The New York Times’ editorial board has joined with other media outlets in declaring Bernie Sanders’ campaign a lost cause, and the newspaper is already laying the groundwork to woo the Vermont senator’s supporters over to Hillary Clinton, who they endorsed in January.
“[T]he plunge in Mr. Sanders’s latest fundraising numbers makes clear what he doesn’t yet want to say. His campaign — for the presidency, anyway — is most likely nearing its end,” the Times editorial board said Tuesday. It said the senator’s recent tone on the campaign trail suggests he, too, realizes he can’t beat Clinton.
They suggested that Sanders is staying in the race “to ensure that all his supporters get a chance to cast a ballot during the primary season ending in June, and most of all, that Democratic leaders pay attention to their views.”
The board also said that overall, Democrats are better off because Sanders ran.
“The Democratic Party and Mrs. Clinton are better off for Mr. Sanders’s presence in this race. His criticism, as Winston Churchill might say, was not agreeable. But it called necessary attention to unhealthy developments in the Democratic Party, including its at-times obliviousness to the lingering economic pain of the middle class and the young, and its drift toward political caution over aspiration.”
For the Times, though, the bottom line is clear: Sanders is out, and Clinton is the obvious nominee.
Newsrooms rolled out obituaries for the Vermont senator’s campaign last week following his defeat in the Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware Democratic primaries.
“[T]here is simply no pathway for Sanders to win,” wrote Julie Roginsky in an op-ed published by Foxnews.com. “By staying in the race until early June, he is misleading his most ardent supporters into believing that he can pull a rabbit out of a hat and win the nomination. He is siphoning resources away from a general election campaign. He is needlessly driving up the negatives of the likely Democratic nominee.”
“The math simply does not add up for Senator Sanders. He and his seasoned team of advisers know it,” she added.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow added in a fatalistic note of her own, “As somebody who is legitimately impartial between these candidates, I feel like there is no way Senator Sanders ends up with the nomination.”
“After suffering four more losses Tuesday … Bernie Sanders must now plot a way forward for his campaign without [a] viable path to winning the nomination,” the Vermont Press Bureau added.
The Times took it a step further than these newsrooms Tuesday, and has gone beyond merely analyzing whether Sanders has a path forward. The newspaper is pushing hard for why Clinton is more qualified to be the party’s nominee, while also explaining how the party should go about appealing to Sanders’ supporters.
“Unrealistic, short on details, the populist Mr. Sanders is a wildly gesticulating reminder of how far the Democratic Party, once champion of the underdog, has strayed. He points out the degree to which the party has become captive to economic elites whose agendas don’t necessarily represent the rest of America’s. Mr. Sanders, who raised more than $200 million through small donations, even cast doubt on Democrats’ claims that they need bigmoney backers to succeed,” it wrote.
The senator also has a “thin record of accomplishment over his decades in Congress,” the board added.
The editorial didn’t list Clinton’s accomplishments in Congress or the State Department, and instead assured its readers that Clinton “outflanks [Sanders] on both knowledge and practice of foreign policy.”
Still, the Times said Sanders has “exposed a broad vein of discontent that Democrats cannot ignore.”
“Unlike the voices on the Republican side, Mr. Sanders’s has elevated this campaign. The Democratic Party should listen,” they added.