Bernie Sanders’ Leverage Isn’t Going Anywhere. Deal With It.

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/20/bernie-sanders-leverage-isnt-going-anywhere-deal-it

Memories are short. When Sanders announced his run in April 2015, FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten opened his article by writing he was “almost certainly not going to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

“Hillary Clinton is the most dominant non-incumbent front-runner in modern primary history. It would take a truly special candidate to defeat her,” he continued, “and Sanders … is not the politician for the job.”

Besides, he added, “there seems to be very little desire on the left for a challenger to Clinton.”

That was what pretty much everyone thought. Look what happened.

There’s no need to relitigate all the roadblocks Sanders faced, at least not now. It’s enough to say that the success he achieved, against overwhelming odds and “the most dominant non-incumbent front-runner in modern primary history,” affirms the power of his message.

Sanders also won the hearts of Democratic voters – more so than his opponent, in fact, despite her 30-year head start. A recent Gallup poll found that Sanders “continues to be significantly more popular than Hillary Clinton” among members of the party he only joined last year.

Sanders’ current net favorable rating among Democrats is 13 points higher than Clinton’s, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. The same poll found that 75 percent of Democrats want him to play a “major” role in their party. (Surprisingly, 44 percent of Democrats polled wanted Sanders to run as an independent, a fact that should give the Clinton team pause.)