What Happens To The Clinton Campaign After Sanders Wins Iowa And New Hampshire

Despite the challenges, Hillary wins by not panicking. Certainly, after an inevitable New Hampshire triumph, Sanders will shoot up in the polls, and Hillary’s lead in most states will shrink a lot. After a couple of grueling weeks, the air will quietly start to leak from the Sanders tire. Bernie is unlikely to inspire anything close to the support that Obama got among Southern black voters in 2008, and most non-New-England states that preferred Hillary in 2008 will still prefer her now. So my guess is she’ll take a narrow but persistent lead across most of the country, winning steadily, if slowly. She’ll take the South, including South Carolina, Florida, and Texas. She’ll take New York, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and California. And she won’t neglect the caucus states, where she was so embarrassingly outplayed in 2008. She’ll come out fine, if she plays it cool. 

As for her campaign narrative, she can appeal to heart by appealing to the head. Sanders may do better against Republicans in many polls, but Hillary can remind people that her negatives have been exhaustively aired, while Bernie’s will still be news She can stress, again, that she’s one of the most qualified and prepared candidates ever to run for office, at least since George H.W. Bush, and maybe since Nixon. (Okay, that’s not the ideal lineage to summon, but she doesn’t have to name names.) Finally, she can tell voters not to risk blowing up everything they’ve achieved with Obama. Unless Sanders dissolves the legislative branch, he’ll be powerless to push through most of his domestic agenda, while Republicans can do much to roll back recent gains. In short, stick with me and don’t try anything funny. As pitches go, it’s uptight and guarded—but so is Hillary.

And, in many ways, this is Hillary’s pitch. She has emphasized her experience. She has conveyed her international toughness. She has tied herself closely to Barack Obama, stressing the need to preserve what he has built. (This is in contrast to the approach of Al Gore, who unwisely distanced himself from Bill Clinton during the 2000 election.) She has signaled leftward moves on policy, for instance on trade, and spoken favorably of Sanders, as is wisest. So Hillary will regain control of the narrative, and, as her victories pile up, Bernie lovers will emerge from their reverie to the real world: a Clinton will be president; a Clinton will always be president.

One final thing Hillary cannot say, but which many Democrats intuitively grasp, is that her nomination lets her party postpone a reckoning. The Republican coalition has broken apart, blown up by leadership duplicity. Democrats are in better shape, but they still have considerable fissures of their own. Their party elite favors globalism and free trade; their non-elite prefers more nationalism and protectionism. In papering over these splits, the Obama coalition has focused increasingly on civil rights injustices related to gender or race. But this is an unsustainable approach, further alienating white working-class voters and fostering internal squabbles over who deserves what. Only the fear of a common foe, the GOP, keeps the peace. Bernie Sanders, by shifting the focus away from identity and over to economic justice, is inviting Democrats to have it out. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is inviting Democrats to keep it in. Even if she’s not a natural unifier, she embodies the idea of “Democrat,” and that spares people from having to examine it more closely. Political parties don’t like to think, and with Hillary Clinton they don’t have to. Maybe there’s a Clinton campaign t-shirt in that: Don’t overthink it. Just vote Hillary. Or maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. Either way, the outcome is the same: she wins.

Source Vanity Fair