How the Democrats Screwed Bernie: Tad Devine on the 2016 Campaign, the Rigged Economy, and What’s at Stake in 2028

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Wednesday, July 8, 2026. My guest today is a very distinguished political consultant, on the left of the Democratic Party, Thomas A. Devine, otherwise known as Tad. He's been involved with all sorts of interesting campaigns, including Al Gore's 2000 and John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaigns, and he was also the chief strategist for Bernie Sanders' twenty sixteen presidential campaign, a campaign that ended in failure but made a lot of news. And Tad has a new book out. It came out yesterday about that campaign. It's called How the Democrats Screwed Bernie. Tad is joining us from, from New York where he's celebrating, not the birth of a grandchild, another grandchild, Tad, but the birth of your new book. I'm curious. Before we get to, the new book, what was writing a book like in comparison to running a campaign? Is it similar?

00:01:37 Tad Devine: No. It was a very different and unique experience. I had never written an entire book before. I had written chapters in books, and they were college academic books, you know, about media consulting and things that I do and campaigns. But this was a whole different process and, very different from campaigns, which is so collegial. You're with people all the time. You're out and about. This was more an isolated event. I collaborated with others. My editor at Simon and Schuster, Ian Straus, I had a writer who worked with me and really helped me, an agent who brought her in to help me to organize things and get it together. But it was a much more solitary experience than the work that I'm used to, which is to write, direct, and produce television advertising for campaigns.

00:02:22 Andrew Keen: The book the title of the book suggests, Tad, a degree of anger, how the Democrats screwed Bernie. Is it an angry book? Did you need to get this off your chest?

00:02:34 Tad Devine: You know, I hope it's not an angry book, but I think it does express a degree of anger. I you know, that title came about not because I felt like I wanted that to be the title. As a matter of fact, we came up with a lot of titles, a little group of people who were working together collaboratively to produce this book in a very short time frame. It was actually the idea of the editor then editor of Simon and Schuster for that title. I submitted many titles as did others who were in our loop, and none of them seemed to live up to what we were trying to do with the book. And when and at first, when I said, no. I don't think it will be a good book, I said, because it sounds too much like Trump, and I just don't wanna be anything like him. But as I went through the process of considering all of these other titles, and also as I went through the process of beginning to write the book, I realized that it most accurately expressed how I felt about what happened in 2016. I don't want it to be viewed so much as an angry missive to the past. I want it to be something, of a learning experience so that we can look back and find out the mistakes that were made, rectify those mistakes, and maybe win more elections if we do.

00:03:46 Andrew Keen: Yeah. The book also is in, the title of the book is also interesting because, of course, you don't need to mention Sanders. Everybody knows who Bernie is. But before, nobody really knew who he was. Tell me about your relationship with Bernie Sanders. How did you come across him? I'm not suggesting that you were part of the Democratic establishment, but you did work on Gore and Kerry's presidential campaigns. Both were relatively centrist candidates. So how did you come across Bernie, and did you change your mind of him over the years? I mean, he was always outside the party. Some people thought him as a so well, I mean, he defined himself, obviously, as a socialist or a democratic socialist. So tell me your history of your Bernie history, Tad.

00:04:32 Tad Devine: Well, first, I would have to plead guilty to being very much a part of the Democratic establishment, okay, earlier in my career. As a matter of fact, one time, believe it or not, Bernie said to me, Tad, you're my link to the establishment. And I replied to him, Bernie, you're a United States senator. That is the establishment. Okay? But I first met Bernie

00:04:51 Andrew Keen: probably both right.

00:04:53 Tad Devine: Yeah. I know. In a funny way, yes. I first met Bernie in 1996. He had almost lost reelection to the House of Representatives in 1994. Remember, that was a terrible year for Democrats. And while he was an independent, he was caucusing with the Democrats, and he was almost, dragged down by what was happening all across the country when the Republicans took over the Congress for the first time in forty years in 1994. One of his colleagues, Peter DeFazio, who was also a member of the progressive caucus, someone, a congressman for Oregon. My partner, Mike Donilon, who went on to become Joe Biden's top strategist in the White House, and I worked on Peter's campaign. And we did, I think, a really good job. We came in about a month before the election. We made a whole new series of ads, and we he was 30 points behind at the time. He wound up losing by just a couple of points. And mostly, he lost because most of the votes got cast before any of the advertising hit. That was the first time they had an all mail in ballot election in America, an Oregon special election. And, you know, Peter was close to Bernie, and he said, listen. I think you should talk to these guys. They really helped me. We all I think we would've won the campaign if it hadn't been for, you know, all the early votes before the advertising hit. And so I was summoned, you know, to Bernie's office. My Mike and I went over there. We

00:06:10 Andrew Keen: What year was that?

