The problem with Bernie Sanders's campaign wasn't that it was too combative or not combative enough, rather that it didn't do it competently. Used alienating rhetoric towards moderate Dems, but also didn't pitch opposition research like a normal campaign, which all others were.

Campaign had no rapid response team, didn't pitch oppo off the record/on background which virtually all of the others did. So the others could be nice in public but also get negative stories on opponents out in private. This basic skill...wasn't used by the Sanders team.

Most people who run for state rep or city council or something have people doing that...and a major presidential campaign with more money than the others wasn't doing it.

So in this vacuum I think people both inside the campaign and outside tried to do their own independent opposition research and just put it out there on Twitter or cable news, which was disorganized, left clear fingerprints, and often had the campaign working against itself.

For instance, David Sirota promoted a Zephyr Teachout op-ed labeling Joe Biden's campaign as having a corruption problem and neither the op-ed nor the newsletter Sirota blasted out were actually approved by Sanders or his campaign, so he disowned it. Disorganized

Now take anecdotes like that, and multiply them by 100 and that was the nature of the communications apparatus of the campaign. That's the main reason they had a tough time in the media -- they weren't doing the basic work of shaping its coverage at all.

Throughout the campaign I had various campaigns pitching me oppo stuff and I wasn't even a full-time reporter for the past year! I was working in psych research. But talking to reporter friends, they had the exact same experience. Everyone was talking to reporters except Sanders.