I see the New York Times has finally gotten around to seeing what I’ve been claiming for some time, with evidentiary support from master strategiests Rahm Emanuel and James Carville:
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, hear constant warnings from allies about congressional losses in November if the party nominates Bernie Sanders for president. Democratic House members share their Sanders fears on text-messaging chains. Bill Clinton, in calls with old friends, vents about the party getting wiped out in the general election.
And officials in the national and state parties are increasingly anxious about splintered primaries on Super Tuesday and beyond, where the liberal Mr. Sanders edges out moderate candidates who collectively win more votes.
Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance. Since Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, The Times has interviewed 93 party officials — all of them superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention — and found overwhelming opposition to handing the Vermont senator the nomination if he arrived with the most delegates but fell short of a majority.
The only way that Sanders can forestall that eventuality is by actually winning a majority of votes in some caucuses. The preponderance of the evidence suggests that won’t be the case in South Carolina and it’s even possible that Biden will win big there (by 20 percentage points or more). Maybe California.
And as Rahm Emanuel has warned, denying Sanders the nominations risks fracturing the party. The fracture would be between Democrats and non-Democrats so I think that’s a risk they should take.
