Bernie Sanders Is Making Strategic Changes, but His Desire for Control Remains

But in interviews over the last week, his aides and advisers said the 77-year-old Independent has consented to some strategic changes as he tries to win over a party that in the Trump era is not singularly focused on economic inequality.His campaign aims to capitalize on the elements that made Mr. Sanders a phenomenon in 2016 — big crowds, a small-dollar fund-raising army — but also to more visibly match an electoral moment defined by inclusion, identity and issues related to both.A central part of the plan, aides and advisers said, involves persuading Mr. Sanders to reveal more of his personal story, starting with the rally in Brooklyn, near the rent-controlled apartment where he grew up, the son of a Jewish immigrant, and on Sunday in Chicago, where he went to college and joined civil rights protests.The rallies, those close to Mr. Sanders hope, will allow him to showcase his upbringing — something he has long resisted — in the context of how it has shaped the policy issues voters now know so well, injecting freshness to his by-now familiar message and providing voters a new window into who he is and what he represents.“That has not been his practice in the past — he is much more focused on the ideas and the policies he advocates,” Jeff Weaver, who was Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign manager and is still his closest adviser, said in an interview. Though his accent betrays his origins, he has spent his entire political career in Vermont, whose winter climate he often recalls on the campaign trail.Even if Mr. Sanders does talk more about himself, his competition presents a new set of challenges that his own biography may only compound.“At the end of the day, he is still an old white man,” said Tracy Sefl, a veteran Democratic strategist and formerly a senior adviser to the super PAC Ready for Hillary.