“Speed Kills.” — Sign in Democratic candidate Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign office

In the post-Clinton, post-Obama era, it is hard to appreciate the insurgent nature of Bill Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1992. After repeated national losses by Democrats and 12 consecutive years of Republican rule in the White House, “liberal” was a snide epithet and there seemed little chance that any Democratic challenger to a Republican incumbent would be taken seriously. As John Kroger later recalled in a 2016 talk about Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, “the Democratic Party had sort of driven off into a ditch of irrelevancy in national politics.”

Kroger (who in 2016 was the president of Reed College in Portland, Oregon) was hired in 1991 at the age of 25 to be the Deputy Policy Director of Clinton’s presidential campaign. His talk, “The War Room Revisited” is a fascinating look back from the standpoint of the 2016 election, when the Clintons were powerful icons of the political establishment. He recalled that when Bill Clinton’s campaign began its “rinky-dink” operation for the Democratic nomination in late 1991, it had no money and Clinton was polling at less than 2% name recognition.

Running against President Bush, who had an “astronomical” approval rating, Kroger credits the campaign’s long-shot victory in large part to two things: that the Democratic primary was a “primary of ideas” in which Clinton prevailed due to his superior policies; and to the staff’s communications center, dubbed the “war room,” which was necessary to fight the relentless attacks on the upstart campaign.

The purpose of the war room was to respond “instantaneously” to negative stories in the media — to which end one of the young staffers put up a poster in the office with the slogan “Speed Kills,” borrowed from an anti-drug ad campaign of the era’s War on Drugs. The idea, according to Kroger, was, “If you could respond very quickly to a story with the facts, you could kill the story.”

The Sanders’ campaign must adopt a similar strategy if it wants to prevail in the Democratic primary. It is somewhat alarming that the campaign doesn’t seem to understand the threat that the major media poses to it — so far, the campaign’s media strategy seems to be to ignore the attacks and go around the corporate media, bringing its message directly to the people itself.

This tactic has been very successful in helping the campaign build a grassroots army of volunteers to help turn out the millions of nonvoters — including younger voters — who sat out the last presidential election. However, while undoubtedly a smart strategy for the general election, it seems less likely to be successful in the primary, in which only the most politically engaged will vote.

To win the Democratic nomination, Sanders needs to turn out young people, to be sure — but he also needs the support of a significant segment of the older Democratic electorate, who make up the bulk of primary voters.

As is often pointed out, a key difference between older and younger voters is that the former rely much more heavily on cable news and other traditional media for their information. As I have shown, these sources of news are working hard to push a misleading narrative of the most anti-establishment candidate in the race. Sanders needs to push back just as hard against this negative framing in order to win over some of these older voters.

Of course, as Kroger points out, the media has changed since 1992; at the time, newspapers still were people’s primary news source, and there was not the 24-hour cable news cycle as it exists today. It is simply not possible to respond “instantaneously” to every attack on Sanders that appears in the media. But that doesn’t mean that the Sanders campaign should simply ignore these stories either. Newspapers are still influential, especially among older voters. They also to a large extent establish the factual record that TV pundits on cable news shows endlessly discuss. Sanders’ campaign should not let false assertions such as the one printed in The Columbus Dispatch stand.

But this is only half of an effective strategy. According to Kroger, responding quickly to media attacks with the facts was crucial, but was only one of the two main purposes of the war room. The other, less well known tactic the staff prioritized was to try to get out ahead of negative stories. This included identifying “problems” in advance and, when possible, having the campaign’s response included in the initial story.

In contrast, when it comes to the corporate media, Sanders’ attitude seems to be to expect to be “embattled,” and to view the constant attacks merely as evidence that he is the anti-establishment candidate. Perhaps this is why the Sanders campaign does not seize the opportunities presented to it to actively shape the framing of its candidate. But like it or not, the mainstream press outlets are still a powerful force when it comes to national political campaigns. When it comes to Wall Street, it is a sign of political courage to “welcome their hatred.” But this is not a winning strategy when it comes to the corporate media, because it lets the smears and false framing go unchallenged.

