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. He’s sunk to third place nationally, behind Warren and Joe Biden, and some polls of early nomination states show him barely clinging to double digits. He’s shaken up his staffs in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s lost the endorsement of the Working Families Party, a left-wing group that backed him in 2016, to Warren…

But party operatives, and even some Sanders allies, aren’t convinced that the swing through Iowa was strategic. “Bernie has no idea how to right the ship and neither does anybody around him,” a Democratic activist with knowledge of the campaign says. “They don’t know where they’re going. They know things aren’t going well and they’re grasping at ideas.”

As Sanders has stagnated and Warren has soared, even some of the Vermont senator’s supporters are expressing alarm. Something is off, they say privately, adding to the chorus of people in establishment political circles saying the same thing. Maybe he should explain how he’s different from Warren — he has deliberately avoided any hint of criticism of her — or commit to out-organizing her in the early nominating states. Or perhaps he needs to make nice with the media and hire more seasoned pros. Or what about going all-in on Iowa?