Bernie Sanders will throw his support behind Hillary Clinton before the Democratic Party's nominating convention, predicted Madeleine Kunin, the former Vermont Democratic governor challenged by Sanders 30 years ago.
Clinton is poised to shore up her formidable delegate lead over Sanders in Tuesday's Democratic primary contests in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The race between Clinton and Sanders has taken a more negative turn in recent weeks and that will take time to “cool off,” Kunin said in an interview with USA TODAY.
“His normal demeanor is grumpy,” she said, but despite the increasingly fractious tone, “I think he will do it,” said Kunin, who’s been critical of Sanders.
“Now he’s a national figure,” said Kunin. “He claims to be a Democrat. If he wants to hold that stature, he’s got to do it,” she said.
Kunin was governor of Vermont from 1985 to 1991 and speaks from personal experience. Sanders challenged her when she ran for a second term in 1986, even though she “was considered on the liberal end of the spectrum,” she said.
Clinton is likely to cement her dominance and put the nomination further out of Sanders’ reach on Tuesday. There are 384 pledged delegates at stake in Tuesday's contests, and the campaign believes it could have 90% of what it needs to clinch the nomination after the votes are counted. Right now, Clinton is 439 delegates short of the nomination when superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials free to support anyone — are included, according to the Associated Press.
While he’s said he’ll fight all the way to the convention, Sanders must decide what price he'll demand for his full support. He’s already begun to indicate he'll make demands of Clinton. With the vast majority of members on the platform committee elected through each state's delegation selection process, Sanders supporters could exert influence over the Democratic Party's message that emerges from the Philadelphia convention.
On Saturday, his campaign sent out a fundraising email stressing the impact his bid has had on the front-runner's policy positions. “Our political revolution has already forced a former U.S. senator and secretary of State to change her mind on matters as critical as international trade, the Keystone Pipeline, and the federal minimum wage,” said the email. “And with every vote and every victory, we grow stronger.”
On Thursday, he hedged on whether he would strongly support her if nominated, telling MSNBC his involvement would depend upon what she includes in her convention platform.
“This will be a challenge” for Clinton, said Kunin. “She can never be as far left as Bernie,” she said, recalling her own experience: “I’m not sure he damaged me, but he certainly took my attention away from where it should have been.”
In the near term, Sanders appears conflicted about how hard to punch.
Clinton largely dropped her stump speech attacks on Sanders after her 16-point victory in New York. In the MSNBC interview, Sanders expressed regret about the negative tone of the campaign. Hours later, he was hitting her in his stump speeches and issued a release detailing key differences with Clinton on trade policy and her campaign’s reliance on big donors.
Sanders’ campaign publicly insists he still has a path to the nomination, though that would require convincing many superdelegates to switch their allegiances. Clinton officials worry Sanders is handing Republicans fodder for their campaign against her in the fall.
During a Thursday rally, Republican Donald Trump said: “So Bernie Sanders, not me, said she’s not qualified. So now I’m going to say she’s not qualified, OK.” And his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, has continued to insist the campaign can convince some superdelegates to transfer support.
A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released Monday found four in 10 backers of Sanders weren't sure whether they would vote for Clinton, while 13% of them said they'd vote for Trump instead. Some of the unease with Clinton among Sanders supporters appears to be emotionally charged, particularly when it comes to her husband’s 1994 crime bill that contributed to higher African-American youth incarceration rates.
During a rally last week in Philadelphia, a few waves of African-American protesters chanting “Don’t trust Hillary, she’s killing black people” were escorted from the building.
They are emblematic of Clinton’s problem with young voters, and they are the reason Sanders must play a pivotal role.
“She does need him,” said Kunin. “The great achievement is, he has gotten them out to vote.”
Sanders’ combative stance is a contrast to 2008, when Clinton and then-senator Barack Obama were locked in a fierce battle. Mathematically speaking, Clinton had a better chance of grasping the nomination then than Sanders does now.
She’d just won the state of Pennsylvania, and TheNew York Times wrote that Obama’s “aura of inevitability” had “diminished.” Just 51% of Democratic primary voters said they expected Obama to win the nomination, down from 69% a month before, a CBS/New York Times poll found. And she still had the lion’s share of the superdelegates in her corner.
And by some benchmarks, her supporters were as angry as Sanders’ voters are today.
A March 2008 Gallup survey found 28% of Clinton supporters would not vote for Obama in November. By the time Clinton conceded in June, 39% said they would either vote for McCain or not at all, according to a CNN poll.
The critical factor, as Clinton has frequently said from the podium, is that she enthusiastically campaigned for Obama.
“My hope would be that Bernie will do a pivot and recognize that he can’t be seen as the spoiler,” said Kunin.
“We’ll have to let this play out.”