00:06:11 Tad Devine: That was '28 that was the beginning of nineteen ninety six, so twenty years before the presidential campaign. And, you know, Mike and I sat down. I said, yeah. My first question to Bernie was, you're a socialist. And he was and he said, no. A democratic socialist. That distinction was very important to him. And, anyway, I wound up being the guy who handled the campaign. Bernie won the race by 26 points instead of barely squeaking through. I think, you know, his impression of what the, you know, the so called, you know, Washington consultants were, you know, which I represented, improved, at least as it pertained to me. And then ten years later, when he ran for the United States Senate, he asked me to work for him again. This time, we were up against a billionaire who spent an you know, 7 and a half million dollars in Vermont. So the equivalent of spending 7 and a half million dollars in Vermont on a senate race would be spending $350 million in California. Okay? It was a massive amount of money. And, and we beat him, his name was Rich Tarrant, by 30 points as well. And so I had this history with Bernie of, you know, first getting to know him in the house race, working for him, a lot of success, a big win. The ten years later, a big win in the senate race. And so I stayed in touch with him. And we and, honestly, we became friends. I mean, I think Bernie and I were very friendly through the years and spent a lot of time, you know, talking to each other at, you know, dinners and lunches and things like that when I would get together with him. And so when he approached me, later, now going into the end of 2014 before 2015 and told me that he was thinking about running for president of The United States. I was frankly shocked. I mean, I just couldn't I didn't see it. You know? I didn't really think of him as someone who would make that kind of run. But as we got into it and we talked about it and, you know, I worked my way through it, I began to see the light that he had the real possibility perhaps of, you know, succeeding in that arena. And, and that led to my involvement in his two thousand sixteen presidential campaign.

00:08:09 Andrew Keen: A lot happened, of course, between 1996 when you first met Bernie and 2014 when he decided when you had that conversation about him running for president, particularly, I guess, the great recession of two thousand and eight and nine. Who changed more Tad over those almost twenty years? Was it you or Bernie?

00:08:30 Tad Devine: Well, it was definitely me because Bernie has not changed a bit in all the time I've known him. You know? And if you look back even further before I came on the scene in 1996, he was saying the things he's saying now, you know, ten and twenty years before that. He's always had a constant focus on the problems of America, that its economy has been rigged. And most recently, in the wake of Citizens United, it has been rigged by a corrupt system of campaign finance. He understood the way that the power centers worked in the country and how that was oppressing working people and taking away from their opportunity to earn a good and decent living. So Bernie really hasn't changed at all. I mean and it's amazing sometimes. It's not just his ideas and the way he expresses himself. You know, I've got a picture of us at that shoot in 1996. Okay? So that's a long time ago, thirty years ago. He looked exactly the same in that shoot picture.

00:09:26 Andrew Keen: I know. It's incredible. I mean, he was I guess he was probably he looks as if he was born with glasses and gray hair, was he? No.

00:09:34 Tad Devine: He had you know, he really there's a little less hair, but he's the same weight. He's the same demeanor. He sounds the same. He has the same level of energy. I mean, it's not an unbelievable thing. I was much thinner. You know? I was a little I was a younger guy, but, you know, it is amazing to me that he has been so consistent in his beliefs and the way he expresses them, and also, frankly, in his physical appearance and demeanor. You know? I think if Joe Biden were as vital as Bernie, he would have served a second term as president.

00:10:03 Andrew Keen: Well, certainly, even close to being vital. Do you think one of the reasons, Tad, that Bernie hasn't changed is because, as you say, he's never compromised. He's taken a position. He's held it for thirty, forty, fifty years. He has a critique of American democracy and American capitalism, and the events have changed around him, but he hasn't changed. He hasn't, compromised his position. He hasn't had to tell lies. I mean, the closest thing to a political consultant that he's worked with is yourself. So is that one reason why he seems in such remarkably good health and remains so, in his own way, youthful?

