Barring any sort of miracle, the next couple of months in the primary fight will feature Bernie Sanders slowly riding off into the sunset as the Democratic Party coalesces behind the most qualified candidate in history. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders launched their Presidential campaigns last April and each candidate has had significant time to make their case to the Democratic electorate. The primary process officially began when Hillary Clinton narrowly won the Iowa Caucus, and has gone on until today as Clinton continues to steamroll through the primary calendar with no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Why does this make Sanders a non-viable candidate? It’s not that he isn’t winning states — he is, it’s actually that he’s losing many more states by horrific margins non deserving of a Presidential nomination. Typically, a campaign can recover from 1-2 bruising losses. Bernie Sanders, however, has received loss after loss in the Southern United States by 30 to 40 points or more and has never recovered. Yes, he continues to fundraise better than Hillary Clinton. Yes, he continues to outspend Hillary Clinton. Yes, he is likely to stay in until the convention because he does have the support and momentum to do so. But no, he will not be the nominee.
Democrats allocate delegates on a proportional basis, meaning that your share of delegates in a state is tied to the percentage of the votes that you receive. This system worked well Sanders when he narrowly lost the Iowa Caucus and then trounced Clinton in New Hampshire. He briefly led the delegate count then, but has not regained it since. In fact, he has fallen so far behind that no candidate in history has ever made up a deficit like this before.
There is still some seemingly blind optimism among his supporters that he can somehow pull it off. This just isn’t true. Yes, Bernie Sanders will win a few more states in the very near future but he simply does not have the support out there to make up the delegate deficit that he currently faces. In order to prepare himself for the states where he is looking more favorable, Bernie Sanders needed to take enough delegates in the early states to keep him competitive — he didn’t. By continuously falling short, he has closed his path to the nomination. As of now he will have to run up margins similar to how he has been beaten so far to even begin closing the delegate lead. He could essentially win every state from here on out and still lose the nomination.
The Sanders campaigns often points to the two largest nominating contests — New York and California still being in play. This is true, however, by the same proportional allocation rules, Bernie Sanders will not make up the delegates here either. He is currently 48 points behind Clinton in New York and 11 points behind in California (and running out of time to close the gap).
Finally, the Sanders campaign hopes that the superdelegates will eventually change their minds. Clinton is doing exceedingly well with superdelegates and they can change their mind, but her far more impressive number is the raw number of pledged delegates she has amassed. If history serves as any indicator, superdelegates typically go with who has the popular support. While Facebook posts and college campuses may lead one to believe that this is Bernie Sanders, the truth of the matter is that he is currently sitting 2.5 million votes behind Hillary Clinton. Sanders is falling short everywhere it counts. This isn’t the fault of the “Democratic establishment”, this is simply a matter of Bernie Sanders running a largely ineffective campaign that fails to mobilize voters in the numbers necessary to win a Democratic nomination.
