Monday, June 6, 2016

The Day Bernie Faces The Music

The Sanders campaign faces a tough decision tomorrow: all indications are that Clinton will win New Jersey handily, and take enough delegates in California to clinch the nomination. The real question then becomes "does Bernie stay in?"

A split is emerging inside the Bernie Sanders campaign over whether the senator should stand down after Tuesday’s election contests and unite behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, or take the fight all the way to the July party convention and try to pry the nomination from her… 
Tad Devine, a senior Sanders strategist who advised Democratic nominees Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, among others, suggested the “path forward” is uncertain, hinging on the outcome in California and other states that have yet to vote. He voiced a conciliatory note, describing how the two campaigns might set aside differences that have grown more pronounced in the heat of the year-long campaign… 
Campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who has worked in Mr. Sanders’s congressional offices and Vermont-based campaigns dating to the mid-1980s, takes a more aggressive approach… 
“The plan is as the senator has described it: to go forward after Tuesday and keep the campaign going to the convention and make the case to superdelegates that Sen. Sanders is the best chance that Democrats have to beat Trump,” Mr. Weaver said. “The trajectory is the same regardless of the outcome in California.”

As Nancy LeTourneau points out:

Ultimately, the candidate himself will have to make the call. It will be up to Bernie Sanders to decide whether he continues to be a progressive voice within the Democratic Party or sidelines both himself and his supporters as disrupters.

Frankly, I don't see the Sanders camp throwing in the towel until the convention.  It's only a matter of how much damage Sanders does and is rightfully blamed for heading into the Clinton v. Trump general election matchup.

We'll see very soon.  But the notion that Sanders is somehow "winning" ends Tuesday night.

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