NBC News senior political editor Mark Murray said that if Hillary Clinton loses Iowa and New Hampshire, there will “be a big panic button pressed in the entire Democratic Party.”
Appearing on “MSNBC Live with José Díaz-Balart” on Monday with guest host Frances Rivera, Murray said while the Democratic Party is “firmly behind Hillary Clinton, her challenge is Bernie Sanders, the independents, and the people that he has attracted.”
“If Hillary Clinton ends up losing Iowa, there’s going to be a big panic button pressed in the entire Democratic Party, which almost has lined up around her. A majority of elected senators, members of Congress, governors have all endorsed Hillary Clinton,” Murray said.
Murray argued that if Clinton loses both Iowa and New Hampshire “you can say the Democratic Party is more fractured than many people thought was possible in the eighth year of the Obama presidency.”
According to Murray, Clinton is “running as Barack Obama’s heir. She’s made some differences with him, but essentially has embraced Barack Obama’s agenda and wants to tinker with them at the margins. Bernie Sanders, by contrast, wants a political revolution, as he’s called for. And so if Bernie Sanders really comes out on top in Iowa and New Hampshire, you can say that the party is certainly split,” Murray claimed.
According to the RealClearPolitics Polling average in Iowa, Clinton currently leads Sanders 49.8 percent to 37.0 percent.