Astroturf - updated

A Berning pile of crap in the Times, this article purports to be a critique of Sanders's campaign missteps, but is nothing more than butter-wouldn't-melt hagiography. He was too pure and too naive to go after Hillary and to campaign hard (because he was so, so dedicated to his job as Senator), and that's why he's losing.

What a crock. First of all, he did, too, go after her -- as the article itself has to admit, he began complaining about the Goldman speeches in January, a month before the first votes were cast.

Second, he did, too, campaign hard in the Super Tuesday states -- as Maddow and others have noted, he was on the ground there before Hillary with more people, and he spent more than she did. His inability to win minority votes was not a matter of campaign tactics or timing. The article uncritically accepts the Sanders campaign's claim to the contrary, which has already been debunked.

Third, the unstated premise of the entire piece is that momentum would have mattered, would have changed everything. It's like a college friend used to say: If we had any ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had any eggs. There has been no Bernie momentum, despite the media's hunger for it. With one notable exception (not counting his home-court-advantage states), he has won lily-white states with caucuses, period. This has decidedly not been a "momentum" campaign. It has been a campaign that has followed the smart money's expectations from the get-go, with Hillary's strengths not being seriously challenged.

Nice work,Times. And spare us, Berners, from your complaints about media bias. If Hillary had gotten anything like the kind of cheerleading coverage in '08 that Bernie has this cycle, we'd be talking about her as a lame duck president now.

Update: The perfesser weighs in.