Confront Hillary Clinton on issues – not her email use – resist the lure of negative attacks, pull off an upset in an early primary contest and harness that momentum to catapult forward into a targeted state-based fight for delegates.

That's Bernie Sanders' game plan to take on the Democratic presidential front-runner in the coming months, as he looks to transform himself from a progressive movement candidate alone to a plausible major party nominee.

The Sanders strategy will test whether a contender who loathes attack ads and refuses to bless a super PAC to support him can compete in a system awash with unlimited money that often rewards bare-knuckled political tactics.



"His brand is about the rejection of the politics of our time, not the perpetuation of it," says Sanders' longtime top strategist, Tad Devine, who admits, "For a long-shot candidate to win, you have to have a few shoes to drop along the way."

The Vermont senator trails the former secretary of state by 18 points nationally, and in Iowa, which holds the first nominating contest, he lags by 19 points. He's shown the most progress in the first primary state of New Hampshire, where the most recent poll showed him overtaking Clinton. Increasingly, this looks like the most hospitable turf for Sanders to produce an earthshaking victory.

"We probably have to win somewhere early to be credible," Devine says.

But how Sanders wins is almost as important to him as the victory itself.

Devine tells U.S. News the campaign will not engage in negative advertising and doesn't expect to try to capitalize on the controversy swirling around Clinton's email use as the nation's chief diplomat. Clinton has been besieged by the charge that she caused top secret information to be vulnerable by using a private server. During a combative news conference in Nevada last Tuesday, she refused five times to answer whether she wiped the server clean. "I have no idea," she said at one point during the aggravated exchange with reporters.

Sanders has yet to pick at that political scab, and Devine doesn't expect him to – even if the problem metastasizes.

"His position will be, if there's an investigation, let it continue and let the chips fall where they may. We shouldn't politicize some investigation. I don't think he's really going to change on that," Devine says.

Neither does Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream who has supported Sanders since his first mayoral bid in Burlington. Cohen says central to Bernie's brand is his ability to shut out the noise and stay focused on his own message.

"He's not looking to talk about other politicians," says Cohen, who likened Sanders' approach to corporate advertising. "We never talked about Haagen-Dazs. We just talked about how good Ben & Jerry's was. Mostly, we let people taste it. Let them decide. People should make the comparison on their own."

The Sanders campaign did raise its brow over a line in a recent Washington Post story that reported Clinton "will confront Sanders in due time, and certainly at the first Democratic debate in October."

"That caught my attention," says Devine, who thinks an incoming attack is "almost inevitable."

But Sanders has a template for dealing with negative fire. In his 2006 Senate race, GOP business mogul Rich Tarrant aired a series of ferocious commercials, one which began with the line, "The Amber Alert is a great idea. ... Bernie Sanders voted against it."

Sanders supported the Amber Alert to help notify the public of missing children but opposed other provisions in broader legislation which he deemed unconstitutional. Instead of retaliating with similar direct strike against Tarrant, Sanders put up an ad juxtaposing his opponent's attacks with his own congressional voting record.



"I expect the way we dealt with it there is the way we'll deal with it in this campaign," says Devine. "He will not engage in tete-a-tete political advertising."

Sanders regularly laments the media's focus on strategy and style, but will be comfortable sparring with Clinton on their key substantive differences.



Clinton has avoided taking a position on the Keystone XL Pipeline, citing her former department's role in reviewing its merits. Sanders opposes it because the project accelerates the production of "dirty oil." He also favors a tax on carbon to reduce pollution, whereas Clinton's solution to climate change has zeroed in on boosting renewable sources of electricity.

On trade, Clinton came out against fast-track approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership earlier this summer, despite touting it as an economic opportunity that would "drive long-term growth" when she was a member of President Barack Obama's administration. Sanders was a vocal opponent of the trade deal from the start, as he has been on most trade policies, dubbing them "anti-worker."

Sanders has advocated for the expansion of Social Security benefits as a core theme to deal with the country's income gap. Whereas Clinton recently told the AFL-CIO she wants to "enhance [the program] to meet new realities," she has left the details for a future date. But in late 2013 she appeared to flirt with trimming entitlements in order to reach a grand budget bargain.

