It’s time for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the Democratic primary. He doesn’t have a path forward, and staying in the race at this point makes him nothing more than a nuisance candidate. His entire argument for winning at every single rally is that he’ll expand the Democratic coalition, but what we’ve seen thus far is a pattern in which he isn’t expanding, only contracting. Democratic voters are rejecting Sanders nearly everywhere with the exception of a few states, and that’s not enough to win the Democratic nomination.
Unlike four years ago, in a shock upset where Sanders narrowly pulled a victory out of Michigan against Hillary Clinton by a margin of 0.23%, Tuesday night was different. Sanders’s victory over Clinton was surprising because days before the primary, Clinton was ahead of him by 21 percentage points. However, unlike 2016, Joe Biden did what Clinton was unable to do, and won Michigan — not narrowly, but by a healthy margin. Biden also won Missouri and destroyed Sanders in Mississippi with black voters.
Biden has also performed better with suburban swing voters than Sanders, and it’s those voters who led to Democrats winning the House in 2018. Of the 69 suburban districts held by Republicans before the “blue wave,” just 32 remained afterward. Democrats need a candidate who performs well in those districts in order to be competitive in November. Biden has shown in North Carolina, Virginia, and now Missouri and Michigan that he can activate the suburbs in ways that Sanders simply can’t.
This is just the beginning of Sanders’s downfall. Looking ahead to March 17, when Democratic voters in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio vote, it’s impossible to see how Sanders does well. The math is no longer on his side. The demographics in Florida are far more favorable to Biden where there’s a large black population. Also, Florida voters tend to be more moderate.
Since Super Tuesday, the writing has been on the wall for Bernie Sanders. He continues to underperform with younger voters. In some states, he’s performing poorer than he did in 2016 against Clinton. If he can’t perform well with his most ardent base, it is highly unlikely that he’ll be able to win enough delegates going forward to be competitive in states that are more favorable to Biden.
In order to win a primary, you have to expand your coalition. Bernie hasn’t done that. His is shrinking. Older and suburban voters are going over to Biden.
It’s key for Democrats to coalesce around a presumptive nominee sooner rather than later to help bring their party together. Unlike President Trump, who enjoys 94% approval within the Republican Party, Biden has significant ground to make up with younger voters, which may be key for Democrats in states where it’s close in the general election. Therefore, the earlier Sanders gets out, the sooner Biden can begin reaching out to younger Democratic voters.
The race for president is between two people: President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. If Sanders really wants to beat Trump, he has to do the right thing and get out of the race and allow the process to move forward without him.
Rightfully, Trump and his reelection campaign have already started running their general election campaign strategy against Biden, which is what any smart incumbent would do. However, Biden isn’t fully capable of responding with the whole weight of the Democratic Party so long as Bernie is still in the race. Running for office is hard, and no one gets in to lose, but at the end of the day, voters choose winners and losers, and Democratic voters have decisively chosen Joe Biden.
Shermichael Singleton (@Shermichael_) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a Republican strategist and political analyst regularly appearing on MSNBC.
