Future of the Democratic Nomination

While the Republican circus continues to unfold, predictions for the winner of the democratic nomination increasingly favor Clinton.  After this week’s Super Tuesday results, Clinton has won ten out of the fifteen states against her opponent Bernie Sanders. While it appears Clinton has the nomination secure, she faces two main challenges: to not offend any of Sander’s voters and the fact that Sanders is by no means out of the race.

These coming weeks Clinton will have to strategically “ice-out” Sanders while being sure not to upset any of his supporters, as she needs to recruit as many as possible for the general election.  Clinton has already made statements to extend an olive branch during her speech on Super Tuesday saying, “I congratulate Senator Sanders on his strong showing an campaigning and am grateful to all of you who have voted for me.”  There are two upcoming debates for the Democrats: one Sunday night in Flint Michigan, and another Wednesday in Miami. It is likely that during the upcoming Democratic debates Clinton will focus more of her attention on the current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump as to avoid insulting Sander’s constituents. While her criticism of Sanders is sure to be relatively subdued, she can’t back off too much because Sanders is undoubtedly still in the race.

The Michigan primary that is coming up on March 8^th will be Sander’s best hope. If he continues to hold his own in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri on March 15, despite these five states largely backing Clinton due to their sizeable minority population, then he will surely hold out for the rest of the race. This is especially because after these five states the race moves west where he will see support as he did from Colorado on Super Tuesday. What’s more, Sanders currently has surpassed Clinton’s fundraising by $12 million and there are no sign of this money flow slowing.  Clearly Sanders sees his fighting chance because his senior strategist, Tad Devine, on Wednesday stated:  “We’ve got a long way to go. Our plan is to win and win consistently between now and June. If we do, we believe Bernie Sanders will have more pledged delegates.” The Sanders campaign seems to be looking forward to Michigan, describing it to be a “critical showdown on working class issues.”

In my opinion, I think it will be hard for Sanders to continue after the primaries in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri because these states have a large minority population that Sanders hasn’t been doing well with. He wasn’t received well in the most diverse states on Super Tuesday (Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas) and this trend will be hard to overcome for future states where there is a large population of African Americans and Latino voters.

What do you think; will Clinton be the Democratic nominee? How do you think Sanders will do for the rest of the race? If you think he will drop out, when? What do you think we can see from Clinton both in regards of Sanders and Trump?

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-primaries/index.html