Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders just won’t quit and won his 20th state Tuesday. What’s next for the socialist?
1. Win The Democratic Nomination
This is what Sanders publicly desires. The Vermont senator tells his supporters that they will take the fight to the Democratic convention and then convince the superdelegates to support Sanders. This is the only way for Sanders to win.
His central argument so far has been that he the better candidate to face Donald Trump. Sanders does in fact do better in general election polling than Clinton. According to the RealClearPolitics average, he leads Trump by 13 percent and Clinton is ahead of Trump by 5.2 percent.
Sanders also argues that ideologically he is the better candidate for the general election. “It is my belief that the candidate best prepared to stop Donald Trump from winning the White House is the candidate who supports a $15 federal minimum wage, who stands on picket lines with striking workers, and who will fight to take our democracy back from the billionaire class,” Sanders wrote in an email Wednesday.
The superdelegates who already back Clinton though have arguments of their own. Clinton leads Sanders in the popular vote by over 3 million votes. Yes, this figure does not include caucuses — the lead would still be in the millions with those included. On top of this even if superdelegate rules were changed and they had to represent the state’s results, Clinton would still be leading.
The superdelegates are also longtime party members and elected officials who are more inclined to support a figure in the party like Clinton than one who said he ran as a Democrat for “media attention.”
2. Influence The Party’s Platform
Hillary Clinton certainly wants to have the support of Sanders’ youth army, but his endorsement will likely not be for free. Sanders has already pushed Hillary to the left so far this election, she doesn’t support TPP anymore and supports a public option Medicare buy-in. He could continue to shape the Democratic Party and force inclusion of language pushing for more Wall Street and campaign finance reform.
3. Bern It All Down
The independent Senator is in the midst of a rift with the Democratic Party, but this is nothing new. In fact Sanders’ political career has been fairly consistent on this front.
Sanders is a firm ideologue, his message has not changed. “We’re coming in with a definite class analysis and a belief that the trickle-down theory of economic growth, the ‘what’s good for General Motors is good for America’ theory, doesn’t work,” then-Burlington Mayor Sanders told The New York Times in 1981.
In 1988, Sanders, still mayor, said, “Republicans and Democrats on one side, Progressives on the other.” Then in 1993, when a congressman, Sanders argued on CNN that then-President Bill Clinton was not progressive enough. Fast forward to 2011 and Sanders is calling for a primary challenger to Barrack Obama.
Super PACs in support of Clinton have received million of dollars in donations and Hillary has recently been campaigning featuring the words of Mitt Romney. Now Sanders could not run an effective independent campaign because of filing deadlines, so this leaves the Green Party or staying home for his supporters.
A hypothetical Trump presidency because progressives failed to unite behind Hillary could embolden the Democrats to become more radical and move towards Sanders.