Bernie-ing Out: Has Hillary Extinguished Her Primary Opponent? (Hillary Group)
In the last few weeks Hillary Clinton has seen her campaign buoyed by a very strong debate performance and a Benghazi committee hearing where she clearly got the better of her political tormentors. She quickly reaped the benefits of those political victories as two minor candidates, James Webb and Lincoln Chafee have dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination, and one potentially strong candidate, Vice President Joseph Biden, opted not to run. Recent polls have reflected this as Ms. Clinton has widened her lead over Bernie Sanders, the leading challenger for the nomination.
Mr. Sanders, who for much of the late summer and early fall, appeared to be doing everything right, including raising substantial funds, and becoming a potential threat to Ms. Clinton, has been the loser in all these developments. Despite a good debate performance where he, not Ms. Clinton, got the line of the night, Mr. Sanders has seen his chances of winning decline and has, overall, received less media attention and generated less buzz over the last few weeks.
As a response to this, Mr. Sanders has done two significant things. He has begun to attack Ms. Clinton more directly, rather than just implicitly lumping her in with the corporate Democrats of whom he has been critical throughout his campaign. Second, he has hired a pollster. Neither of these things should be altogether surprising in a presidential campaign, but Mr. Sanders had told us that his campaign was going to be different....
The race is not over, and there are still scenarios where Mr. Sanders could catch up to the frontrunner, but these scenarios are much less plausible than they were even a month ago. Summer of 2015 was a very good time for Mr. Sanders and a very stressful one for Ms. Clinton’s campaign. However, it now appears that Ms. Clinton survived that summer of Sanders and has demonstrated her considerable resilience. It is also becoming clear that Mr. Sanders squandered his run of good fortune in the summer, making the mistake of thinking that it would last. When fortunes turned, Mr. Sanders inability to build a genuine well planned out presidential campaign, rather than an exciting, but often unfocused movement complete with large crowds at rallies and an active social media presence, caught up with him....
http://observer.com/2015/10/bernie-ing-out-has-hillary-extinguished-her-primary-opponent/#.VjFVDprWGsU.twitter via Observer
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