Clinton is Stuck In Late-Primary Limbo

Hil­lary Clin­ton can now feel Barack Obama’s pain.

The former sec­ret­ary of State de­clared Tues­day night after a de­cis­ive primary win in New York that “vic­tory is in sight,” with a nearly in­sur­mount­able del­eg­ate lead over Bernie Sanders and just more than a hand­ful of primary dates left on the cal­en­dar.  

But the Sanders cam­paign signaled he in­tends to stick it out un­til the fi­nal primar­ies in June, or through the Ju­ly con­ven­tion, mean­ing Clin­ton will have to wait to fully pivot to the gen­er­al elec­tion. 

It’s a re­versal of for­tunes from 2008, when it was Clin­ton who re­fused to drop out even as Obama was well on his way to win­ning the Demo­crat­ic nom­in­a­tion. Clin­ton sol­diered on through early June, while Obama be­came the pre­sumptive Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee weeks earli­er.

“It was the greatest six weeks of our lives,” former Obama speech­writer Jon Favr­eau mused in a re­cent ap­pear­ance on The Bill Sim­mons Pod­cast. “It was some point in April we woke up think­ing, ‘We are go­ing to spend the rest of our lives run­ning against Hil­lary Clin­ton in this primary, and noth­ing’s ever go­ing to change. This is now pur­gat­ory.’”

The Clin­ton cam­paign may now feel the same way about Sanders.

After New York, Clin­ton holds a 695-del­eg­ate lead over Sanders, in­clud­ing su­per del­eg­ates. That ad­vant­age means Sanders would need to win 71 per­cent of all re­main­ing del­eg­ates to catch up, ac­cord­ing to tal­lies by NBC News.

“As far as who’s ac­tu­ally go­ing to win, that was de­cided even be­fore last night, but last night was the ex­clam­a­tion point,” said Mitch Stew­art, Obama’s 2012 battle­ground-state dir­ect­or.

In her vic­tory speech Tues­day night and in stump speeches in New York over the week­end, Clin­ton took dir­ect aim at po­ten­tial Re­pub­lic­an rivals Don­ald Trump and Ted Cruz, and didn’t men­tion Sanders by name. But her cam­paign activ­ity in the next five states, sched­uled to hold primar­ies on April 26—Con­necti­c­ut, Delaware, Mary­land, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Is­land—re­flect a cam­paign that is by ne­ces­sity still fo­cused lo­gist­ic­ally on her match­up with Sanders.

“Rhet­or­ic­ally she’s ob­vi­ously made more of a pivot, there’s no doubt,” said Flor­ida Demo­crat­ic strategist Steve Schale. “But I’d think or­gan­iz­a­tion­ally they’ll be­gin to start mak­ing real moves to­ward the gen­er­al elec­tion after Mary­land and Pennsylvania.”

Clin­ton is con­tinu­ing to drive wedges between her­self and Sanders in states that vote Tues­day, primar­ily on gun vi­ol­ence. Clin­ton held an event Wed­nes­day in Phil­adelphia to dis­cuss the is­sue, and will hold a sim­il­ar one in Hart­ford, Conn., later this week.

In Mary­land, Rep. Eli­jah Cum­mings is fea­tured in a new Clin­ton ra­dio ad dis­cuss­ing the 2011 shoot­ing death of his neph­ew. The Clin­ton cam­paign also re­leased a new TV ad Wed­nes­day in Con­necti­c­ut and Rhode Is­land fea­tur­ing the daugh­ter of Dawn Hoch­s­prung, the prin­cip­al killed at Sandy Hook Ele­ment­ary in New­town in 2012.

Much of Clin­ton’s out­reach on guns has centered around Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans, who will make up a siz­able share of Demo­crat­ic primary voters in four of the five states vot­ing next week. The vote is centered in cit­ies in­clud­ing Phil­adelphia, Bal­timore, Wilm­ing­ton, and Hart­ford. Many also ex­pect Clin­ton to con­tin­ue talk­ing about gun vi­ol­ence in the gen­er­al-elec­tion cam­paign.

And Clin­ton is air­ing a Span­ish-lan­guage TV ad in Pennsylvania and Con­necti­c­ut that takes aim at Trump over his views on im­mig­rants. The ad, which ini­tially launched in New York, was her second to take Trump to task by name.

Lo­gist­ic­ally, Clin­ton hasn’t be­gun to staff up to any sig­ni­fic­ant de­gree in battle­ground states. That will likely hap­pen soon, and it could track with the way it played out on the Demo­crat­ic side in 2008.

Both Schale and Stew­art were gen­er­al-elec­tion state dir­ect­ors for Obama in 2008—in Flor­ida and Vir­gin­ia, re­spect­ively—and re­called be­ing se­lec­ted for those po­s­i­tions in May and start­ing by early June, around the time Clin­ton dropped out.

The tricky part for Clin­ton is con­tinu­ing to com­pete with Sanders while not ali­en­at­ing his sup­port­ers, whom she hopes to win over be­fore Novem­ber.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journ­al na­tion­al poll this week il­lus­trated how split the party re­mains. It found Clin­ton ahead of Sanders by just a 2-point mar­gin, while a com­par­is­on of NBC News/Wall Street Journ­alpolls from 2008 and 2016 found that, by a 12-point mar­gin, Clin­ton voters then held a more fa­vor­able view of Obama than Sanders back­ers do of Clin­ton now.

In 2008, Clin­ton played a key role in bring­ing her sup­port­ers over to Obama by swiftly en­dors­ing and cam­paign­ing for him. How the cur­rent race plays out after Clin­ton se­cures the nom­in­a­tion could rest on what Sanders does to bridge the di­vide.

“There is a cer­tain hope, for sure, and ex­pect­a­tion, to some de­gree, that after the primary is over he sig­nals to his sup­port­ers what’s really at stake in a gen­er­al elec­tion,” Stew­art said. “Hav­ing a Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump would be an ab­so­lute dis­aster, and I think every­body re­cog­nizes that.”