00:10:44 Tad Devine: I think. But I also think it's a little more complicated when we say he's never compromised. I believe he has never compromised his values, his stance on the big frame of politics. And yet, he was a very effective legislator, you know. And you cannot be effective as a legislator without compromising, you know, if you're gonna have a two party system. And there was a period of time when he was in the House of Representatives over the course of a decade that he passed more pieces of legislation than any member of Congress in either party. Okay? He did that because he worked principally with Republicans to get it done. And when he was a senator and they had the crisis of the, you know, of health care at the VA, you know, he and John McCain locked themselves in the room for about three days and came out with the most important and significant piece of legislation in that session of congress, which the two of them negotiated together. So Bernie has not compromised, I think, on that basic level of what he believes and what he stands for and who he fights for. But he has the capacity, certainly as a legislator, and I think he would have as president as well, to reach compromised solutions with others, even people who have very different views than him on some big issues.

00:11:58 Andrew Keen: So, as, as we've said several times, the new book, it's out. It was out yesterday. How the Democrats Screwed Bernie is rather generic. Of course, when we think about the Democrats in 2016, we think of Hillary Clinton. Is that in the title of the book, Tad, is the Democrats a euphemism for the Clintons or Hillary?

00:12:22 Tad Devine: Not entirely. When I say the Democrats, I'm talking about three distinct sort of power centers. Number one is Hillary Clinton and her campaign. I would say the Clinton campaign, and I would, you know, include both president and Hillary in that regard. Number two is the Democratic National Committee, which was supposed to be a neutral body that oversaw the nominating process. It turned out to be not a neutral body at all, but a wholly owned subsidiary of the Clinton campaign. And number three was the Democratic establishment. You know, its leaders like Harry Reid, for example, or Chuck Schumer, you know, it's leadership in the house as well. It's leadership around the country. When I say the Democrats, that's who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the establishment, the party, and the Clinton campaign.

00:13:07 Andrew Keen: Do you think, Tad, if Donald Trump had got knocked over by a New York bus or decided that he didn't wanna work run for president or got put in jail or something, there would be a need for this kind of book. I mean, had Hillary won, had you not had the Trump phenomenon, this whole issue of the Democrats and Bernie wouldn't seem so absurd now. In fact, the centrist establishment who, as you said, whether they screwed them or organized themselves politically to effectively bar Bernie from being the candidate, that it wouldn't be as pertinent or as sensitive. Because, I mean, Bernie I mean, I know that Bernie and Trump have a peculiar kind of almost like a symbiotic relationship, but they're separate political phenomenon, although they kind of coexist in parallel, I guess.

00:14:02 Tad Devine: Yeah. I think I calling it a parallel relationship, I think, is even better than symbiotic. You know? But, if Hillary had won, I don't think there would have been a need for the book. If there was no Trump, there would have been less of a need for the book. If we had not had what happened in 2024 with the way that process was conducted, there really would not have been a need for the book. But in light of all the circumstances that have happened, I mean, one of the reasons as I got into writing it and really realized what I was thinking about and trying to capture, you know, I realized that, you know, I was trying to look to the past for pertinent lessons for today and tomorrow, not a history of what happened. You know? And I think what happened in 2016 was that the country, the voters were demanding change, and the democratic process produced a candidate who could not meet the expectations of the voters. They did in 2008 with Obama, which was also a change election, but they did not eight years later. And what I wanted the party to do is to look at its process of nominating a candidate for president and stop trying to rig it. Stop trying to give so much power to insiders and institutions that the voice of the voters is muted. Because if we wanna win elections, we're going to have to take the lead from them and not force a candidate upon them.

00:15:26 Andrew Keen: Is one of the problems with candidates like Clinton, and Harris also comes to mind, is that the establishment of the Democratic Party thinks of itself as the change party, as the party of the left, of American progressivism, but actually isn't, is the party of, a coastal elite. Again, Hillary is a good example, and I think Kamala Harris an even better example, is that in very simple terms, they don't reflect reality.

00:15:59 Tad Devine: Well, listen. You know, I think the Democratic Party, you know, aspires to be, you know, a party that is a big tent and brings in people all across America, but we haven't attained that. Unfortunately, I think the set the power centers of the party are, in tow of a system which is corrupt at its nature, and the system I'm referring to is a system of campaign finance. And as long as the Democratic Party persists within that system and tries to be a part of it as much or even more at times than the Republicans, we will be a victim of it. That is my view, my personal view. And we have to break away from this system because it is the system of campaign finance in America, a corrupt system, which is destroying our economy in fundamental ways and also destroying our politics. You know? So that's what the problem is, I think, with the Democratic Party.

