Hillary Clinton’s NY primary victory yesterday showed Bernie’s faithful followers that---once again---in those states where her influence on the institutional party is great, it becomes very difficult to defeat her in a closed primary format.
(Which is why the Sanders campaign has such high hopes for closing the delegate gap with California’s open primary.)
The fact that she was able to do well in a state where she enjoys broad and deep connections within the Dem party was not unexpected. And neither was a Sanders victory in NY perceived as absolutely essential to his chances of winning the nomination.
Yes, it would have been nice to pull off the big upset, but the forces we are taking on do possess a lot of political weapons. It was indeed a formidable challenge.
Despondent Bernie supporters, however, would do well to remember the last time they felt this kind of sadness, which was right after the institutional party came up big for Hillary on Super Tuesday.
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What happened next was Bernie winning 7 out of 8 contests against her and making continual progress in improving his polling in national Democratic surveys, to where he has now drawn even with her.
And yes, my friends, that important indicator of Bernie Sanders’ growing popularity happens to be far more important than the results of the NY primary for one very important reason: a contested Democratic Convention is now a near statistical certainty.
What this means is that it is statistically unlikely that Hillary will have enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination in the Convention’s first round of voting, and that means that the decisions of the Superdelegates will collectively decide who the party’s nominee will be.
Now, contrary to what Hillary supporters will try to suggest over the next 48 hours, none of those Superdelegates who have voiced their support for Hillary thus far can be counted on to vote for her in July (see Hillary Superdelegates, 2008).
Indeed, they have not committed themselves to vote for Hillary in any kind of binding way, but have merely expressed their preference for her at an early stage in the nomination process.
Sure, they may still feel the same way when the convention convenes in July, but there are no guarantees that they will, especially if the Bernie Sanders surge among Democrats nationally continues to strengthen.
So Bernie now polling evenly with Hillary is a big deal because proving to the Superdelegates that you can rely on the support of only a slim majority of Democrats does nothing to establish your viability as a general election candidate.
As the Democratic Party leadership is now acutely aware of, 43% of Americans now identify themselves as Independents, compared to only 30% who describe themselves as Democrats.
It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of this key electoral reality. It is not possible for a Democrat to win the general election by merely persuading all Democrats to come out and vote for her/him.
Simply telling an uncertain Superdelegate that your candidate is [barely] popular enough within the Party to have won a plurality of the pledged delegates is to brag of nothing of significance.
There is one question a Superdelegate must consider above all else is: how well can this candidate be expected to do among Democrats + Independents combined?
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Hillary’s supporters may believe that closed primaries are the best ones to have, simply because Hillary has done well in them, but such primaries give you no idea of what kind of appeal a candidate might have among Independent voters.
If she had won NY in an open primary AND she had shown that she had strong appeal among Independents, then even the Sanders camp would have to admit that she had made a very powerful statement about her potential strengths as the nominee of the party.
But instead, because...
- It was a closed primary...
- Recent polls have shown Bernie equaling her support among Democrats nationally...
- Many other polls have shown that he appeals to far larger numbers of Independents than she does, perhaps because of her very poor favorability ratings…
...the NY Primary results actually did nothing to diminish the power of the Big Picture arguments which identify Bernie Sanders as THE best possible candidate for the party to select as its nominee, if it wants to win in November.
Hillary has no choice but to continue to do whatever she can to stop his popularity from growing further still, but without employing the kind of smears that will enrage his supporters. Not as easy a challenge as it might sound.
Will she be able to improve her standing among Independents? Perhaps it’s possible, but I’m not seeing how she gets there from here.
She must continue to win approximately 65% of the remaining pledged delegates and it is not clear at all how she hopes to be able to do this. If she fails to achieve that goal, then she must hope that Bernie will not continue to gain in popularity nationally and that she can somehow become as appealing to Independents as he is in order to prevail at the contested convention.
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So take heart, Berners! Even if, in spite of all our efforts, we were to come up just short, keep in mind that it is much, much better to lose the nomination 49%-51% than it is to lose it 40%-60%.
A very narrow loss to Clinton at the convention would be an astounding victory for Bernie Sanders’ movement and it would instantaneously garner the respect of the establishment, who will be quaking in their boots re: the raw political power of this late-blossoming, $$-rich HALF of the Democratic Party that stands before them.
They’d be fully aware that Hillary would have a zero percent chance of winning in the general election without the committed support of Sanders’ enthusiastic posse. Quite a start for the political revolution even if it were to come up just short this first time out.
So even if we don’t ‘win’, as long as we make it a close loss we would still win, making all the $$ and hours we’ve thrown at his campaign 100% worthwhile. I know one thing: as long as Bernie Sanders is talking, and people are listening, my $$ contributions are an INVESTMENT that is paying off in a big way.
Speaking of which, it’s time for me to make another $$ contribution to the cause. Some big contests are coming up…