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Will Bernie Sanders Give Up On The Presidency?

By Val Powell
Published on: 23:24 PST, Apr 22, 2016

Presidential Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders may be on the brink of waving the white flag after a huge loss against Hillary Clinton in the New York primaries that took place on Tuesday.

The Vermont senator was banking on an upset against Clinton, 68, in the Big Apple to gain momentum in the final stretch of the primary season. His campaign was optimistic that he would win in New York, considering his previous string of victories in smaller states.

Before the New York primaries, the senator won seven straight primaries and caucuses, which led people to believe that his campaign is succeeding in turning the tides in his favor.

But on Tuesday, Sanders, 74, failed to inch closer to Clinton, and instead, the former secretary of state widened the gap that separated her from the Vermont senator. Clinton gained 58 percent of the votes, which accounted for 139 delegates while Sanders only got 42 percent, which brought 106 additional delegates.

Currently, the path to victory is pretty bleak for Sanders, who now trails Clinton by 277 pledged delegates and 464 superdelegates. Clinton has several million more votes than Sanders in the final months of the primary season.

With this reality, it would be understandable if Sanders just gave up on his bid and started supporting Clinton for the general elections. No one in the Democratic Party wants to have Republican frontrunner Donald Trump as president, so Sanders’ campaign should do whatever it takes to prevent that even if it means dropping out of the nomination race and rallying behind the former First Lady.

However, as the Democratic race comes to a close, it seems like the Vermont senator is becoming more and more aggressive in fighting the system, proving to everyone that he has not given up.

“We still have a path to the nomination, and our plan is to win the pledged delegates in this primary,” said Jeff Weaver, who is Sanders’ campaign manager.

Weaver says that he projects the Bernie Sanders campaign to continue picking up pledged delegates, although he pointed out that the party should try to win the vote of superdelegates.

Superdelegates are influential individuals in the Democratic Party that are free to choose their candidates regardless of primary results in their respective states.

“It’s going to be an election determined by the superdelegates,” Weaver said, saying that the race for the Democratic nomination would be decided at the Democratic National Convention in July.

In this case, superdelegates may opt to switch to Bernie Sanders mainly due to his odds in winning against eventual Republican nominees Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

However, if the Sanders campaign wants this to happen, they would have to make sure that they will fight until the end. That is what Bernie Sanders has been doing over the past few months even after early losses to Clinton, and it has paid off recently.

Furthermore, he is decrying the closed primaries, talking about his chances of winning in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. He also pointed out that he plans to fight all the way to the Democratic Convention.

Bernie Sanders has not stopped talking about what he thinks is wrong with the system, including the closed primaries, the schedule of debates, and the seemingly joint fundraising committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“It’s one thing, after all, to see your candidate lose,” wrote Ezra Klein over at Vox. “It’s another to see the election stolen, and that’s increasingly how Sanders supporters are understanding the race.”

The next Democratic primaries will be on Tuesday next week.

[Photo by Matt Rourke/AP Images]

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