Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 02:02 pm
It is understandable that he doesn’t want to give up, but Sen. Bernie Sanders is losing credibility by refusing to accept that Hillary Clinton has currently secured enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee.
In a statement, Sen. Sanders said:
It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgement, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer.
Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination. She will be dependent on superdelegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change their minds between now and then. They include more than 400 superdelegates who endorsed Secretary Clinton 10 months before the first caucuses and primaries and long before any other candidate was in the race.
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Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump.
It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t become official until the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. The superdelegates aren’t going to flip. Sen. Sanders can force a vote at the convention, but the result of this academic exercise will be the same. It is ironic that the same candidate who spent much of his campaign claiming that superdelegates are undemocratic now wants the same “undemocratic” feature of the Democratic primary to hand him the nomination.
The truth is that Sen. Sanders is hurting himself with these absurd claims that the Democratic contest is not over. There is no precedent for the superdelegates flipping to a candidate in the large number that Sen. Sanders would need to become the Democratic nominee. It is not going to happen.
The only mathematical argument that Sen. Sanders can make to the superdelegates is that he does better in the hypothetical head to head polls against Donald Trump, but those polls are meaningless. Otherwise, Sanders can only argue that he can bring more young people into the process, which may or may not be true.
Sen. Sanders is harming himself and his movement by continuing to make an argument that is not based in reality. His contested convention, if he plays this out, will last for one vote.
Bernie Sanders should stay in the race until the very end. It is up to him to decide when his presidential campaign ends. It doesn’t matter if he quits tomorrow or at the convention, but Sen. Sanders needs to at least acknowledge the basic math that Hillary Clinton currently has enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee.
Sen. Sanders has run a fantastic campaign, but his refusal to accept the current reality of the race is embarrassing.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
