Sanders Campaign Will ‘Reevaluate’ Attacks On Hillary Clinton After Next Primaries

When asked if the Sanders campaign might consider pulling back on some of the negative attacks against Hillary Clinton in light of their increasingly narrow path to the nomination, Sanders’s top aide Tad Devine is hedging his bets, saying that the campaign will wait to see what Tuesday’s primaries hold first.

“If we think we’ve made enough progress, then we’ll keep on the path that we’re on,” Devine said. “If we think we have to, you know, take a different way or reevaluate, you know, we’ll do it then. But right now, we think the best path beyond is the one we laid out months ago.”

But although the campaign seems reluctant to change the tenor of its campaign, the campaign seems adamant that they will stay in the race until the end. This determination to stay in is despite the fact that the delegate math just isn’t adding up for Bernie Sanders. After his resounding loss to Hillary Clinton in New York’s primary, Sanders will now need to win 73 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates in order to clinch the nomination. Even the Sanders campaign admits that the outright capturing of the nomination through a delegate count before the Democratic National Convention is unrealistic. But another Sanders top aide, Jeff Weaver, told MSNBC that “it’s going to be an election determined by the superdelegates,” even after Clinton took New York by even wider margins than expected. Weaver implied that the campaign will continue to brawl against Clinton through the remaining primaries, and then push for a Sanders nomination regardless of the popular vote total or delegate count.

On Thursday, Bernie Sanders told ABC’s Andrea Mitchell that he knows it will be “hard” to win the Democratic presidential nomination if Hillary Clinton secures a majority of the delegates, which she is expected to do. But he would not say if he planned on dropping out of the race, pointing to the fact that some polls show him to be a stronger candidate against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton as his reason.

“Look, if we do not have a majority, it’s gonna be — be hard for us to win. The only fact that I think remains uncertain is if we continue to be running significantly stronger than she is against Donald Trump, or whoever the Republican nominee will be. I think that’s a factor,” Sanders said in defense of his campaign.

RealClearPolitics averaged five major polls and shows that Sanders holds a clear lead in a general election match-up against Trump at 52.8 to 37.6, giving Sanders a +15.2 advantage. But the same polls show that Clinton also holds a clear lead over Trump at 48.8 to 39.5, which gives her a +9.3 advantage.

But Tuesday’s primaries seem to be firmly in Clinton’s favor — and the polling in those states back it up. And although the Sanders campaign seems willing to stay in the race even as the delegate math becomes more and more of an impossibility, many Democrats are wondering if the Sanders campaign should consider toning down the criticisms against the front-runner, much as Clinton herself did in her 2008 race against Barack Obama.

The Clinton campaign, as well as other Democrats, have grown concerned that Sanders’ attacks on Clinton are damaging her chances in the general election should she become the nominee. Sanders raised giant sums of money in March and has been able to outspend her campaign on television ads in many states. And, in order to maintain her lead, Clinton has to campaign against Sanders, running her own ads and unable to turn her attention to the general-election fight.

Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, worked for the Clinton campaign in 2008 and offered insight into the difficult position Sanders’ campaign is in.

Speaking of the 2008 campaign, Elleithee says, “We were behind. We had a late burst of momentum. But the math was never there for us.”

And so, as the math became more and more evident that Obama would win the Democratic party’s nomination, Clinton began pulling back on her attacks against Obama. Elleithee explained that the campaign made an emotional and tactical shift because, he said, there are two ways to go — graciously or lashing out.

“It’s a dangerous place to be in, and you’ve got to keep your head about you and remember what it is you’re fighting for. That doesn’t mean you have to get out, but it does mean you need to kind of keep your focus in the right place.”

Elleithee said, too, that the way Sanders and his campaign continue for the next six weeks will determine the legacy of his campaign.

“People ought to feel good about what he did,” Elleithee said. “The problem is too often campaigns in this position end up squandering a lot of that goodwill as part of the end game.”

In 2008, Hillary Clinton stopped the roll call during the Democratic National Convention in order to nominate Barack Obama for the Democratic party.

[Photo of Bernie Sanders by Darren Hauck/Getty Images News/Photo of Hillary Clinton by Mark Wilson/Getty Images News]