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Bernie Sanders Camp Hopes DNC Fight Boosts Their Campaign

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Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 01:51 pm

Months of tensions finally boiled over, and the Bernie Sanders campaign finally got the fight that they have been aching for with the DNC.

Politico reported that the Sanders campaign thinks the DNC did them a favor:

“In an outsider year, a year of discontent, when the electorate clearly is unhappy with business as usual and politics as usual, for the DNC to try and use the thuggish politics of usual to try and muscle the Sanders campaign? It’s going to backfire on them,” said a top Sanders aide on the eve of the forum. “They couldn’t have given us a bigger favor.”

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It also comes at a useful moment. Sanders has appeared to plateau in recent weeks, failing to gain ground on Clinton in Iowa or national polling while maintaining a slim lead in New Hampshire. By homing in on Wasserman Schultz, a party leader whose tense relationship with the White House has already claimed headlines and who is perceived as closer with Clinton than any other candidate, his team thinks it can rekindle the spark.

It’s a strategy that hinges on the public perception of Clinton’s and Wasserman Schultz’s personal relationship, which in reality is not particularly warm. However, it is closer than the one between Wasserman Schultz and Sanders, an independent senator who caucuses with Democrats.

The reality is that the DNC is doing nothing different than what the RNC is trying to do. Both parties decided that they would cut down on the number of debates and frontload the primary process to help the party’s frontrunner. The only difference between the RNC and the DNC is that the frontloaded primary is benefitting the Democratic frontrunner. The frontloaded process has been a total disaster that has fueled the rise of Donald Trump on the Republican side.

If Bernie Sanders were leading nationally and in three of the four early states, his campaign and supporters wouldn’t be complaining about the process. The debate and primary schedules are an insult to the primary process, but make no mistake about it, if an outsider candidate were leading on the Democratic side, the DNC would be stuck.

The fight between Democrats and the DNC has been building for a long time. The strategy of using the fight to boost Sanders is going to test the ceiling on his support. Will Democratic primary voters give him another look after the DNC confrontation? Maybe, but the only true path to the Democratic nomination for Sanders remains a large influx of new voters in the early states.

If this story motivates a wave of new voters to come out in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada for Sanders, the senator from Vermont could pull the upset. If new voters aren’t inspired by the battle with the DNC, Sanders has probably reached the ceiling on his support, and Clinton will march to the Democratic nomination.

Bernie Sanders got the fight that he wanted, but now he has to convert the confrontation into enough votes to win.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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