BY ARTHUR Z. SCHWARTZ | Since last July, I have been arguing to my constituents that “presumed” Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was anything but a shoo-in. I have kvetched about the media’s refusal to cover the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, except for a week after the New Hampshire primary.
I daresay that the Sanders campaign has been as profound as that of Donald Trump. In fact the general election poll averages are amazing. Hillary beats Trump by 11 percent; Bernie beats him by 17.5 percent. Hillary beats Cruz by 2.9 percent; Bernie beats Cruz by 8.4 percent. Hillary loses to Kasich by 6.5 percent, while CNN has Bernie beating Kasich by 6 percent. Unless you believe that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, the Democratic Party is in trouble with a Hillary candidacy.
The other telling poll? On average, 57 percent of the American people have an unfavorable view of Hillary; 65 percent have a favorable view of Bernie. So, just for practical reasons (unless you want a Republican in the White House), Democratic voters must give Bernie a serious look. Electability was once the reason for not considering Bernie. Now, after nine months on the campaign trail, he is the most electable Democrat in this bizarre election year.
Then there are the politics underlying the race. Bernie is about getting corporate money out of politics. He is about expanding our healthcare system, and our safety nets, like Social Security. He is about making higher education a right, just like kindergarten through 12th grade. And he believes in a non-interventionist foreign policy. Hillary’s interventionist policy is responsible for major problems in the world.
Bernie is about opening up the political system. Bernie is about reaching for the stars. Hillary is about more of the same. Bernie calls for a “political revolution,” something our corrupt system badly needs. Hillary says she opposes money in politics, and then takes it.
Can Bernie win the nomination? He can certainly win a majority of the elected delegates. Two weeks ago he won Washington State’s caucus with 72 percent of the vote. He won Hawaii’s with 70 percent of the vote. And he won Alaska’s with a whopping 82 percent of the vote. This follows victories in Idaho and Utah, where Sanders beat Hillary Clinton with 60-point margins. As of this Monday, according to CNN, Hillary had 219 more elected delegates than Bernie, out of about 2,341 elected to date.
The night before this column went to press, the returns were coming in from Wisconsin. Bernie was winning with 55.5 percent to Hillary’s 44.4 percent. This will narrow the gap by about 14 delegates.
With just less than 2,000 pledged delegates left in the contest, Sanders needs 55 percent of the remaining delegates to win a majority of the pledged delegates. And, as a party leader, I do believe that if Bernie went into the convention with a majority of the elected delegates, the “superdelegates” would dramatically shift in order to avoid a political disaster that would be felt for a generation.
To get a majority of the elected delegates, Bernie has to win majorities in most of the upcoming states: Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, California and New York, and Bernie has massive campaign operations in most of these states. Given his recent success, his fundraising and the sheer enthusiasm for his campaign, it’s easy to look at his recent surge and believe that Sanders is on the cusp of a new dawn — that soon he’ll turn a corner toward victory.
“Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the nomination or win the general election,” he told supporters on the Saturday of the Washington, Alaska and Hawaii wins. “We’re going to do both of those things.”
New York matters a lot. And the 10th and 12th Congressional Districts, where we live, matter a heck of a lot. So if you want change, and you want to see a win over the horror show that any Republican is sure to present, get out to vote on Tues., April 19, and vote for Bernie.
Schwartz is New York counsel for Bernie Sanders 2016, and is a candidate for state Assembly in the 66th District, covering the Village, Soho and Tribeca