"What has worked is a compromise where, yes, we raise revenues for a certain period, we go and look at entitlements to see what is fair and can be done without really disadvantaging either existing beneficiaries or people who are going to rely on those programs," she said at Colgate University in October 2013.

Clinton's college affordability plan dedicates $350 billion to reducing America's college tuition burden by capping itemized tax deductions for wealthy families. Sanders has unveiled a tuition-free college plan that would be paid for by taxing Wall Street speculators.

"What she's trying to do is not as ambitious," Devine says.

Four separate Clinton spokespeople and advisers did not respond to inquiries seeking a counterview. But Clinton will almost certainly react to Sanders by arguing her plans are bold but pragmatic and have a more realistic chance at clearing Congress.

With Clinton hitting the airwaves last week with her third television advertisement, the Sanders campaign has also been forced to put more thought into its own media planning. Devine saw Clinton's initial advertising blitz as a sign she was feeling pressure to redirect the conversation after a rash of negative polling, something Clinton's top strategist denied. This latest 30-second spot, which will run in Iowa and New Hampshire, is part of the campaign's opening buy, but it comes right on the heels of a deluge of negative press regarding her handling of her private email account.

Sanders raised $15 million through the end of June, meaning that in order to reach his campaign's goal, he will need to take in an additional $35 million by February. Devine says they are on track to hit that mark, but even if they do they are expected to remain at a significant financial disadvantage to Clinton. That's why an early victory is so integral to spurring a flood of small-donor contributions that will help fund a longer-term effort.

While Clinton allies have conceded they could suffer an early state loss, they feel much more confident about the primary map afterward, which will benefit a candidate who can operate, organize and advertise in countless media markets in multiple states around the country at once.

Sanders does not yet have paid staffers in any state holding a contest in March, but the campaign has begun eyeing its most fruitful post-early state opportunities. At the top of that list are Massachusetts, whose residents will see much of the advertising and media coverage of the campaign in next door New Hampshire, as well as Colorado, a battleground state which uses a caucus system that usually rewards the most extreme ideological candidates.

Clinton has already been organizing in the Bay State, holding meetings in each congressional district, setting up booths at farmer's markets and signing up new supporters in summer parades.

She has also cultivated institutional support, including Rep. Jim McGovern and Joe Kennedy Jr.



"The overall map still heavily favors Hillary," says a Democratic operative who worked on the initial organizing effort for Clinton.

But even though Clinton topped Obama by 15 points in the 2008 presidential primary there, she only netted 17 more delegates, due to proportional allocation. She took 55, he received 38.

Sanders' team, which sees a strong progressive streak in the state after the 2012 election of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, already thinks it may even be able to outperform Obama there.

"Even if we lose, can we split the delegates? Can we get him to 40 [percent]? You've got to beat someone pretty bad to get a majority of the delegates," Devine says. "If you stay within 20 percentage points of somebody in a district, you split the delegates. That's how it works."

Warren will also be closely courted by both teams. Whether she explicitly and forcefully endorses a candidate and works on their behalf could be enough to swing the state. But she's likely to keep her powder dry until early next year as she monitors Clinton's progression on her pet issues.

"If Elizabeth can extract her pound of flesh on some income inequality issues, she's going to get Hillary to a place she wants," says the Bay State Democrat supporting Clinton.

In 2008, Obama trounced Clinton in the Colorado caucuses, 67 percent to 32 percent, and Democrats there note the candidate who has the broadest popularity in the party usually doesn't fare as well in the system.

"If there was a primary election, Hillary would beat Sanders relatively comfortably," says Craig Hughes, a Rocky Mountain State Democratic consultant. "But in the world of caucuses, you never know how broad support translates when people show up on a certain Tuesday. Colorado's caucus system has a history of favoring the underdog."

And Sanders certainly remains that.

Two of the last three Democratic presidential primaries have featured a combustible insurgent who fizzled faster than they rose. There was Bill Bradley in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004 and Obama in 2008.

Obama was the exception to the rule.