Bernie Sanders Is in Trouble

(Politico) HOLLY OTTERBEIN September 30 2019 WEST LIBERTY Iowa Bernie Sanders was on the final leg of a barnstorming tour through Iowa last week that he hoped would persuade voters hes the best candidate to take on President Donald Trump. He had crisscrossed the state at typical breakneck speed visiting in two days five counties that had thrown their lot in with Trump after helping put Barack Obama in the White House. But a community center where Sanders was taking questions from voters Daniel Clark a delegate for him in 2016 wasnt interested in talking about the general election. He wanted to know about the primary and how Sanders was going to get through it. Since it seems like its going to be kind of the way that it was last time where the field seems a little skewed against you are you willing to take this to a contested convention?" he asks. Were in this race to win it" Sanders replies. The most important thing is person-to-person contact all right? It is everybody here reaching out to five other people and explaining to them the importance of the election and why you think I should win this election. And right now ... we have here in Iowa incredible grassroots support." With just four months until the first-in-the-nation caucuses Sanders is in trouble. As he delivered his populist gospel to large crowds of camouflage-clad high schoolers liberal arts college students and trade union members across Iowa last week a problematic narrative was hardening around him: His campaign is in disarray and Elizabeth Warren has eclipsed him as the progressive standard-bearer of the primary. Hes sunk to third place nationally behind Warren and Joe Biden and some polls of early nomination states show him barely clinging to double digits. Hes shaken up his staffs in Iowa and New Hampshire. Hes lost the endorsement of the Working Families Party a left-wing group that backed him in 2016 to Warren.