I'm wondering if Sanders actually might prefer Trump to Clinton as President. First of all, Bernie is an independent by nature and only more recently a Democrat. And Trump is mostly like an Independent not like a Real Republican or Democrat. So, it is possible when all is said and done that Bernie might actually prefer Trump because he might help the little people more than Clinton would (or so he might think). Because both Trump and Bernie in the end have been running as populists even though their solutions might look different they both want the same thing. To keep the Middle Class alive so our government doesn't collapse into a 3rd world Banana Republic during the next 10 or 20 years.
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Defiant and determined to transform the Democratic Party, Senator Bernie Sanders is opening a …
Bernie Sanders, Eyeing Convention, Willing to Harm Hillary Clinton in the Homestretch
Defiant and determined to transform the Democratic Party, Senator Bernie Sanders is opening a two-month phase of his presidential campaign aimed at inflicting a heavy blow on Hillary Clinton
in California and amassing enough leverage to advance his agenda at the
convention in July — or even wrest the nomination from her.
Advisers
to Mr. Sanders said on Wednesday that he was newly resolved to remain
in the race, seeing an aggressive campaign as his only chance to
pressure Democrats into making fundamental changes to how presidential
primaries and debates are held in the future. They said he also held out
hope of capitalizing on any late stumbles by Mrs. Clinton or any damage
to her candidacy, whether by scandal or by the presumptive Republican
nominee, Donald J. Trump.
After
sounding subdued if not downbeat about the race for weeks, Mr. Sanders
resumed a combative posture against Mrs. Clinton, demanding on Wednesday
that she debate him before the June 7 primary in California and
highlighting anew what he asserted were her weaknesses against Mr.
Trump.
Mr.
Sanders, his advisers said, has been buoyed by a stream of polls
showing him beating Mr. Trump by larger margins than Mrs. Clinton in
some battleground states, and by his belief that an upset victory in
California could have a psychological impact on convention delegates who
already have doubts about Mrs. Clinton.
But
his newly resolute attitude is also the cumulative result of months of
anger at the national Democratic Party over a debate schedule that his
campaign said favored Mrs. Clinton; a fund-raising arrangement between
the party and the Clinton campaign; the appointment of fierce Clinton
partisans as leaders of important convention committees; and the party’s
rebuke of Mr. Sanders on Tuesday for not clearly condemning a melee at
the Nevada Democratic convention on Saturday.
While
Mr. Sanders says he does not want Mr. Trump to win in November, his
advisers and allies say he is willing to do some harm to Mrs. Clinton in
the shorter term if it means he can capture a majority of the 475
pledged delegates at stake in California and arrive at the Philadelphia
convention with maximum political power.
Tad
Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders, said the campaign did not
think its attacks would help Mr. Trump in the long run, but added that
the senator’s team was “not thinking about” the possibility that they
could help derail Mrs. Clinton from becoming the first woman elected
president.
Continue reading the main story
“The
only thing that matters is what happens between now and June 14,” Mr.
Devine said, referring to the final Democratic primary, in the District
of Columbia. “We have to put the blinders on and focus on the best case
to make in the upcoming states. If we do that, we can be in a strong
position to make the best closing argument before the convention. If
not, everyone will know in mid-June, and we’ll have to take a hard look
at where things stand.”
The
prospect of a drawn-out Democratic fight is deeply troubling to party
leaders who are eager for Mrs. Clinton and House and Senate candidates
to turn to attacking Mr. Trump without being diverted by Democratic
strife. Mr. Sanders has won nearly 10 million votes, compared to Mrs.
Clinton’s 13 million, and Democratic leaders say she needs time to begin
courting the young voters, liberals and other Sanders supporters who
view her as an ally of corporate and big-money interests.
But
Mr. Sanders has sharpened his language of late, saying Tuesday night
that the party faced a choice to remain “dependent on big-money campaign
contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited
energy” or “welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for
real economic and social change.”
Mr.
Sanders’s street-fighting instincts have been encouraged by his
like-minded campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, who has been blistering
against the Clinton camp and the party establishment. On Wednesday, he
took to CNN to accuse Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of
Florida, the Democratic national chairwoman, of “throwing shade on the
Sanders campaign from the very beginning.”