In the case of The New York Times story about Sanders’ years as mayor in the 1980s, for example, the writers state that Sanders declined to be interviewed for the initial article. Later, after the (negative) story appeared, Sanders reached out to the reporters. His subsequent interview was included in subsequent, online versions of the article, and he offered a very effective explanation of his opposition to Reagan’s foreign policy (showing how skillful Sanders is at parrying such attacks). As a result, that attempted mischaracterization by the writers (trying to imply that Sanders was beingunpatriotic and even Anti-American in his opposition to the US-backed Contras) failed. However — and again, the interview took place after the original, negative article had already been published — he did not respond at all to the misleading portrayal of a mayor unconcerned with local affairs. This was a missed opportunity to both kill a false narrative and to acquaint an older, skeptical demographic with his successes as an executive.

In another missed opportunity to use the corporate media to its advantage, CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Rep. Ro Khanna, one of four national co-chairs of the Sanders campaign, the following question (after quoting some remarks from Sanders about things Biden has supported, such as NAFTA, which Sanders opposed): “If he [Sanders] were to get in, what proof do we have that he could make deals, instead of just making demands? Because he’s often against things that wind up getting bipartisan support.”

Literally the only example Khanna gave in response to this question was Sanders’ recent bipartisan bill to end U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen that Khanna co-sponsored in the House (a significant achievement, to be sure).

Cuomo then asked as a follow-up, “All those years in the Senate. What else can you point to?”

Even given this second chance, the only other accomplishments Khanna could come up with were Sanders’ success in pressuring Amazon to increase its workers’ wages, and the fact that he has passed “numerous amendments.”

These are not terrible responses, but they are disappointing. Here was another opportunity for the campaign to use the corporate media to actively challenge a false narrative about Sanders, and to reframe the candidate using facts about his record in Congress. (I actually am a fan of Rep. Khanna, one of a handful of true progressives in Congress. My point here is that the campaign should ensure that all Sanders surrogates are well-prepared to refute predictable talking points.)

Wouldn’t pointing to the bipartisan veterans bill negotiations — so impressive they held up as “an example for future dealmakers” in the Brookings Institution case study — be an effective response to a question such as Cuomo’s about whether Sanders “knows how to make deals?” Given that community health centers are now “the largest and most successful primary care system in America,” isn’t Sanders’ role in their expansion relevant to the current debate over which primary candidate is the one who can successfully bring health care to Americans? (And as Sanders himself has written in The Hill, CHCs now enjoy strong bipartisan support; the most recent bill to reauthorize the CHC funding program for five years was introduced by a Democrat and a Republican.)

It’s true that the campaign excels at producing its own media, including a podcast hosted by Sanders’ press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, “Hear The Bern.” More recently, the campaign launched its own channel on Twitch. But what audience is being reached through such means? This seems like a great way to keep Sanders supporters engaged and energized, but it is not going to be effective at winning over the hearts and minds of people (especially older people) currently being propagandized by cable television and the major newspapers.

The campaign needs to harness the talents of its excellent media team to counter the false framing of Sanders. One of the reasons that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez caught fire was the campaign ad that the production team Means of Production created with her that went viral. Now that this team has been recruited by the Sanders campaign, why not have them produce a video about community health centers? From their origins during the Civil Rights movement, to the first neighborhood health centers established during the War on Poverty in Mississippi and Boston, to the clinics today serving diverse communities from migrant farm workers in rural areas to urban neighborhoods in Detroit, the history of CHCs is an inspiring progressive policy success story. Along with Bernie’s historic role in their expansion, the topic could make a compelling, and very timely, short film.

Farmworker children sit on a pick-up truck used by their parents, Courtesy of the National Center for Farmworker Health

These stories — about Sanders’ years as mayor of Burlington; about how he came through for veterans; about his championing of community health centers — need to be told. Because the one thing I can’t emphasize enough is to what extent the facts are on Bernie’s side. No matter how good you may think he is, I can assure you, he’s better. Even as a supporter who thought I knew his record, as I did research for this essay I was by turns impressed and frustrated learning about Sanders’ extensive list of impressive accomplishments. It is disappointing that the media does not portray him more fairly. But the more you learn about the mountain of ammunition his campaign has at hand, the more frustrating it is that Sanders and his staff so often choose to hold their fire in responding to the attacks. If the campaign isn’t more assertive in reframing the public’s perception of their candidate, they risk losing this political fight.