00:16:54 Andrew Keen: Not necessarily it, Bernie, I mean, Bernie, that was a Freudian error, Tad, Tad. Is it a catch-22? The only way you can run, is by getting large political contributions? So it's hard to run with all those political contributions and then run against the very financial system that enabled those contributions?

00:17:18 Tad Devine: It is. And I'm a realist. And I, you know, I'm not an ideologue. I'm not out here expressing my philosophy or ideology. I want the book to exist within the world that I live in, which is the world of trying to win elections. And I recognize, you know, that when one side has mountains of money and the other side has a little pool of money to the side, okay, that is not a fair fight. But there are ways to deal with that. And let me give you a real world example. You know, New York City, where I am today, has a mayor, you know, who won a surprising election. Mayor Mamdani got elected against all of the odds, all of the polls. How did he do it? Well, he did it first by having, a winning message that connected with voters, by organizing a campaign that could mobilize support, by bringing new people into the process. But he also did it, in my view, it's my personal view, because New York City has a very generous system of campaign public finance. I think it's a five to one match, okay, where you raise a dollar, you get five. And he was able to, on the basis of the public funding scheme in New York, raise enough money to actually communicate with people through the means that I believe is still the most important one, and I'm biased in that because I make television ads. But television advertising is still sort of the big kahuna in this thing. And, Mamdani was able to come in and have a floor level of communication through television advertising that allowed people to hear his message in a meaningful way, and on top of that, put all the organization and the other aspects of campaigning that made the difference in his victory. So I think we can compete with the Republicans in some places, you know, if we can get more if we can begin to build a system with campaign finance exist at least for us to compete. Sure. He was outspent massively by the super PACs, and the Wall Street interests, on his opponent's side that tried to elect Cuomo. But it was not enough for them to stop him. So that's what we've gotta do in the meantime. We've we have to get away from dark money. When I talk about dark money, I'm talking about the money that comes into campaigns that has no public disclosure. It secretly snuck in through the back backdoor. That's a first step. We need to have more public financing, particularly at the local levels, so we can give new candidates an opportunity to come and compete against the old money that still dominates Democratic politics as well as Republican politics.

00:19:54 Andrew Keen: And returning back to that 2016, primary election that you cover in the new book, how the Democrats screwed Bernie, how did Bernie raise the money? Was it by small contributions? Did he go to the unions? Did he go to the banks? Did he go to Silicon Valley billionaires?

00:20:16 Tad Devine: He did not. And that's another lesson from this book. Bernie Sanders in 2016 raised a quarter of a billion dollars in small dollar contributions. His average contribution was $27 a contribution. He did so by reaching out and appealing to people and developing a system of fundraising, principally, you know, through email solicitation, that allowed him to raise that amount of money. He actually wound up, you know, outspending Hillary in much of the primary period if we just look campaign to campaign. Now, of course, she had super PACs on her side supporting her, and she was benefiting from that support even in the primary process. But Bernie Sam Sanders established the model of how you can raise money outside the massive fundraising of Super PACs. We I can't you know, I don't even remember a fundraiser in our campaign. Well, there may have been one that I missed or something, but I you know, it was really not that kind of a campaign. And Bernie's not the kind of guy who's gonna go hobnob with billionaires when he's attacking them. Okay? His message is no good with the audience, number one. And number two, he just would never do it, but we found a way to reach out to people, to identify them, and to get them to contribute small contributions over and over again in many cases to fund that campaign.

00:21:36 Andrew Keen: Let's go back to 2016 to the election. On the Wikipedia page, there's a lot of green. There's a lot of yellow of Hillary and Bernie. Were there moments in that campaign, Tad, where Bernie really did have a good chance of winning the nomination?

