone who will listen, as long as they STFU.

[SouthernProgressive]

7. This is how a career campaigner doesn't talk about something. NT

[Blue_Tires]

8. Oh, trust me... We KNOW St. Bern ain't in this to make friends...