For
weeks, some current and former Sanders campaign workers have privately
acknowledged feeling disheartened about Mr. Weaver’s determination to go
after the Democratic National Committee,
fearing a pitched battle with the party they hope to support in the
general election. The intraparty fighting has affected morale, they say,
and raised concerns that Mr. Weaver, a longtime Sanders aide who more
recently ran a comic book store, was not devoted to achieving Democratic
unity. Several described the campaign’s message as having devolved into
a near-obsession with perceived conspiracies on the part of Mrs.
Clinton’s allies.
Democratic
leaders said they wanted to do everything possible to avoid having
Clinton-Sanders tensions send the Philadelphia convention into the sort
of chaos they had expected to mar the Republican convention. So far,
though, Mr. Sanders has not indicated that he would ask his delegates to
support Mrs. Clinton, as she did in 2008 for Barack Obama.
“I’m
hopeful that the two candidates will come together, and soon, which
could blunt the possibility of real trouble at our convention,” said
Edward G. Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and a Clinton
supporter who is chairman of the Philadelphia host committee for the
convention. “But you look at what happened in Nevada, and you worry.”
The
melee there, at which Sanders supporters revolted and threatened the
state Democratic chairwoman in a fight over delegates, intensified
concerns among Clinton allies. Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who
attended the convention, said she spoke with Mr. Sanders late Tuesday
and said he was “distressed” by the Nevada episode.
“He will be judged as whether or not he has leadership qualities by the way he handles this,” she said.
Senator
Harry Reid of Nevada, who is close to Mr. Sanders, spoke with Mr.
Sanders on Friday about not letting the state convention devolve into a
messy fight. They spoke again on Tuesday afternoon, and Mr. Reid
complained that a staff member who had attended feared for her safety.
But Mr. Sanders’s subsequent statement condemning the violence, which
mostly dwelled on how dismissively he felt the party was treating him,
did little to soothe Mr. Reid’s unease.
“Bernie and I have known each other for a long time, and I believe he is better than this,” Mr. Reid said Wednesday.
But
some Sanders supporters said that Democrats were ignoring an
undercurrent of anger among those who fear that Mrs. Clinton, if
elected, would lack the courage to challenge her friends and political
contributors.
“We
want to have progressive values and socialism on the convention’s
agenda, rather than slip back into centrist Democratic thinking if she
gets elected,” said Tick Segerblom, a state senator in Nevada and a
Sanders supporter. “I think there could be some chaos at the convention –
at least outside, with a lot of anarchists, socialists, young people.”
Mrs.
Clinton’s campaign has largely taken Mr. Sanders’s latest broadsides in
stride. In soliciting donations Wednesday, it said that the two-front
battle against Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump was “one of the toughest parts
of our campaign so far.” A Clinton campaign spokesman declined to
comment about Mr. Sanders’s debate proposal in California.
Privately,
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said Mr. Sanders could win California but
emphasized their confidence that Mrs. Clinton would still win the
nomination. She now has a total of 2,293 pledged delegates and
superdelegates; she needs 90 more to win the nomination, although
superdelegates can shift their support up to the convention. Mr. Sanders
has 1,533 pledged delegates and superdelegates.
Mr.
Sanders is now running slightly behind Mrs. Clinton in California in
public polls. Ben Tulchin, Mr. Sanders’s pollster, pointed to signs of
rising voter registration in California among young people and
independents — two core Sanders constituencies — as evidence that he
could win the state. But Hispanic registration is also rising, which
could benefit Mrs. Clinton. With Mr. Sanders expected to campaign
aggressively over the next three weeks, his supporters in the state said
they were focused on winning the primary, not on November.
“If
you want to talk about historic, let’s talk about the record turnout
numbers at his rallies,” said Mayor Bao Nguyen of Garden Grove, Calif., a
Sanders supporter. “Senator Sanders isn’t obliged to help Secretary
Clinton if she wins. That’s a decision his team can make if they face
that choice.”
Senator
Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, Mr. Sanders’s lone endorser in the
Senate, said that the party’s divisions would only deepen if Mr. Sanders
was driven from the race now.
“You
can’t say to them, ‘Hey we don’t want to hear your views,’ and shut the
door on them,” Mr. Merkley said, “and then a month later open the door
and say, ‘Hey, can you come in and help us out?’
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