Bernie Sanders about his social media strategy: "we don't know what we're doing"

Two weeks before he would appear at the Iowa State Fair, surrounded by a sea of whiteness, Bernie Sanders was at the Italian restaurant Chi Spacca, in Hollywood, trying to shore up another key constituency. The presidential candidate, who remains a serious contender for the Democratic nomination despite having slipped in the polls, was having lunch with 25 or so creatives—writers, musicians, artists and social-media mavens, most of whom were African American or Latino.

It was a somewhat unusual scene for Sanders, who seems to dislike the glitterati, never mind people in general, and who has studiously avoided the sort of $2,800-a-plate parties that are a staple for other candidates jetting in and out of Hollywood. Like Elizabeth Warren, Sanders has mostly eschewed big-dollar donors in New York, L.A., and Silicon Valley in favor of a more national network of so-called ordinary people who give $20 or $30 a pop. (Biden and Harris have a little more than a quarter million individual donors. Sanders has nearly three times that.)

Sanders prefers to wag his finger, to be earnest, to lecture—about inequality, structural imbalances, socking it to the billionaire class. He seems permanently furrowed, slovenly, cantankerous. He has no time to glad-hand. But there he was at Chi Spacca, where the tomahawk pork chop runs $90, and the beef Florentine is $195. Sanders ordered steak.

Sheppard voiced concern that Sanders, should he snag the Democratic nod, might be unprepared for the general election. “Bernie said explicitly, ‘Look, I’ll be frank with you. In terms of our social media strategy, where we’re headed, we don’t know what we’re doing.’