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Bernie. Don’t Do This.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/bernie_sanders_scorched_earth_run_against_hillary_clinton_is_a_mistake.htmlBernie Sanders is still in it to win it. Which is a problem. Because he can’t.
Hillary Clinton holds 1,768 pledged delegates—allocated through primaries and caucuses—to Sanders’ 1,494. To overcome that deficit, Sanders would have to win 67 percent of all remaining delegates, including massive wins in Clinton-friendly states such as California and New Jersey. Barring an extraordinary shift, this won’t happen. It’s not a live possibility.
But the Sanders campaign doesn’t seem to care. “While Mr. Sanders says he does not want Mr. Trump to win in November, his advisers and allies say he is willing to do some harm to Mrs. Clinton in the shorter term if it means he can capture a majority of the 475 pledged delegates at stake in California and arrive at the Philadelphia convention with maximum political power,” reports the New York Times on the campaign’s newest strategy—a scorched-earth run to the finish.
The reaction from mainstream Democrats, and even from a few Sanders supporters, has been decidedly negative. On the other end, Sanders’ defenders say this is no different from what Clinton herself did in the 2008 primary, when she continued until the summer, as anti–Barack Obama anger and vitriol simmered in her camp. It’s true there are real parallels and similarities. But there are real distinctions, too, that make Sanders’ actions different in kind.
Let’s compare Sanders’ actions with Clinton’s at this point in 2008. Like Clinton, Sanders has adopted an almost intransigent tone, even echoing elements of her old rhetoric. “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” said Clinton in early May of that year, citing an Associated Press story that “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” A few days later, she would crush Obama in the West Virginia primary.
If it were just this rhetoric, Sanders staying in wouldn’t be an issue. Things get heated at the end of a presidential primary, but there’s no reason the losing candidate should bail before the end. That said, there are key differences between 2008 and now. Then, Clinton promised to run only to the last primary, to give every Democrat a chance to vote (and at that point, when it was clear Obama had the pledged delegates and superdelegates to win, she conceded). Now, Sanders vows to take this fight to the convention, even if—it seems—he’s still behind in pledged delegates.
“There are a lot of people out there who say Bernie Sanders should drop out, the people of California should not have the right to determine who the next president will be,” he said to supporters in California on Tuesday night, celebrating his win in the Oregon Democratic primary. He added: “We are in this until the last ballot is counted … and then we’re going to take that fight to Philadelphia.”
Sanders isn’t just planning a run to the convention—he’s also hoping to flip enough superdelegates from the Clinton camp to erase the difference in pledged delegates, giving him the nomination. It’s a fair strategy (given the rules), but a curious one, given the extent to which Team Sanders has blasted superdelegates as unfair—another way the Democratic National Committee has rigged the primary.
Democratic leaders say they’re worried, and it’s easy to see why. In the past month, Sanders has switched gears, from a policy critique of Clinton to a process argument against the Democratic Party. The argument? That any outcome short of full deference to his campaign is evidence of corruption and betrayal. “The Democratic Party has a choice,” he said in a statement, issued after a near riotous confrontation between Sanders and Clinton supporters in Nevada, where the former accused the latter of rigging the process for their candidate. “It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change … or the party can choose to maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big-money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy.”
Clinton took a terrible turn in the last weeks of the 2008 campaign, where she cited the possibility of Obama being assassinated as one reason to stay in the race. But this is different. Less crass and more destructive. Even at her worse, Clinton never wavered from Democratic unity. And after she conceded the race, she urged her supporters and delegates to back Obama. Sanders, on the other hand, has offered a stark analysis to his voters. If Clinton, the winner of the Democratic primary, bends the knee, Sanders says the party is salvageable. If she doesn’t, it’s not.
In the meantime, he’ll show no care or concern in his rhetoric or attacks, a fact emphasized by the degree to which a vocal minority of his backers believe the entire process has been rigged against them, with Clinton as the illegitimate winner of an unfair contest. It drove the fracas in Nevada, and if Sanders plans to strafe Clinton ahead of California, it could drive tension elsewhere, all the way to the convention.
more on story.....
He is causing so much pain for us Dems.....knowing him he more likely he will go until the end....
his ego is problem....
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