00:21:51 Tad Devine: I do think he had a chance, a real chance. And, it was at the beginning, mostly, you know, a little bit after that. This was the chance that he had. And I talk about this in the book. You know? I was asked by Bernie and his wife Jane to travel to Burlington, Vermont and spend a weekend with them in the April 2015. You know? We knew each other. We'd worked together on two winning campaigns for house and senate. And, you know, and they knew that I had this background and experience at very high levels of presidential campaigns, and I was the only one really in their group that had it. And I spent those that weekend with them talking to him about the likelihood of success, how to put together a campaign, what are all the elements of it that would be involved. And, you know, and I pushed him very hard. You know? I mean, Bernie and I knew each other pretty well, and we could be tough on each other, you know, particularly when we were just the two of us together. And, you know, and I explained the whole system of delegate selection in the Democratic Party. I spent a decade in the eighties working for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis, working my way through the ranks of delegate selection from a tracker to the deputy director to the director of delegate selection and the floor manager at a convention. And so I knew this system from, you know, a decade's worth of experience. And when I explained it to him in terms of the superdelegates of which, you know, with 40% of the nominating majority was superdelegates, a proportional representation, something I had worked on, an allocation of delegate formula, all of this sort of inside workings of the party. And I said, listen. This system is set up to make it almost impossible. And in order for you to win, first, we're gonna have to win Iowa, then we'll have to win, New Hampshire, then we'll have to win Nevada. Somehow, we'll have to figure out how we're going to beat her in South Carolina. And when that happens, we'll face the second front from the entire establishment. You know, that's what we're confronting. You know? And I really pushed him on why are you doing this because I'm telling you as someone who's, you know, done this for a decade and is recognized as knowing as much or more about it than anybody, you can't win in this system. And he explained to me in very colorful language, which I'm not gonna repeat here, that he was sick and tired of being a backbencher. Okay? And, you know, that really was the moment when I understood the motivation of the candidate, what the campaign was about. Now as we got into this, and to answer directly more directly your question, was there a time when we thought we could win? I think that in the aftermath of his performance in the New Hampshire primary, he won the New Hampshire primary by 22 points against Hillary Clinton, who had beaten Obama in New Hampshire eight years before. Okay? And he received a 150,000 votes. That was a number, you know, of people like me who worked a lot in New Hampshire over the years. I never thought anybody would get to a 150,000 votes in a contested primary when both parties are holding primaries on the same day. Because when that happens, as it did New Hampshire and other states like Michigan and Wisconsin later on, where the state is holding a primary, where there is party registration, and where independents can participate in either the Democratic or the Republican primary, It becomes a real true test of general elect election strength. And when Bernie went out and won that 150,000 votes in New Hampshire that night of the primary, it's hundredth anniversary of the primary, I think we all thought, wait a second. We may be riding the rocket here. Okay. This is and I've been on the other side of that too. I was in New Hampshire in 1984 when Gary Hart beat Walter Mondale. I was working for Mondale. You know? I said I was part of the establishment before. Those are the candidates typically that I work for. And I saw how that momentum can build so quickly in so many places based on victory. So coming out of, you know, New Hampshire, I think we all thought, listen. Maybe we can do this thing now. In order to do it, we're gonna have to go and win Nevada. We were 25 points behind in Nevada just a few weeks a cup before New Hampshire. I know that because not only did we poll there, but also Clinton put out their polling as well. And their and then what they put out was a 25 Hillary lead. And as we went to Nevada and began to close that gap of 25 points and really run it down, we saw the possibility of victory there. And I think that victory, for us was turned into defeat by the actions again of the Democratic establishment. And I write about it in the book. Harry Reid, who at the time was alive and still controlled the politics of that state, particularly Democratic politics, intervened on behalf of Hillary and I think made the difference. And it's not just my opinion either, by the way. I write about Jon Ralston. He's probably the most astute observer of Nevada politics who wrote an op-ed column in USA Today a week after that primary where he exposed Harry Reid's involvement, and he said he did it because he and the establishment knew that if Bernie won that primary, the whole inevitability message, which was the heart of their messaging, would have been destroyed, and she may have lost.

00:26:42 Andrew Keen: Tad, the outsiders have, of course, stormed the party before. Think of Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill, Jimmy Carter. What was it, or what is it about Bernie? Is it because people fear this socialist, this democratic socialist, the man of the left? Or does is it because he just doesn't play the game of the democrats? What triggered the behavior of Harry Reid, who I assume in other contexts is a relatively honorable figure?

00:27:19 Tad Devine: He was an honorary figure, and I liked Harry Reid.

00:27:22 Andrew Keen: Honorable rather than honorary. I mean, a decent enough guy.

