{"id":4792,"date":"2016-03-29T08:01:39","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T15:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/with-echoes-of-2008-sanders-vows-to-fight-as-path-narrows\/"},"modified":"2016-03-29T08:01:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T15:01:39","slug":"with-echoes-of-2008-sanders-vows-to-fight-as-path-narrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/with-echoes-of-2008-sanders-vows-to-fight-as-path-narrows\/","title":{"rendered":"With echoes of 2008, Sanders vows to fight as path narrows"},"content":{"rendered":"

MADISON, Wis.<\/strong> \u2014 If there\u2019s anyone who understands how Bernie Sanders feels right now, it might just be Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

The Democratic primary candidate is sweeping Western states but is struggling to overcome Clinton\u2019s significant lead with the delegates who ultimately will decide the party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a situation that\u2019s oddly reminiscent of race eight years ago, when a frustrated and fatigued Clinton found herself fighting \u2014 and failing \u2014 to close then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama\u2019s early delegate lead.<\/p>\n

Just as Clinton did in 2008, Sanders and his team are vowing to take their fight all the way to the party convention in July with an aggressive push for delegates in next month\u2019s contests in Wisconsin, New York and five northeastern states. They\u2019re ratcheting up focus on her weaknesses, particularly with independents and younger voters. And Sanders is casting himself as the most electable Democrat in the general election, an effort targeted at wooing superdelegates, the party insiders who play a big role in picking the nominee.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little question that Sanders has tapped into a powerful force within the Democratic party. He\u2019s still drawing tens of thousands to his rallies \u2014 attracting 17,300 in Seattle on Sunday \u2014 and has collected more than $140 million in donations. His fundraising shows no signs of slowing down: Sanders raised more than $4 million since his victories in Saturday\u2019s contests in Washington state, Hawaii and Alaska.<\/p>\n

But his campaign has always had a fight ahead of it. And despite his wins in 15 contests that shot seems to have grown even longer in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Even top staffers acknowledge that the path forward isn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to win states by significant margins,\u201d said senior strategist Tad Devine. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be a big lead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on primaries and caucuses to date, Clinton has 1,243 delegates to Sanders\u2019 975. Including superdelegates, Clinton has 1,712 delegates to Sanders\u2019 1,004, leaving her shy of the 2,383 it takes to win.<\/p>\n

According to an Associated Press analysis, Sanders needs to win 67 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates through June to be able to clinch the Democratic nomination. So far he\u2019s only winning 37 percent.<\/p>\n

The difficult math is, at least in part, a reflection of how Clinton learned from her 2008 mistakes. One of her first hires was Jeff Berman, Obama\u2019s delegate guru. Her campaign invested early in their delegate strategy, a tactic that seems to have paid off. Her current lead of 268 pledged delegates is nearly double the margin that Obama held over Clinton during the 2008 primary.<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s campaign believes they can knock out Sanders by the end of next month, arguing they will have racked up enough delegates after the April 26 contests in five northeastern states to make it mathematically impossible for him to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to contest these states, we\u2019re going to contest these states, but the truth is that after April 26 there is just not enough real estate for Senator Sanders to contest the lead that we\u2019ve built,\u201d said Joel Benenson, Clinton\u2019s senior strategist.<\/p>\n

While Clinton aides say they have no plans to push Sanders out of the race, they\u2019re eager to look past the primary. In interviews and speeches last week, Clinton largely focused on Tuesday\u2019s deadly attacks in Brussels, casting GOP front-runner Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as unqualified to deal with complicated international threats.<\/p>\n

She kicked-off her Wisconsin campaign with a Monday speech in Madison, where she urged voters to consider what Trump might do to shape the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Sanders team plans to compete hard in Wisconsin and New York, hoping to not only win delegates but hit Clinton with the psychological blow of losing the state she represented in the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cBernie is a native son of Brooklyn,\u201d said campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who called the Vermont senator the \u201cvoice of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also plan to try and persuade uncommitted superdelegates to back Sanders, arguing that his higher approval ratings and ability to motivate Democratic voters pose toughest challenge to Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t an academic exercise now whether Trump could be the nominee. He\u2019s likely to be the nominee,\u201d said Ben Tulchin, Sanders pollster. \u201cDemocrats cannot win if we don\u2019t have an energized base.\u201d<\/p>\n

His challenge, again, comes down to the numbers. There are only 216 uncommitted superdelegates out of 714 total, according to an Associated Press analysis.<\/p>\n

Sanders also argues that superdelegates in states that he won will feel pressure to support his bid \u2014 a claim Clinton supporters dispute.<\/p>\n

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said she faced similar questions in 2008 about her allegiances to Clinton as a superdelegate after then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama won her home state\u2019s primary.<\/p>\n

Baldwin, who again endorsed Clinton, said she will be voting for the former secretary of state in next month\u2019s primary and it would be \u201codd\u201d for her to vote for someone as a super delegate and then not pledge support for that candidate in the convention.<\/p>\n

Besides, she noted, super delegates did not make the difference in the 2008 primaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not necessarily believe that this one will be any different in that regard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MADISON, Wis. \u2014 If there\u2019s anyone who understands how Bernie Sanders feels right now, it might just be Hillary Clinton. The Democratic primary candidate is sweeping Western states but is struggling to overcome Clinton\u2019s significant lead with the delegates who ultimately will decide the party\u2019s nomination. It\u2019s a situation that\u2019s oddly reminiscent of race eight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4792"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}