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Is It Time For Bernie Sanders To Make A Graceful Exit? Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid Gives His Two Cents

By Val Powell
Published on: 03:50 PST, Jun 2, 2016

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid urged Bernie Sanders to give up the fight so the Democratic Party can rally behind Hillary Clinton to craft a unified campaign against the surging Donald Trump.

In an Associated Press report, Harry Reid said that sometimes people need to recognize that they are behind and make a graceful exit, or as he puts it, “you just have to give up.”

“I’ve never been too good at math but I can figure that one out. I think he better do a little mathing,” he said of Bernie Sanders.

Pundits expect the Senator from Vermont to lose out to Hillary Clinton after the New Jersey and California primaries next week.

Bernie Sanders has never made it a secret to push through with his campaign up to the Democratic National Convention, but Harry Reid thinks that it’s a bad idea.

“I don’t know what that’s going to prove. Sometimes you just have to give up. I’ve lost before. The numbers aren’t there.”

Harry Reid said that the final decision will still lie with the Vermont senator. He also noted that he’s not going to go out of his way to give Bernie Sanders his opinion unless it is requested.

Nevertheless, in the poll conducted by NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist, Bernie Sanders may still have something to fight for leading up to the California primary. The results of the poll reveal that the former Secretary of State garnered 49 percent against the Vermont senator’s 47 percent.

With a margin of error of 4.2 percent, the presidential contenders are actually in a statistical dead heat for the Democratic nomination.

“In the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll, Clinton leads Sanders 63% to 33% among likely voters ages 45 and older, while Sanders outpaces Clinton 66% to 30% among those 45 and younger,” the Los Angeles Times said.

The recent survey follows the same trend of the polls in the past few weeks, where Bernie Sanders captured the support of the younger voters. Meanwhile, the older voters are all for Hillary Clinton.

One surprising thing about the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll is that Bernie Sanders managed to wrest away from Hillary Clinton the attention of the Latinos. The former Secretary of State usually monopolizes the support of minorities.

Nobody gave Bernie Sanders a chance against Hillary Clinton, but he did manage to raise some doubts among some quarters in the Democrats by sheer confidence alone.

The race is much closer than it seems, however, without factoring in the superdelegates. According to CBS News, Hillary Clinton has 1,769 pledged delegates while Bernie Sanders has 1,495 pledged delegates.

The odds are stacked against the Senator since the former State Secretary only needs to secure 257 to hit the majority of pledged delegates. On the other hand, Bernie Sanders still need to get nearly seven in 10 of the pledged delegates to win.

Next Tuesday, however, is crucial. There are 694 delegates at stake when California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota hold their primaries.

“Clinton is the clear leader with superdelegates and needs just 71 more delegates — pledged and superdelegates — to clinch the nomination,” said CBS.

It added that Bernie Sanders still thinks that if he can win California or get the majority of the pledged delegates, the superdelegates are still up for grabs.

National University System Institute for Policy Research senior analyst Vince Vasquez said that despite what the Democrats may think about Bernie Sanders creating division within the party by refusing to quit, his stubbornness actually has its advantages.

According to him, the aggressiveness of the campaign by Bernie Sanders created a resurgence of interest for the Democratic Party. Vasquez cited estimates of about two million new voters.

“A large chunk of those voters are millennials, Democratic-leaning and overall fit the demographic profile of Bernie Sanders supporters.”

[Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images]

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