Every failed campaign goes through three stages.

1. The dream

2. The fundraising

3. The circular firing squad

The campaign of Commissar Bernie Sanders is now approaching that happiest gulag, the circular firing squad. Long live Bernie! 

What that really means is insiders hurling blame at different figures who were calling the shots, namely Faiz Shakir and Nina Turner. Also complaining that a senile socialist never transformed into a unifying figure who could have made everyone take Castro’s literacy program.

Then there’s the suggestion that AOC was chasing Bernie.

As Ms. Warren relentlessly courted Ms. Ocasio-Cortez last fall, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s advisers had to prod Mr. Sanders’s aides into having him call her — a conversation that eventually led to her endorsing him.

If true, why?

It worked out pretty well. Cortez’s endorsement of Sanders matched up with his growing rise in the polls. Warren faded and AOC looked good. And then she had the excellent timing to escape from Gulag Sandernista just in time for the decline and collapse to kick in.

Unlike fellow squad members, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who went down with the S.S. Bernie.

But, if we’re to believe this, Cortez wanted Sanders to court her.