Insiders recount how Sanders lost the black vote -- and the nomination slipped away [View all]

Bernie Sanders reached the pinnacle of his campaign inside Cowboys Dancehall in San Antonio on Feb. 22. He pumped his fist to punctuate a triumphant speech. He’d just won the Nevada caucuses and was sitting on top of the Democratic presidential race.

But 1,200 miles away in South Carolina, some aides and allies felt dread that trouble was lurking just around the corner. “I knew that our campaign had not done the work it needed to do,” Donald Gilliard recalls thinking. He felt the campaign’s strategy was “geared toward white progressives,” leaving black voters behind.

Gilliard, the deputy state political director, wasn’t alone. Mal Hyman, a former congressional candidate and a Sanders surrogate in South Carolina, had a similar sense of anxiety. “We knew we were vulnerable,” he lamented.

A week later, their worst fears came true. A resurgent Joe Biden thumped Sanders by 28 points in the South Carolina primary, sending the Vermont senator into a free fall from which he not recovered.