NOMINEES CHOSEN: NOW THE HARD PART STARTS

…The Final Winning Democratic Nominee

 

Top Democratic Leaders are advising Bernie to “throw in the towel”.

 

Now that Hillary has made it clear who is the final Democratic nominee will be, with the previous year of effort between Hillary and Bernie behind them, now comes the hardest part.

 

No, I don’t mean dealing with the Trumpster, that is one of the simplest and most basic issues to come.

 

Many of the leading Democrats are agreeing that this time it is different and potentially more difficult than it was between Hillary and President Obama in 2008.

 

First, Sanders has always operated outside the Democratic Party structure. He has always run for office as an independent and as a self-described “democratic socialist”.  Although he does caucus with the Democrats in the Senate, his ties to that party are decidedly much looser than were Clinton’s.

 

But even more important is that his candidacy, as did Obama’s in 2008, has generated great enthusiasm and spawned a different but powerful grass-roots movement made up mostly of independents.  And these who do not usually identify with the Democratic establishment. Clinton will need Bernie’s voters in the fall, and that no doubt will require a lot of help directly from Sanders.

 

This issue has been at the top of some of the Democratic leader’s lists for months.

 

Those leaders include the current president as well as Vice President Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and White House political director David Simas.

 

Obama called both candidates Tuesday night and he is scheduled to meet with Sanders at the White House today.  Sanders also plans to meet with Reid today on Capitol Hill.

 

“It’s not a one-way street. They’re both going to have to, in effect, compromise,” Reid said in an interview. Reflecting on his earlier career as a trial lawyer, the Senate leader said, “I never knew what was going to happen when I went to trial, so if I could get a decent offer I would settle the case, and that’s what I think my two friends should take a close look at.”

 

Even though Sanders has sent mixed signals in recent days, barnstorming California with a vow to contest the Philadelphia convention, he has also stated that he would have to fully digest his new reality later this week.  Sanders was discussing with his top advisers about his options while flying home to Vermont from Los Angeles.

 

The hope in the Clinton camp is that Sanders is so anti-Trump that he will do anything to stop Trump, including joining up with Hillary.

 

Tad Devine, a senior Sanders strategist stated. “If he is going to get out and endorse her [Hillary] before the convention, how do you do that in a way to persuade as many of his supporters as possible to support her? Not just, ‘I’m for her,’ but, ‘You be for her, too.’ ”

 

Devine said there have been a number of conversations between these two camps, including talks between Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver.  Many of these issues have had to do with those important ones around the Democratic platform.  “Things are going in a positive direction,” Devine said. “No negotiations are going on but there is interaction.”

 

The issue is that the primary may officially be over, but the Sanders Movement is very much alive.  Sander’s did address big, boisterous rallies in California over the past several weeks and those crowds are not going to easily move over to support Hillary after being so committed to Bernie’s “Revolution”.

 

“He’s obviously struggling and in great internal conflict about what’s going on,” said former Vermont governor Howard Dean, a Clinton supporter. “He knows intellectually that he can’t win, but he can’t stop himself. . . .There is part of him that doesn’t want to quit.”

 

This is a level of emotion that the former Vermont governor knows well, as he also ran and was a front-runner in the 2004 presidential election.  Governor Dean is very aware of how hard it is to walk away from having been so close to actually becoming the final nominee.

 

The biggest problem however, is an issue that the Sanders Team already knew about before he decided to run for the nomination.

 

That issue is that the Democrats have Superdelegates.

 

Superdelegates are elected Democratic officials and party leaders who many have publicly committed to Clinton, and they did so before Sanders even decided to run.  Sanders has since been trying to get some of those Superdelegates to not only to change their allegiance to him, but to go against the total popular vote where Hillary is ahead by many millions of votes.  He also wants these Superdelegates to ignore the results of some of the state contest results over the past months.

 

Sanders will most likely find very little sympathy for his case that he says he will make between now and the convention in Philadelphia. 

 

Many progressive activists also dislike the very concept of Superdelegates.  This is the exact position that Senator Warren and her liberal base has, and it is the same attitude that fueled the Sanders candidacy.

 

“I’m a superdelegate and I don’t believe in superdelegates. I don’t think that superdelegates ought to sway the election,” said Senator Warren, who so far has not endorsed either candidate.

 

Warren’s comment about superdelegates notwithstanding, she is seen by other leaders of the party as uniquely credible and positioned to play one of the most influential roles in bridging the Clinton and Sanders divide.

 

A Warren adviser said of the senator, “She takes the threat of Trump very seriously and she takes seriously her potential role in helping unify the party.”

 

The fact that Trump has gone to name-calling Senator Warren the “Wacky Senator” and that he continues to name-call her “Pocahontas”.  This is because of the reputation that Warren’s family had always been told that their Great, Great, Great grandmother was a Cherokee Indian.  Trump has also falsely accused the senator of improperly “flipping” houses in the real estate market.  A claim that has been totally debunked.

 

One danger for the stubborn Vermont senator is that Sanders could be met at the convention by a chorus of Democrats urging him, both personally and publicly, to bow out of the race.  But Sen. Robert Casey Jr. (D-PA), a Clinton backer has said, “We have to be thoughtful about having a few voices at one time, as opposed to everyone talking and preaching at the same time.  You can’t have 30 people call and start lecturing the Senator.”

 

At a meeting Tuesday morning of the Senate Democratic Leadership, some senators vented about Sanders vowing to fight on and said that they had lost their patience with him. One Democratic official who relayed the exchange said Reid quieted the chatter, telling his colleagues, “We have to remember that Bernie has always been good to us, he’s always been there when we needed him and we need to treat him fairly.”  He said Sanders has been “a tremendously important part of my caucus,” and Democrats would need to “depend on Bernie” for the final seven months of Obama’s presidency.

 

Supporters of Sanders see it as especially crucial that Clinton as well as the Democratic National Committee (DNC) make genuine concessions. They already have seated five Sanders supporters on the 15-member committee responsible for drafting the 2016 party platform in Philadelphia.

 

Other ideas from Sanders allies include stronger policy positions by Clinton, and in the platform, on trade, oil fracking, Social Security, the role of money in politics (Citizens-United) and other reform issues.

 

Reid raised the example of Obama in 2008 inviting Clinton into his circle, just as President Abraham Lincoln did in building his team of rivals in his Cabinet. “He [Obama] reached out to her and gave her the best job he had to offer, Secretary of State, and I think the history books will recount that was a brilliant move,” he said.

 

Asked whether he would counsel Clinton to ask Sanders to join her ticket, Reid said he would not give her advice.

 

“You can make a case for who is the strongest at this stage, either Clinton or Bernie, but the point is they have to work it out,” Reid said. “No one can do it for them.”

 

As I said, now is when the difficult part really starts.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2916