(Editor’s note: “Bernie Briefing” is a weekly campaign-season look at how Vermont U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is playing in the national media.)
[O]ne recent headline in the New York Post reads: “Resign yourself to the depressing reality: It’s going to be Trump vs. Clinton.”
“Clinton and Trump prepare for ugly election battle,” continues a second in the Financial Times.
“Clinton v. Trump in the General Will Be Brutal,” concurs a third in U.S. News & World Report.
Bernie Sanders has a different view — and he’s communicating it in different ways.
“Don’t let anybody tell you this campaign is over,” he told supporters last week in Atlantic City, New Jersey, according to a Politico story titled, not surprisingly, “Sanders to Supporters: Don’t Let Anyone Tell You This Is Over.”
Moving on to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the candidate found the television host struggling to dislodge a candy bar stuck in a backstage vending machine, as captured in a skit.
“It’s a lost cause,” Colbert said.
“It is not a lost cause,” Sanders replied.
“What are you doing here?” the host asked.
“I don’t take money from billionaires,” the candidate answered, “but I do check every vending machine change slot.”
Not finding change or candy, Sanders nevertheless continued.
“I think we’ve got a shot to win,” he said. “It’s a narrow shot. But we still have a chance to win a majority of the pledged delegates. We’re gonna fight for every last vote, and at the end of the day, I hope and believe that we are gonna win this.”
“But at a certain point, don’t you have to say, ‘I’m not going to get the thing that I want?’” Colbert asked. “Look at me, I’m never going to get my candy.”
“You’ve got to believe,” Sanders replied. “You can’t give up on that contested confection. You’ve got to rock the system.”
As well as the vending machine, which eventually spit out the stuck candy.
“Now,” Sanders concluded, “how about we share that 100 Grand bar?”
But not everyone is so sweet.
“By hanging around, Sanders may be depriving Democrats of an opportunity to take back Congress,” Dana Houle opines in a New Republic commentary headlined “The Sooner Bernie Sanders Ends His Campaign, the Better.”
“It is Sanders’s prerogative to remain in the race,” Houle writes. “But exercising that prerogative makes it easier for mega-wealthy conservatives to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lethally bludgeon both Clinton’s candidacy and the progressive agenda to which Sanders has devoted his career. This is not solely about combating the grave threat of a Donald Trump presidency. It is also about the potential of a Democratic landslide and the progressive achievements that could follow.”
A group of Sanders staffers and supporters is also making news by circulating a proposal for the candidate to exit the race after the final Democratic primaries June 7 and, rather than continue his fight through the party’s convention July 25-28, create a national progressive movement to stop Republican candidate Donald Trump.
“Senator Sanders should proceed to lay out his plan to build an organization, completely independent of the Clinton campaign that will single-mindedly devote itself to educating Americans about the threat of right wing (some say fascist) takeover and the task of identifying and mobilizing voters to defend our democracy in November 2016 and beyond,” reads a copy of the proposal obtained by Politico. “Call it Revolution 2016 or another name that best speaks to base and message and its focused task over the next 5 months might be to mobilize voters under 30 (with likely positive impacts on Senate and Congressional races).”
Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs is calling the draft plan “totally irrelevant” and told The New York Times, “This document is something that neither the senator nor anyone he works with has seen — we are focused on winning the Democratic nomination.”
The candidate himself, preparing for primaries Tuesday in Kentucky and Oregon, was supposed to address the issue on his sole advertised Sunday news show appearance. But at the last minute, ABC’s “This Week” instead showcased an exclusive report from the front lines of the U.S. fight against the Islamic State group.
As for the electoral battle? Stay tuned.