00:27:26 Tad Devine: I respected Harry Reid. I liked Harry Reid. Harry Reid was a good man, okay, you know, in many ways. But what happened, okay, in Nevada. And why did people feel this way about Bernie? I think part of it was, you know, the Democratic socialist thing was something, but I don't think that was a huge impediment. I really don't. And, you know, I pushed him very hard in the campaign to give the speech about democratic what democratic socialism meant to him. He did so, and I think it was very refreshing when he did. Because what we found out from that speech was that this the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders had uniquely American origins. He, in fact, wanted to accomplish what Franklin Roosevelt left as his unfinished agenda. Roosevelt proposed a second bill of rights for workers before he died. And Bernie wanted us to be the ones to pick that up and to run with it and to realize it in our time. You know? So to me, it wasn't some foreign ideology inspired by Europe or some faraway place. It was very much an American, political movement that Martin Luther King, who used to talk about, you know, socialism for the rich and rugged capitalism for the poor, you know, understood as well. So I think people were scared about the socialist stuff. I think, you know, in terms of Bernie not being a guy who would compromise, I think his rhetoric put off some people in the party. And, certainly, the vested and powerful wealthy interests of the party didn't like what he was talking about in terms of the money polluting everything. But I think, you know, the people who dealt with him in a legislative environment understood that he was a practical politician. The people who dealt with him when he was mayor of Burlington understood that he was a very practical politician who was willing to work with the interests of his community or in the broader political interest in Washington to find common ground and to achieve real results. So, you know, listen. I think his style put him off. I think the label put people off. But who he didn't put off in 2016 were the voters. Okay? The voters heard his message, and when they heard it, they acted. And I think if the process had been level and fair, he would have been the nominee, and he would have defeated Trump in the general election.

00:29:38 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And in a sense, I mean, of course, he didn't win, but he almost won by not winning, especially given Hillary's defeat, by Clinton and every by, Trump and everything that's happened since. Tad, I'm sure you've seen the movie Chinatown. At the end of the movie, there's that famous phrase, it's just Chinatown. Could we remix that and say, well, this is just politics. I mean, you're not happy about Harry Reid in Nevada, but that was his home state. He did everything he could to support his candidate, and that's just the way things work. Why is that what why is that the Democrats screwing Bernie? It's just the nature of politics.

00:30:19 Tad Devine: Well, I think the Democrats screwing Bernie about a lot of things, not just Harry Reid doing something that he said he wasn't gonna do. And by the way, I remember sitting in Nevada and elsewhere with Bernie being on the phone with his leader in the senate and, you know, and it was very cordial, and it was a very good relationship. And he said he was neutral. It turned out later, we found out that was not true. It was really what happened inside the campaign, and there were some prominent examples. For example, in December and now in December 2015, the campaign is moving. We went on television in November. Hillary went on in August, so they had three months of unanswered TV in Iowa, New Hampshire. We weren't even on. We joined in November, and you could see and everybody was picking it up in their polling, the movement towards Bernie. First, within the eternal numbers of the poll, his favorability skyrocketing, his unfavorability staying low, then we began to see the results in the horse race. So now we get to the middle of December, and suddenly, the Democratic National Committee comes forward out of nowhere and says that our campaign did something very wrong, that we spied on the voter files. These voter files are very precious tools for a campaign. They give each campaign the identity of every voter in each individual state and allow us to target them for communication and to figure out who would be with us. And in our case, uniquely, much more so than the Clintons, it provided the base upon which we did our fundraising. You know, the that was the email list we're going out under the auspices of the voter files. And, you know, when they took when they decided that we had done something wrong, that we had violated the rules by looking, you know, at the Clinton voter files because these voter files are available to each campaign, but there are firewalls that are built up. So one campaign can't look on the other campaign's files. When the firewall came down because of the negligence of the people who were in charge of it, and a few young people in our campaign went and looked for a half hour at the voter files, they stood up and said, we're taking your voter files away. Now in my mind, it was clear what they were doing. It was clear that they were rigging the process, that we were moving too fast. They wanted to stop us, and we had to go to federal court that night and prevail there in order to get our hands back on the voter files. It was the debate process. You know? In the four in eight years earlier, when Obama and Hillary were running against each other, there were numerous debates, and the Republicans had numerous debates. The Democratic National Committee announced that before, this is it. And if you don't take our schedule, you can't come to any of the four debates. Okay? One of the debates was on the Saturday night before Christmas. I mean, it was a ridiculous thing. And I knew I got a call about fifteen minutes. I didn't write about this in the book, but this is what happened. I got a call about fifteen minutes before the public announcement that this was gonna go on. And then about ten minutes later, after they announced it, Hillary Clinton tweeted that she accept she accepted the invitation for debates. I mean, it was such an obvious fix. You know? And there were so many things like that went on, you know, within the Democratic National Committee that finally, when this was all revealed, when the WikiLeaks, you know, correspondence came out and thousands upon thousands of emails to the DNC between the Clinton campaign were exposed, we could see with our own eyes that the Clinton campaign effectively ran the Democratic National Committee, which was in charge of the process. And that's how Bernie got screwed. Yeah. Harry Reid in Nevada. Yes. The Democratic establishment in a lot of places. But mostly, it was the coordination between the party apparatus and the Clinton campaign that distorted the rules, gave her undue advantage. And then finally, even though she said she would never do it, the super PACs, which they set up, again, in coordination with the Democratic Party and raised astronomical amounts of money. They said they were for the general election. But when she started losing to Bernie, they started entering the primary process. So all of these factors came together to screw Bernie, not just one person like Harry Reid or one event like the voter files, but all of these things together gave him gave, Hillary an unfair advantage. And as a result, the voters didn't have their say in choosing a nominee.

