Bernie Sanders’ Momentum In Iowa and New Hampshire Could Propel Him Into Winning The Democratic Nomination [Report]
Bernie Sanders’ initial momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire could propel him into winning the Democratic nomination come June, according to his campaign’s chief strategist Tad Devine.
As Inquisitr mentioned in a report earlier, the Vermont senator has not only managed to cut down Hillary Clinton’s lead in the two states since mid-November, but has even gone on to lead his fellow Democratic presidential hopeful by 13 percent in New Hampshire, according to Fox News poll results. Other polls conducted in the month of January, like the NBC News polls, have either shown Sanders coming perilously close to Hillary, or like the Quinnipiac polls, have shown the senator establishing daylight between himself and Clinton. So what, really — if anything — can we infer from the staggering amount of ground Bernie Sanders has been able to gain on Hillary Clinton now that we are only three weeks away from the Iowa caucuses?
Well, for starters, it means that Sanders has been able to galvanize Democratic primary voters — mostly young people and women — and has been able to win them over with his anti-establishment political stances. His desire to address issues of Wall Street reforms and tax reforms have made him a particular favorite among Democratic voters crying out for an upheaval in what they believe is a rigged economic system. His support of President Obama’s executive action on gun control is expected to sway some Democratic voters towards Clinton, but it will also end up in helping him gain some support from the same quarters. Moreover, minorities — including African Americans and Hispanics — who were believed to be staunch allies of Hillary Clinton earlier, have now begun to show their support for Sanders, as the Field poll results suggest.
That’s not all. The belief that helping Clinton win the nomination was the only realistic possibility Democratic voters had of defeating Donald Trump in the general elections seems to be a thing of the past. As Bernie Sanders’ campaign begins to rival Clinton in every department, the recent polls suggest, Democratic voters have started to believe that they might have a stronger candidate in Sanders than they previously anticipated.
All of which has led Sanders’ campaign’s chief strategist Tad Devine to predict that Bernie Sanders’ initial momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire will bode well for him in the long run. In an interview he granted to The Washington Post, Devine claimed that, unlike what many people on the outside think — mostly that Bernie Sanders will have no wins left in him beyond Feb. 9 on the calendar — Sanders has already started to set a strong foundation for latter stages of the campaign, and by consequence, has a much better chance in Nevada and South Carolina than rival Hillary Clinton.
“The momentum that comes from an early victory is huge, and I believe that Bernie’s campaign is in position to take advantage of that momentum. We have strong campaigns on the ground in Nevada and South Carolina, and we have been on radio in Nevada since November and on TV in Nevada since late December… We have also been on radio in South Carolina since November. So I think we can compete and win in a number of states, like Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota and Vermont on March 1st and elsewhere as we move into big battlegrounds like Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.”
Furthermore, when asked about what could make Democratic voters choose Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, Devine stated that Sanders alone can build the kind of coalition that Barack Obama built in 2008.
“We are already seeing general election polling that recognizes Bernie as by far the strongest candidate for the Democrats [because of] his core strength with independents. The truth is if we do not have a nominee who can win support from independents and even some Republicans, we will lose. Bernie won 25 percent of the Republican vote in his last reelection to the Senate,” wrote Devine.
The recent poll results, coupled with Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgement of Bernie Sanders as a veritable and difficult opposition, has given the Sanders’ campaign enough confidence to propel it into making strategies for states where polls are to be held later in the calendar year. As Sanders himself remarked during the Iowa forum held at Drake University on Monday night, nothing has been decided yet, and therefore nothing can be taken for granted.
“It could be that the inevitable candidate for the Democratic nomination may not be so inevitable today.”
Hillary Clinton will know that very well, and so will Bernie Sanders.
[Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]
