Bernie Sanders’ shrinking chances of winning the Democratic nomination “relies on overturning the will of the voters,” Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager declared Monday evening.
Just hours before the day of the Wisconsin primary where 86 delegates are at stake, Robby Mook, campaign manager of Hillary for America, wrote in a blog post that the Sanders camp is having a difficult time making a valid case for continuing the campaign.
“Their latest strategy involves a combination of trying to flip pledged delegates at state and county conventions, while also convincing superdelegates that he deserves their support — despite the fact that Hillary Clinton has won 58 percent of the popular vote and a majority of pledged delegates thus far,” he wrote. The Vermont senator has in the past criticized the role that superdelegates play in the nominating process, but now that Sanders lacks a clear path the nomination, Mook said he is “aggressively courting their support.”
Clinton’s lead is “nearly insurmountable,” said Mook as he repeated a common Clinton campaign refrain, boasting of her nearly 230-pledged-delegate lead.
As the campaign rolls into April, Clinton leads the pledged delegate count by a large margin. She has 1,243 delegates to Sanders’ 980. The margin grows wider when looking the number of superdelegates, party officials who have the freedom to back the candidate of their choice, supporting the candidates. Of those superdelegates, Clinton has 469 superdelegates committed to her, while Sanders has only 31, according to the latest Associated Press count.
Mook added, “with each passing week, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that Senator Sanders will be able to catch up. In order to do so, Sanders has to win the four remaining delegate-rich primaries — New York, Pennsylvania, California, and New Jersey — with roughly 60 percent of the vote.”
Contrary to some of the “spin,” Mook rejected a talking point favored by Sanders that high voter turnout betters his chances of winning. “Clinton has won 17 of the 21 states where more than 7 percent of eligible voters turned out,” Mook said. “On the other hand, most of Senator Sanders’ wins come in states that hold caucuses, where overall voter turnout is typically much smaller.”
In a pivot to looking ahead to a possible matchup against Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Mook mentioned that with nearly 9 million votes so far, Clinton has 1 million more votes than the billionaire candidate, while the media mogul has about 1.5 million more than Sanders. And while both Clinton and Sanders both lead Trump in hypothetical matchup surveys, Mook said Clinton has shed off millions of dollars spent by Republicans on negative ads, while Sanders has yet to be touched. The impact of negative ads against Sanders, Mook warned, he could not predict.
Clinton is the only candidate “tough enough” to defeat the billionaire candidate, Mook said.