00:34:23 Andrew Keen: Well, you've certainly convinced me, Tad, that the Democrats screwed Bernie. Ten years later, a struggle, at least according to Bernie Sanders', x, x account, the struggle continues. You've mentioned Mamdani. As we speak, there's a huge scandal, a controversy over Graham Platner, again, in New England, another controversial Democratic politician. What have we learned in the last ten years? Has anything changed since, in your words, the Democrats screwed Bernie as the Dems are preparing for another round in 2028, and mainstream Democrats like Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris are gonna go up against one kind of insurgent or another?

00:35:14 Tad Devine: Well, some things have changed. I mean, Bernie fought very hard in the wake of the 2016 to take away the voting status of the superdelegates on the first round of ballot. But aside from that, frankly, not a lot has changed, you know, to be honest with you. I think, you know, I'd I'm not accusing the Democratic National Committee now of being partisan and for a candidate. I think the situation we had in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, I mean, she was almost in effect a an incumbent president running for reelection. She had so much support from the entire establishment. We don't have anybody in those ranks, and I think the party will be much more of a neutral party today than it was in 2016. But there still are many, many things that we have to change if we want to get, you know, where we need to be. I mean, you know, and, you know, and in terms of Platner, just, you know, because you raised it. I mean, I do and I do think I just saw in one of my, you know, email notes before we started this conversation that, you know, Bernie has called for him to drop out as many others have. The mayor did earlier in the day as well. And I think that's the right decision. You know, sometimes in campaigns, you know, the candidates have to realize that they simply cannot succeed. Okay? And if they want the change that they're calling for, it's gonna have to be somebody else who carries the mantle of change.

00:36:33 Andrew Keen: Is Bernie he has a very active X account. He's got almost 15 million followers. He's active on the Gaza issue. He's active on tech. Has he become a king or queen maker in the party? Is that his victory really out of twenty sixteen, out of defeat? He's become perhaps the certainly the most respected elder statesman. I mean, I don't think Hillary has a lot of credibility. She might think she has, but I don't think anyone outside her own little circle thinks she has. As well as Kamala, who seems to be Hitler [unclear — likely ASR mishearing], a sort of a second coming of Hillary in some way.

00:37:12 Tad Devine: I think he has become, one of the most important leaders of the Democratic Party, you know, even though he's not part of it. You know, he's never really identified as a Democrat. Unlike Mamdani, who said, yes. I'm the Democratic nominee. He sort of embraced it. But I think Bernie's contribution that is much more important than his status as someone who can help people to win elections, okay, which is a pretty powerful thing as the mayor demonstrated in the most recent primaries here in New York. His biggest contribution, I think, is substantive, that he has identified the problem in our society, the biggest problem in our society. Every we all of us who are against Donald Trump sort of see him as the problem. But, really, the problem is that America's economy is rigged, and that rigged economy is held in place by a corrupt system of campaign finance. That was the problem that I think the campaign in 2016 identified. I remember as we were trying to find the way to best express that. You know, Bernie at first didn't wanna have any polling, and, you know, and I was like, I really need polling to do my job. My job is not just, you know, sort of writing ads and things like that. My job is to find out who the targets are, and then the media buy is targeting towards people who we can persuade. And you only know that if you have research, and I needed this in order to do my job. And finally, he yielded and let us go in there. And when we were testing, Ben Tulchin, who's in California pollster, a very good national pollster, you know, and I, you know, we're talking through the poll. And we had an argument about the economy being rigged, and we had an argument about, a corrupt system of campaign finance. Usually, when we're testing these arguments and polling, they come in the form of narrative, descriptive paragraphs where you describe something in about thirty seconds, the length of an ad, and then you get feedback from it. And I suggested to Ben that we combine these two sys these two messages, and it came out to a sentence, which is America has a rigged economy held in place by a corrupt system of campaign finance. And when we first and finally polled in Iowa and New Hampshire, that frame of messaging was the highest testing message in both states. So we knew finally where the sweet spot was with the voters, what they were looking for in that election. And when Bernie delivered it, that's when his campaign began to move. And I believe that is his biggest contribution to the debate today, that he understands the problem that is holding back our economy, crushing the middle class, making it impossible for people to afford groceries, gas, and health care. It's really the system that is holding it back. And until we correct that, we're not going to be able to have a thriving middle class again in America.

