“When the auto industry really needed Sen. Sanders, he wasn’t there," Hillary Clinton's campaign manager said. "That is a fact that we believe voters need to know." | Getty Clinton's camp ramps up attack on Sanders' auto bailout vote

Hillary Clinton’s charge that Bernie Sanders opposed the auto bailout was criticized as a cheap shot for telling only part of the story. But Clinton’s campaign manager said Wednesday the attack line is not going away.

“Her point is you can’t just be with the auto industry when it’s convenient,” campaign manager Robby Mook said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday, following Sanders' stunning upset in Michigan. “When the auto industry really needed Sen. Sanders, he wasn’t there. That is a fact that we believe voters need to know. We’ll continue to talk about it.”


In 2008, Sanders voted for the standalone auto bailout, which did not pass. But he later opposed using TARP funds to bail out the auto industry because those funds were also earmarked for bailing out financial institutions — that measure passed.

At the Flint debate last Sunday, Clinton pulled out the unexpected attack line in an attempt to damage Sanders ahead of the big primary in the industrial working class city. But Sanders' campaign fought aggressively to explain his full position and ultimately the attack didn't appear to sink in.

The disappointing results in Michigan, Mook said, taught the campaign that it must “work even harder to amplify Secretary Clinton’s economic arguments,” noting that she will focus on her plans to create good-paying manufacturing jobs as she looks to three industrial contests that go to the polls on March 15: Illinois, Ohio and Missouri. “We’re aligning this campaign to amplify that message as loudly and as clearly as we can,” he said.

But he insisted that Sanders’ big win did little to change the overall dynamics of the race or strategy of Clinton’s campaign. Sanders has “placed big bets on pulling out wins in certain individual states,” Mook said. “We have sought to compete everywhere with the goal of amassing...delegates.” He noted that Sanders had his worst showing in Mississippi, where he “nearly missed the 15 percent threshold for viability” and where Clinton beat him Tuesday night 82.6 percent to 16.5 percent. And while each candidate took one state on Tuesday, Mook said the delegates were not split evenly. “It is possible we may end up netting four times as many [delegates] out of Mississippi as Sanders does out of Michigan,” he said. Sanders “needs to win by very lopsided margins if he is going to catch up. We’re nearing the point where our delegate lead will become insurmountable.”

Sanders’ senior strategist Tad Devine did not dispute Mook’s claims that they need big wins to survive.

“We know we’ve got to beat her in some big showdowns,” he said, pointing to New York, where Clinton served as senator for eight years, as a prime target. “It’s his home state, too,” Devine told POLITICO on Tuesday. “When we go to a place and spend ten days campaigning there, it’s going to be big.”

And they said the map now turns in Sanders' favor with states like Idaho, Arizona and Washington coming up on the calendar, and with the big Southern states, which consistently delivered body blows to Sanders, now in the rear view mirror.

