Monday, May 30, 2016

Bernie Sanders: Irrelevant to Hillary Clinton? Or essential?

Paul Krugman has been resolutely supportive of Hillary Clinton during the primary campaign. And he professes to be quite confident that not only will Hillary be the Democratic candidate, but that she will handily defeat Donald Trump in the general. Based on current polls, those two things are likely outcomes.

And he makes the case again in Feel the Math New York Times 05/30/25016. On the second, he writes, "So unless Bernie Sanders refuses to concede and insinuates that the nomination was somehow stolen by the candidate who won more votes, Mrs. Clinton is a clear favorite to win the White House."

Robert Reich on his Facebook page today criticizes Krugman for overstating the certainty of Clinton's nomination. And on the Sanders comment I just quoted he notes, "That sets up Bernie and his followers to be the problem if Clinton wins the nomination and loses to Trump. But if that occurs it won’t be due to Bernie and his followers. It will be because Hillary Clinton has failed to make the case to his followers that they should vote for her."

While it's understandable, there's a pretty obvious problem in the Clinton campaign at this moment making this argument. Tom Tomorrow calls out this dilemma in his weekly cartoon today:

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