Us old Bernie Broads and every other Bernie supporter gotta hang on until the Golden State.
Bernie Sanders is slowly chopping away at Hilary’s lead. The last Quinnipac poll for New York shows that Clinton holds a 54% to 42% lead, while the Quinnipac Pennsylvania poll showed Clinton at 50% and Sanders at 44%.
This puts Bernie in striking distance in PA, and he may still close the gap substantially in New York. The NY contest looks to be the nastiest primary fight the Democrats have seen in a long time. Bernie may take PA by a decent margin, though.
All this makes the Democratic primary more addictive than meth for politics junkies, and It’s quite possible that neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates to clinch the nomination by California.
California voting rules mean Bernie could dominate California, with its 475 delegates. According to Observer (observer.com/...):
“The hidden ball in the 2016 Democratic primaries is that in California independent voters can vote in the Democratic primary but cannot vote in the Republican primary. This fact—which has not been widely reported in the mainstream media that is overly focused on short term news cycles—will work to the considerable advantage of Mr. Sanders and the considerable disadvantage of Donald Trump.
In other words, if Mr. Sanders is within striking range of Ms. Clinton in elected delegates before California votes there is a legitimate chance he could overtake her with a significant victory in California, in which case the issue of the super-delegates would become a cause célèbre throughout the Democratic party and the media.”
Put simply, every California voter who who is angry at “the establishment” and who wants to make a statement has no alternative but to vote for Bernie. They can’t vote for Trump.
An open primary that lets non-aligned voters participate is much more representative of how a general election will go than a closed primary. Bernie’s been the clear winner in open primaries. California is semi-open, which may not be the best case scenario for Bernie, but a semi-open primary is better than a closed primary.
As the Pew Research Center showed, more than 40% of Americans are independent voters. (www.pewresearch.org/...)
Bernie does much better with with voters who have not aligned with either the Democratic or Republican parties than does Hillary. In Wisconsin, such voters preferred Bernie over Hillary by 72% to 28%. (www.cnn.com/...)
None of this will make the coming weeks any easier for Bernie supporters. There’s much work to be done, and many voters to be registered for most of the remaining primaries and caucuses.
But if it was easy, politics wouldn’t be fun, would it?