Will Bernie Sanders burn it all down on the way out? While it is still always possible that things could get very contentious and destructive among Democrats all the way to the convention and beyond, new data out Friday suggest that he might not.
A new New York Times/CBS poll finds: "Twenty-eight percent of Mr. Sanders' primary voters say they will not support her if she is the nominee, a figure that reflects the continuing anger many Sanders supporters feel toward both Mrs. Clinton and a process they believe is unfair."
That sounds worrisome. But it turns out that things may have been worse in 2008, as the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wound down.
A NYT/CBS poll from April 2008 found: "Looking ahead to November, 35 percent of Clinton's voters now say they would vote for McCain in the fall if Obama is the Democratic nominee."
According to this one metric, at least, the percentage of Clinton's supporters in 2008 who seemed prepared to bolt was marginally larger than the percentage of Sanders supporters who now say the same.
Meanwhile, in Friday's poll, Clinton is viewed favorably by 62 percent of Democrats. But in April 2008, Barack Obama was viewed favorably by only 57 percent of Democrats.
In 2008, Clinton went on to concede and deliver a major speech in which she urged her supporters to get behind Barack Obama, and the rest is history.
Arguably there are some differences between 2008 and today. In some ways Obama and Clinton were closer ideologically than Clinton and Sanders are now. As Jonathan Chait details, Sanders has also made an argument against a fundamentally corrupt system that makes it rhetorically and philosophically difficult for him to treat a Clinton nomination as anything but illegitimate. Making this more worrisome still, the Sanders campaign still refuses to say whether in the end he will do everything necessary to get his supporters to agree that the outcome was in fact legitimate.
But it's also possible, for the reasons I've tried to detail, that Sanders could still decide that the incentives point towards him doing everything possible to get his supporters across this gulf for the explicit purpose of maintaining his movement's influence and staying power.
Meanwhile, if you listen closely, Clinton and her campaign are trying to signal to Democrats that they should dial down the hostilities with Sanders and his supporters and signaling that the Clinton camp recognizes that it has a role to play in encouraging unity, which is important.
Things could still get very turbulent. Maybe the rift will prove lasting. But things could also look very different to Sanders once the voting ends, he is well behind in the pledged delegates and popular vote, he makes one last pitch to super-delegates that fails, and there is nothing left to do but produce some concessions for his efforts. You could also see a shift in opinion among Democrats at that point that might make Sanders less inclined to walk away.
Editorial on 05/23/2016