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

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody, it's Wednesday, July the 8th, 2026 My guest today, 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 2016 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 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?

**Tad Devine** (1:36)
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, 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 & Schuster, Ian Strauss. 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.

**Andrew Keen** (2:20)
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?

**Tad Devine** (2:33)
You know, I hope it's not an angry book, but I think it does express a degree of anger.
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 then editor of Simon & 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 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 want to 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.

**Andrew Keen** (3:44)
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 social, I mean, he defined himself obviously as a socialist or a democratic socialist. So tell me your history of, your Bernie history, Tad.

**Tad Devine** (4:31)
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.

**Andrew Keen** (4:49)
And you were probably both right.