Time for Sanders to pull out?

Hillary Clin­ton crushed Bernie Sanders in the lat­est round of pri­maries, not only in their home state of New York, but even the key east­ern states of Mary­land, Con­necti­cut, Delaware and Penn­syl­va­nia. Sanders was only able to clinch the state of Rhode Island on Super Tues­day, but Clin­ton’s win in New York last week end­ed the Ver­mont Senator’s impres­sive win­ning streak where he claimed 7 states in a row in pitched pri­ma­ry bat­tles since March. New York reward­ed its Sen­a­tor like it did in 2008 over Barack Oba­ma, and Clin­ton has main­tained a lead of 700 del­e­gates over Sanders, with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty con­ven­tion around the cor­ner in July.

Even though Sanders has vowed to fight for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion ’till the last vote is cast’, Clin­ton has more or less secured the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion. She has emerged as not only the Demo­c­ra­t­ic party’s clear favourite to face off against the Repub­li­cans, but even the people’s choice.

With Trump poised to win the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, beat­ing Ted Cruz by sweep­ing the last 6 pri­maries, the conun­drum now before the Democ­rats is whether they should pre­pare a unit­ed front ahead of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Novem­ber, or let the bit­ter bat­tle for the nom­i­na­tion con­tin­ue.

The odds are stacked against Sanders even as he con­tin­ues to push his pop­u­lar ‘polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion’ pitch. On paper, Sanders is the per­fect Demo­c­ra­t­ic poster boy, cham­pi­oning the party’s lib­er­al pol­i­tics for decades – not tied up by the strings of lob­by groups and cor­po­rate inter­ests. Clin­ton may not have a stel­lar record as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader, with her flip-flops on the Iraq war, same sex rights, and a sub­dued cam­paign pitch on empow­er­ing the wel­fare state, but she has proven her­self a polit­i­cal heavy­weight. She has effec­tive­ly exer­cised her pub­lic image and clout over Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, nour­ished over a long career from First Lady, Sen­a­tor to Sec­re­tary of State. Clinton’s pri­ma­ry wins and del­e­gate count show she is a light­ning rod for the eclec­tic Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­er base, and has emerged as the party’s best can­di­date to retain con­trol of the White House.

There’s no doubt that Sanders con­tin­ues to hold sway over a major sec­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers. How­ev­er, with Trump’s posi­tion­ing in the Repub­li­can Par­ty, it may be prag­mat­ic for Sanders to step back from a divi­sive cam­paign, cut the media jibes and attack ads in the run-up to the July con­ven­tion.

Con­sid­er­ing the tal­ly of del­e­gates, Sanders must realise that he has more to offer the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and its social jus­tice agen­da by back­ing Hillary Clinton’s nom­i­na­tion for the Pres­i­den­tial tick­et. By sup­port­ing Clin­ton, Sanders in no way will be wav­ing the white flag as he has had a major influ­ence on the over­all Demo­c­ra­t­ic cam­paign.

Sanders stressed on the need to tack­le income inequal­i­ty and high­light­ed his plans for immi­gra­tion, bank­ing and edu­ca­tion reform, stir­ring Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers across the Unit­ed States. The cam­paign sky­rock­et­ed him as a strong con­tender for the nom­i­na­tion, and even pushed Hillary Clin­ton to re-align her nar­ra­tive to reap the pop­u­lar­i­ty of his social jus­tice mes­sage. Even though he is miles behind in the race, Sanders has act­ed as a bridge between the Clin­ton cam­paign and Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, cal­i­brat­ing the party’s mes­sage to the sen­ti­ments and issues at the heart of its sup­port base.

Sanders should now con­sid­er serv­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty as Clinton’s Vice Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. The effect of his cam­paign has shown he is akin to a Bir­bal to Hillary’s Akbar, a force of truth and rea­son before the heir of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, keep­ing her true to its ideals. He should move to for­malise that arrange­ment and end the fric­tion between the two sides, to deter all vot­er fatigue and divi­sion in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic ranks. The results of the pri­maries have clear­ly estab­lished that it is time for the Democ­rats to unite before the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States, to become a more pow­er­ful ide­o­log­i­cal counter to the Trump led Repub­li­cans for what is set to be a no holds barred Pres­i­den­tial race.