The primary season has truly been an entertaining one — even fun to watch. All along, we have known that the fundamentals of 2016 heavily favor Democrats. Meaning, if we just look at the president’s approval rating and the demographics of the electorate — the Democratic nominee starts with about 240 EVs and an excellent chance at exceeding the needed 270. Despite an extended nomination fight on the Democratic side, we were not losing any ground because of the absolute chaos on the Republican side.
The good times are over.
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have both dropped out. Now, suddenly, Donald Trump is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. Forget the semantics — as of May 4, 2016, Trump is the GOP nominee. And he can immediately begin to take the fight to Democrats.
This is truly an unfortunate turn of events. While I never bought into the idea that Bernie Sanders’ challenge to Hillary Clinton could hurt her in any meaningful way, the truth is, his protracted fight with her is now working against all of us. If Clinton is forced to spend the next month fighting with Bernie Sanders, we will have wasted 4 weeks — and Trump will spend every single day blowing every little squabble between them out of proportion. Democrats lose the month, and nobody will know how much damage we will have inflicted on ourselves.
Until now, I’ve believed that Sanders deserved to leave the race when he felt it comfortable. I was okay with him staying in all the way to June 14. After all, Clinton stayed in all the way until the end in 2008. But now, I’ve flipped on this. Bernie Sanders can not win. We all know this to be true. If we allow this party fight to continue, we all lose.
Bernie Sanders should seriously consider whether it’s worth it to continue fighting with Hillary Clinton over our nomination. The Democratic Party should now publicly pressure Sanders to give up his claims to our nomination. We need to be fighting Donald Trump, not each other.