After the AP called the Democratic nomination for Clinton, the Sanders campaign released a statement:
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.
Now, I happen to agree with Sanders on this one, but it still strikes me as hypocritical of his campaign to invoke the DNC, after all the times that Sanders (and his supporters and campaign) have accused the DNC (and especially its chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz) of rigging the election for Clinton.
In addition, Sanders has now said he will win by talking Democratic superdelegates into changing sides, in many cases defying the will of the voters in their home states. His campaign has declared that its “job from now until the convention is to convince superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump.”
What happened to the “Democratic” in “Democratic Socialist”?
Yes, I know that Sanders’ statements are likely political posturing, but it still strikes me as strongly contrary to Bernie’s principles and values, which was his whole appeal. And that’s sad.
It is also pointless. According to FiveThirtyEight.com, there actually “isn’t much sign of forward momentum for Sanders”. He had a “strong run of states in late March and early April, but over the past seven weeks, from the New York primary on April 19 through Puerto Rico on Sunday, Clinton has won 505 pledged delegates compared with 428 for Sanders. Her current lead in our national polling average, 14.4 percentage points, is the widest it has been since mid-February.”
And Clinton is gaining superdelegates, not losing them. How can Bernie talk superdelegates into switching, after he has spent months attacking them?
Finally, by continuing to attack Clinton, Sanders is hurting his chances of influencing the Democratic Party platform. And that’s sad too.
UPDATE: Politico has an inside look at Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and how Sanders himself is making all the big decisions, including the ones that have hurt his campaign and incited anger among his supporters. It is fascinating, and answers some of the questions asked in this post.
4 Comments
It is just wrong to announce results before the votes are cast. You can’t anoint a winner based on polls. If you did, Dewey would have been President and Hillary would have been President in 2008.
Hillary is going to be the nominee with virtual certainty, but a making false statements about “clinching the nomination” more than a month before the votes is purely a political trick to suppress votes in California and other states voting today. Just the latest trick from the Democratic dirty tricks plan, like the shutting of 2/3rds of the voting locations and cutting hours in Puerto Rico.
Hillary doesn’t need MORE examples that she is the candidate of the plutocrats, political power monsters and insiders.
Excuse me, why are you blaming this on Clinton? The AP announced it, not her. It seems obvious that this hurts her more than it hurts Sanders. Why would Clinton supporters vote if she has already won? While Sanders supporters show absolutely no signs of giving up and they are also strongly interested in the party platform, which they might be able to influence more if Sanders has a convincing win in California.
The media calls results of elections before all the votes have been counted all the time, including for Sanders. In this case, we already have quite a few actual votes (far more for Clinton), and the AP announcement was not based on a sampling (like a poll), it was based on finding (formerly undecided) superdelegates who now said they are definitely going to vote for Clinton to give her enough votes to win on the first ballot.
Now, I happen to agree with you that the AP should not have announced this just before the primaries today, but calling it a political trick sounds like you are reaching a pretty serious conclusion with no evidence. Which is even worse than what you are complaining about.
Not to mention that Sanders’ whole argument is that polls show that he would be better able to beat Trump in the general election. Do you believe that the superdelegates should switch their votes to Sanders based on these polls? Seriously?
Does anyone remotely doubt that Hillary Clinton will win general election in landslide? The only scenario she can get competition is if somehow Republicans get rid of Trump and put some sane candidate for general election.The other remote scenario is that Obama DOJ decide to indict her for email server.
Gary Johnson seems rad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdkznU2IvfU