"I don't think he realizes the damage he's doing at this point…" whines one Clinon campaign surrogate, who as The Hill reports, is concerned that Sanders is still – this late in the game – throwing shots at Clinton and the Democratic establishment. How dare Bernie Sanders, who explains "I'm not harming the party, I'm invigorating it," not just lay down and let the establishment roll right over him and his supporters?
As Hillary "Death Cross"-es in the national poll…
The talking heads need excuses and someone to balme… (as The Hill reports)
Hillary Clinton allies worried about polls that suggest a tightening general election match-up with Donald Trump are placing blame on Bernie Sanders.
They say that the long primary fight with the independent senator from Vermont, which looks like it could go all the way to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, has taken a toll on Clinton’s standing in the polls. In the latest RealClearPolitics average,she is two-tenths of a point behind Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
“I don’t think he realizes the damage he’s doing at this point,” one ally said of Sanders. “I understand running the campaign until the end, fine. But at least take the steps to begin bringing everyone together.”
In an interview with ABC on Sunday, Sanders called voting for Clinton in the general election “the lesser of two evils.”
He has also kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism against the Democratic National Committee and its chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who his supporters charge is rigging the contest against Sanders.
Clinton has problems and vulnerabilities that go beyond Sanders. Her favorability numbers are weak for a major-party nominee at this stage of the campaign. She is also still waiting for the FBI to finish its investigation of her use of a private email server while at State. Still, it is the Sanders problem that is now on the front burner of concerns for Clinton and her supporters.
Just two months before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Clinton has yet to lock up a nomination that would allow her to focus her fire on Trump amid an effort to unify Democrats around her candidacy.
Instead, Sanders supporters online are loudly declaring no end to the “Bernie or bust” motto even as Republicans increasingly rally around Trump as their own nominee.
“It holds her back from controlling the narrative,” another Clinton ally said of Sanders’s continued presence in the race.
It’s already May and now the question is: Can Hillary crawl past the primary finish line? And if she does, will she be so crippled for the general election that she becomes a sitting duck for Donald Trump?
The message from The Clinton campaign to Sanders is simple – "Stay down…"
via http://ift.tt/1WMNZwV Tyler Durden