00:39:50 Andrew Keen: Well, you've mentioned earlier that Trump and Sanders exist in kind of parallel. Hasn't that message been, for better or worse, appropriated by the MAGA crowd? Aren't the people many of the victims of this brave new world, aren't they, voting for Trump and right wing populism?

00:40:10 Tad Devine: They are. And I write about it in the book, the comparison between the two populists, you know, the phony populist, Trump, who came in and grabbed this stuff and ran with it, and a real populist like Bernie, who actually is dedicated to improving the lives of people. You know, Trump's populism was also, you know, infused with his xenophobia, with his racism, with all of the bad aspects that he brings to politics, including being, as Bernie first described him, a pathological liar. Okay. All of these things are in the bundle for Trump. I think what Bernie represents is a belief that government has a role of serving people, not, you know, a role of telling people what to do in their lives and making rich people even richer, which is the current state of government in America today.

00:40:59 Andrew Keen: Finally, Bernie won't run-in 2028, but, of course, AOC might. She's toured with Bernie. She seems to be the younger female face in some ways of Sanderism, if there's such a thing. Will there, in your view, Tad, you're a keen political observer. You still have your own political consultancy. Is it fairly inevitable that there will be a Bernie style serious candidate in '20 in the Democratic race in 2028?

00:41:35 Tad Devine: I think there probably will be one or more. Yes. I think a lot of people are gonna run for president in 2028 because they can sense, you know, the frustration underneath the surface of the Democratic Party that people are desperate for new leadership and a new way forward. And so, I don't know if it's gonna be, you know, AOC or Ro Khanna, who is very much someone who supported Bernie and shares many of the same principles, as he does in belief and issues like Medicare for all, for example. And I think others could come forward. We're seeing remember, at this point in the calendar, going into 2006, Barack Obama was a state senator from Illinois. You know? So, you know, there are still people out there who may only come into focus after the next midterm, who, if in if they're in the right place at the right time, can spring broad, you know, in our society today. We have so many ways of communicating with people and so many ways of raising money, you know, that in fact, I think a lot of people who we don't even know right now could become potentially the nominee of the Democratic Party.

00:42:39 Andrew Keen: Well, it's all rather encouraging, Tad, I think. The Democrats, as you note, screwed Bernie, but you seem to be suggesting that American democracy is surviving with or without Trump. He certainly hasn't helped. But what's your sense, your optimism or pessimism about American democracy in 2028? Will there be a fair election?

00:43:02 Tad Devine: Yeah. I don't know. And I can't describe myself as totally optimistic about it. I am very hopeful that we will prevail, that we will have free and fair elections here in our nation. And I and, boy, if you'd asked me this question thirty years ago when I first started working outside The United States and came into contact with systems that are very different than ours, you know, I never would have believed that our country would be where it is today, with an authoritarian president, with a complicit press in many ways supporting him, and with a threat to the actual freedom of elections itself sitting there in the White House. And so, I think we, you know, we all have to recognize that this threat is real and that this president is capable of doing anything. We already saw it on January 6, what he did. And he is capable of doing that and worse again. So we'll be tested. I'm hoping that if the, if we win elections and this is the only way to fix the problem. People have to run on this message, okay, and have to win. And when people run and win on a message that this economy is rigged and that the rigging of it is because of the system of campaign finance, then the others will back down. It's the only way to make them back down. You have to beat them in elections, and I hope we start this November.

00:44:22 Andrew Keen: Well, that's the Bernie message. The Democrats did screw Bernie, but I wouldn't say Bernie screwed them back, but he certainly is more powerful in many ways than the whole Democratic establishment put together. Tad Devine, the book came out yesterday. How the Democrats Screwed Bernie. Congratulations. It's an important book, important message. And as the twenty twenty eight Democratic race unfolds, I'd love to get you back on the show. Thank you so much.

00:44:50 Tad Devine: Great, Andrew. Great to be with you.