Bernie Sander’s campaign has already driven over the cliff, they just refuse to look at what’s coming up at them (jef/AP)
The Bernie Sanders campaign is about to implode, and it won’t have anything to do with unfairness, or a rigged selection process.
Money
The Sanders campaign has been spending massive amounts of money to win small states. This has been a tactic to keep up the appearance of having momentum, even though the New York primary effectively ended his campaign. Now he faces the June 7th primary in six states and the big prize is California. He needs money for ads, for campaign workers, for materials, for travel, and the thousands of expenses of running a national campaign.
On June 7th, Sanders would have to win in all the states to argue his legitimacy in the race, but California is the I-beam that will break his back. Without money to ‘burn’ in California he can’t effectively campaign during the critical final two-week push.
Summer Breakdown
Sanders campaign is more like a street gang, than a political organization. They need each other to maintain their passion. He has effectively used the micro environments at colleges and universities to build excitement and recruit supporters. The bad news is that almost every college in the United States is going or has gone on summer break this month. He has lost his core of his organization and while many students have been assigned to volunteer duties for his campaign over the next few weeks, the ‘gang’ nature of his organization has been lost.
Sanders would like to be able to storm through college campuses in California, whipping up support, but he can’t because most of the students are gone, and/or they’re working summer jobs. In effect, he has lost the foundation of his support and he has no money to replace wild-eyed college students with a real political machine.
Unpresidential Behavior
Some Sanders supporters have the tact and dignity of a Trump supporter. There are intelligent and respectful supporters in the Sanders camp, but the thugs are attracting the spotlight. The antics of the Sanders supporters at the Nevada Democratic State Convention, and their social media behavior following the convention, required Sanders to stand up and disavow his campaign from the thugs. He didn’t.
In his response statement to the bad behavior of his supporters, he implied that he is not, and never was a Democrat. He has allowed himself to be deluded that real Democrats will suddenly become mindless Bernie Zombies, disavow their party, and select him to lead them into the abyss.
A qualified presidential candidate would have stepped up and made it clear that he or she would rather lose, than condone the behavior of violent and disruptive people. A qualified candidate would honor and respect the will of the people (Clinton won the Nevada’s caucus, not Sanders,) rather than offer a non-apology regarding his supporters who threw chairs, disrupted the meeting, and then called women sexually derogatory names. Sanders is not presidential. It is becoming difficult to distinguish who is less presidential material, Bernie Sanders, or Donald Trump.
Pushing A Bad Position
The hardest part of losing is accepting that you have lost. When almost everyone else knows the inevitability of the outcome, it is too late to back down. Sanders is beyond the point of any hope of winning. He lost on April 19th in New York when he failed to show that he could win a big state with a diverse population. Now, he is looking more and more desperate with each campaign speech. The line between a committed, passionate man, and an impassioned man who should be committed is a nanometer wide. Sanders is over that line.
Currently, Sanders is 264 pledged delegates behind. To win the nomination, Clinton needs 93 more delegates to add to her current combined totals of pledged and superdelegates. There is nothing Sanders can do to prevent Clinton from wrapping up the nomination on June 7th. He can pretend he is accomplishing something by staying in the race, but he is becoming the man who his supporters will pity, rather than admire.
The Road Out
Sanders does have an option out of his dilemma. He could suddenly announce he is dropping out, and throw his passionate support for Hillary Clinton. Some of his supporters would be angry at him, but those are mostly the thugs, who seek to disrupt the National Democratic Convention. By dropping out, he would gain the admiration of Clinton supporters who would celebrate the man who sought to bring the party back together. Then, he and his loyal supporters could continue to campaign on the issues that Clinton and he agree must be addressed.
The result would be the complete destruction of Donald Trump’s campaign before he was nominated in July. It’s not going to happen, but that is the contrast between a loser and a great person.
