Following Hillary Clinton’s win in the New York Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, insisted that their campaign is still headed to the July convention.
During an interview on MSNBC, Steve Kornacki asked Weaver whether the campaign will still try to persuade superdelegates to side with Sanders if Clinton wins the overall popular vote and pledged delegate count in the primary.
“We’re going to go to the convention,” Weaver said in response.
“It is extremely unlikely that either candidate will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to get to this number,” he added. “So it is going to be an election determined by the superdelegates.”
Kornacki pressed Weaver and asked how Sanders could persuade superdelegates to switch their support if Clinton is winning overall.
“They’re going to want to win in November,” Weaver replied, citing polls that show Sanders performing well against Republican opponents in the general election.
The MSNBC host asked once more if the Sanders campaign will try to flip superdelegates even if Clinton wins in terms of both pledged delegates and the popular vote.
“At this point, yes, absolutely.” Weaver responded.
Watch the clip via MSNBC:
Maybe they will threaten to sue them unless they vote for Sanders.
I saw this comment about this interview on another site last night: I don’t smoke but I wish I had what Weaver is smoking.
This is an absolute outrage. No nominee in the 40 years of this process has won a contested nomination without super delegates, and to suggest that a candidate must win enough pledged delegates to match half of all delegates is unreasonable.
What Sanders is trying to do is deligitimize Clinton’s win, and to make his people think she won solely because of super delegates and not popular support. This is patently untrue, and an outrageous strategy.
She won 300K more votes than Sanders yesterday, has about 2.2M more votes though the whole process, and has a 275 pledged delegate lead. She is winning, and will win, by a better margin than Obama in 2008.
A majority of all pledged delegates starts at 2026, and if either candidate gets there and has general support the other should get out.
We all know how much Sanders disdains the Democratic Party.
So why wouldn’t he and his fans do everything to harm the party in a year when Democrats should be able to take the White House AND the Senate AND make inroads in the House AND make big gains in a lot of state?
Bernie Sanders, wasting his donors’ money…sad to see.