Warning, unpopular opinion below. And it's very ranty, because I'm very angry. And upset. We had one chance, and I am not convinced we are in a recoverable situaiton. But in the event that we are, here is the unpopular, hard truth as I see it.
A large part of the problem with Bernie's campaign is that on the backend they are very disorganized and not making smart choices. Couple that with the fact that they are relying on a demographic that is ridiculously hard to motivate to get up and go to the polls and he is underperforming everywhere.
Absolutely every penny from this point forward should go toward getting ballots to those people, not the people to the ballots. Setting up tables at colleges and malls and apartment buildings with tablets and phones with cell service/wifi to req absentee ballots (or provide if possible/legal - sometimes the voter has to req them.) Giving people stamped envelopes to put them in, etc. Scheduled buses from high population areas taking people to early voting locations and registration locations for closed primaries.
And those rallies - those rallies are GOLDMINES of 10s of thousands of people who have already got up off their ass. For God's sakes, give them ballots/ballot request forms to fill out on the spot, a box to collect them like movie glasses on the way out the doors and mail them for them!!! I cannot for the life of me figure out why we never capitalized on this. I always just assumed the campaign knew what it was doing, but it has become crystal clear that is not the case.
And spring break - those schedules were published last year, before Bernie even announced. Where was the plan to deal with that and capture those votes ahead of time? We have one for all the spring breaks that are upcoming, right? Right?!
Like the volunteers are running the show and they shouldn't be, you know? Not that there is bad will or incapability or anything, just that one stupid census CD and a Crystal Reports or SQL person could have been guiding our efforts with laser focus. It's better to load only 2 zipcodes at a time with the right demographic into the calling software to make sure EVERYONE gets canvassed is probably better than using data from the DNC.
Having a real strategy for phonebanking and canvassing rather than "Do any of these states! Come to our office and volunteer!". Guide that shit with laser accuracy - ESPECIALLY on voting days. There should be one volunteer exit polling and providing real time data to the campaign at every polling site. (Ideal world of course. Some places might need to be paid. And some places may be deemed to small or Republican or Hillary to monitor.) Input results into a phone app for real time data back at HQ. Load up the zip codes into the phone banking app and send out the message: "We are currently down by 5% in XXX county according to our exit poller but only YYY votes have been counted. Can you PLEASE go vote in the next 90 minutes? There's still enough active voters to turn this around, but we need YOU."
And on a related note to phonebanking, why haven't I ever seen a single thing from the campaign that says "We are seeing everyone's reports of people getting multiple calls and are concerned we have a bug in our software. If you would like to be part of our bug squashing team, please contact us at: XXXXXX." And then give them instructions to collect information when it happens so you can do a database trace and see if there's something going wrong with the flagging. Instead it's all people guessing that it's just user error or end recipient error or something else.
And why are we relying on TV advertising - the DVR has negated any functionality of TV ads. It's a waste of money unless it's on a single huge event where people actually watch commercials - like the super bowl. Otherwise, save the videos only for social media and canvassers and events. Pay to have them broadcast at sports events on the arena screen or before concerts where the audience is captive. But everyone skips the commercials. It's dumb. Snail mail and radio for everything else. Everyone empties out their mailbox every now and then or the post office gets pissed at you, no matter if your 97 or 19.
Arm your canvassers with an app for their phones and send them out the door. Make sure the GPS is on. Have them record non-specific subjective data about areas: opposition signs, Republican influence, receptiveness in general, etc.
I actually put a lot of Bernie's failure to be where he should be on his campaign manager to be honest. I don't know much about running a damn campaign, but I can guarantee you that the things I mentioned up there would provide superior results. Whoever is running this thing does not have the appropriate ops skillset. Bernie's next hire should be an ops wizard, like tomorrow.
I mean, seriously, <brooklyn> what are we fuckin' doin' here? </brooklyn>
TL;DR: Bernie's campaign ops manager is in over their head.