U.S. Election: Polls Show Clinton Losing To Trump, While Bernie Maintains Double-Digit Lead Over Donald
Hillary Clinton supporters are asking Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race and unify the Democratic Party, despite the fact that according to RealClearPolitics, Clinton trails the official Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in many major polls. Meanwhile, Sanders maintains a double-digit lead over Trump and has done so for months. If the goal of the Democratic Party is the presidency and Bernie Sanders gives them the best chance of accomplishing that all-important objective, why would Sanders drop out in light of Clinton’s FBI investigation? What will the superdelegates do at the Democratic Convention if Sanders is seen as the stronger candidate versus Trump?
Momentum has decided the fate of many presidents. As for Clinton’s campaign, she is currently being investigated by the FBI for misusing classified information and could face criminal charges for her negligence. Just this week, Clinton’s trust issues were further damaged when the Office of Inspector General (OIG) proved that she broke the rules of the State Department by setting up a “secret” email server at her home and failing to report hacking attempts among other damning details. The Washington Times published the OIG’s findings, here is an excerpt from the official document,
“Notification is required when a user suspects compromise of, among other things, a personally owned device containing personally identifiable information… However, OIG found no evidence that the Secretary or her staff reported these incidents to computer security personnel or anyone else within the Department.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, audiotapes of her questionable conduct as a lawyer defending an alleged rapist have recently re-surfaced on CNN.
It’s no wonder (yet perhaps not related to the fact) that Clinton has “backed out” of a debate between her and Senator Sanders that was supposed to take place before the California primary.
Enter the Democratic Party’s infamous superdelegates, who could elect Bernie Sanders as their nominee at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia if they feel he gives the party the best chance to win the presidency. After Clinton’s drama-filled week, it’s no surprise that Sanders has decided to stick around.
The people have spoken — the only problem is the result is contradictory. According to the majority of the Democratic electorate, Hillary Clinton is the party’s presidential nominee. When asked who would defeat Donald Trump in the general, the majority has chosen Sanders. All ifs, ands, or buts aside, the superdelegates are the kingmakers given the current delegate numbers, as neither candidate will be able to clinch the nomination on pledged delegates alone.
Hillary Clinton is ahead of Bernie Sanders in the race to 2,383 delegates, but not the way many news media outlets have portrayed it. She currently has 1,768 pledged delegates and 537 superdelegates. Sanders trails with 1,497 pledged and 42 super. It is unlikely that Clinton will secure the 2,383 on pledged delegates alone, thus allowing the venerable Vermont Senator to take her to Philadelphia.
The reason for this is that superdelegates are “unbound”. When we see that Hillary Clinton has the sum of both the delegates (1,768) and super delegates (537), which is 2,305, it seems like she’s only 78 delegates away from the nomination, but that’s only if the super delegates that are currently supporting her continue to do so at the convention. There are 921 delegates up for grabs. Sanders would need 886 of those to win the nomination outright, while Clinton would need 615. Unless Clinton goes to jail or Sanders moves to socialist Sweden, the chance of either candidate avoiding a contested convention is unlikely.
Perhaps the question Hillary Clinton needs to answer is: What would she do if she were in Bernie Sanders’ Birkenstocks?
- Sanders polls higher than Clinton against Trump and has for months.
- Many of the superdelegates that support Clinton are from states Sanders won.
- If the superdelegates were proportional based on the state vote, Sanders would have approximately 265 superdelegates and Clinton would have approximately 296 – a big difference compared to the 537-42 split we see today.
- Sanders favorable rating is 50 percent, Clinton’s is only 38. Her unfavorabe is 56, Sanders, 39.
The X factor in all of this is and always has been the scandal and drama surrounding Hillary Clinton. The current FBI investigation into her emails will determine if Hillary Clinton misused classified information and broke the law. If so, she will be indicted and will presumably drop out of the race. That being said, if the current front-runner of the Democratic Party is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly misusing classified information, thus threatening her nation’s safety, why would Sanders, the Democratic Party, or the American populace want him to drop out of the race and concede a tidal wave of momentum to Trump?
American investigative journalist and author Carl Bernstein told CNN, “I was in Washington this week, I spoke to a number of top Democratic officials and they’re terrified, including people at the White House that her [Clinton’s] campaign is in free fall because of this distrust factor … and the great hope in the White House as well as the Democratic leadership and people who support her, is that she can just get to the convention, get the nomination, which they’re no longer 100 percent sure of, and get President Obama out there to help her. He’s got a lot of credibility, this election is partly about his legacy, but she needs all the help she can get because right now her campaign is in huge trouble.”
Bernie Sanders has every right to pursue the presidency and his pursuit might not be making Clinton or her supporters happy, but given the circumstances, if anything were to happen to the former Secretary before the convention, Sanders and the Democratic Party would be poised to succeed President Obama with another four years in the White House.
[Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images]
