With New York primary day upon us, the battle for the Democratic presidential nominee is far closer than the party originally thought it would be.
Most observers — including this one — believed the Democratic primary would be less a primary and more of a coronation for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But then Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders happened, and many Democrats — especially young liberals — saw a chance to back a revolutionary more like Barack Obama instead of the cookie-cutter politician that is Clinton.
Clinton leads among pledged delegates, but she doesn’t have an insurmountable lead. She leads Sanders by nearly 250 delegates. Clinton’s more sizeable lead over Sanders comes from superdelegates, who can support any candidate they want and have almost exclusively decided to back Clinton so far. If Sanders has any hope of winning, he’ll have to convince those superdelegates to leave Clinton for him — no easy task.
And if Clinton does end up winning the nomination thanks to the superdelegates, her nomination will forever be tarnished by “the establishment” having chosen the nominee instead of the people.
But back to New York. On Tuesday night, voters in the Empire State will decide who they want as the nominee of each party. Clinton currently has a nearly 12-point advantage over Sanders in the state, according to a RealClearPolitics averaging of polls. Clinton’s advantage is likely partially due to her representing the state as a senator for eight years (although that doesn’t make it her home state), even though Sanders was born and raised in the state — and still carries his accent. It could also be due to her ties to Wall Street.
Still, with Clinton at 53.1 percent in the polls and Sanders at 41.4 percent, the contest in the Empire State is far closer for Democrats than the party may have anticipated. Meanwhile, for Republicans, business mogul and New York native (a true native) Donald Trump is running away with the state. He leads his closest rival by 30 points — and that’s in a three-person race.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Clinton. She’ll probably win New York, but she won’t run away with the delegates. She will likely split the delegates with Sanders, but take a slight majority.
The Sanders insurgency has some Democrats panicking. The Democratic primary was supposed to be a sham, with several candidates tepidly running for president just so Clinton didn’t appear to be the only option.
But Sanders didn’t get the memo (or he ignored it). What began as a simple alternative to Clinton — a throwaway vote for leftists and others who really didn’t want the former secretary of state to be the the nominee — has morphed into a movement. And it continues to threaten to derail Clinton’s chances at the nomination.
Clinton’s supporters have responded by trying to paint Sanders supporters as vulgar dude bros who don’t support the former first lady because she is a woman. We knew this would be the Clinton campaign strategy for the general election, but she’s had to break it out during the primary to try and stave off a Sanders win. Note to Clinton and her supporters: You tend not to win people over by calling them names and insinuating that they are awful.
The Democratic campaign has become increasingly bitter in recent weeks, with Clinton and Sanders trading nastier attacks than earlier in the campaign. Now Sanders and his team are claiming Clinton may have broken campaign finance rules by coordinating fundraising with the Democratic National Committee.
Democrats aren’t enthralled with Clinton like they were with Barack Obama. They didn’t want her to be president in 2008, and they don’t really want her to be president in 2016. But, of course, they’d rather vote for her than a Republican alternative. She may very well end up being president, but she’ll lack the luster of Obama and the initial good will and super majorities he enjoyed as a fresh(er) face in Washington.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
