Washington – When Hillary Clinton dueled with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2008, a tough primary slog eventually yielded to a largely unified party. The future president said the process ultimately made him a stronger candidate and he later persuaded Clinton to become his secretary of state.
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Eight years later, Clinton is yet again engaged in a lengthy primary process that seems all-but-certain to stretch well into the spring. But how her battle against rival Bernie Sanders positions her for what’s widely expected to be an ugly fall election remains far less clear.
While Clinton aides insist there’s little they will do to push Sanders out of the primary race, they are beginning to show signs of impatience with the increasingly negative nature of his campaign.
“We would like to wrap it up as soon as possible,” said communications director Jen Palmieiri, just hours before Sanders won the Michigan primary. “You don’t want to let them have a head start on the general.”
Clinton and her allies had hoped to switch much of their focus to the general election after Tuesday’s primary contests, a plan thrown into doubt after her loss in Michigan last week. Democratic strategists wanted to use the spring to settle on early lines of attack against Trump, a brash billionaire who’s successfully deflected nearly all Republican efforts to undermine his candidacy. And top donors had expected the campaign to begin raising money for the general election beginning in April, a transition they now say has been pushed off.
But aides say contests in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois look tighter than they did just days ago, forcing them to keep focus on the primary despite a sizable advantage among the delegates that determine the nomination.
Wins on Tuesday would give Sanders fresh momentum in the contest, granting him months to continue criticizing Clinton’s positions on issues that Republican front-runner Donald Trump wants to put front and center in the general election.
Some Clinton allies worry that messages from Sanders’ campaign — demands that Clinton releases transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks, her past support for trade deals and his argument that most Washington politicians are bought and paid for by campaign contributions — could aid Trump in the general election. Sanders and his supporters are also making a similar case against Clinton backers with ties to Wall Street, expanding his critique to a broader swath of the party.
At a Saturday press conference in Chicago, Sanders charged Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a long-time Clinton ally, with being “indebted to Wall Street and big money interests.”
Those are lines of attack already being tested by Trump, who’s increasingly turning his focus to the general election — and a potential campaign against Clinton.
“She’s not going to bring back trade, she’s not going to bring back businesses,” said Trump, in an interview with CNN.
Clinton carries an edge of more than 200 pledged delegates into Tuesday’s primary contests in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois and Missouri and could effectively foreclose Sanders’ path to victory with a sweep of the large states. While the delegates will be awarded proportionately, Clinton’s support with so-called “superdelegates” — elected officials and party leaders free to back whomever they’d like — puts her in a strong position to win the nomination.
According to an Associated Press analysis, Clinton holds 1,231 of total delegates, more than half the amount needed to clinch the nomination. Sanders has 576.
Clinton’s team argues that once Sanders lost the delegate lead, it became very difficult to regain control of the race because delegates are awarded proportionally.
Then, Clinton stayed in the race until the bitter end, buoyed by popular wins in nine of the final 16 contests. But senior strategist Tad Devine says he sees no scenario where Sanders gets out before the party convention in July — and he’s got the money to keep going until spring, having reportedly raised more than $42 million in February.
“If he’s not the nominee, then I think Hillary will benefit as did Barack Obama when she challenged him all the way to the end,” said Devine.
Clinton aides involved with Obama’s election effort said the long primary contest helped their campaign by forcing them to establish operations in every state.
“If you would have asked us in June how we felt about it, as opposed to earlier on in the process, I think we would have said there was a benefit to it,” said Joel Benenson, a senior strategist for both Obama and Clinton.
Some Clinton backers worry that Sanders, long a self-identified independent, won’t feel the same obligation to support the party the way Clinton claims to have done for Obama in 2008.
“It wasn’t easy to convince a lot of my supporters to immediately move to supporting Senator Obama but I made the case,” she said in a Fox News forum in Detroit. “When you get through a primary, despite the emotions that are engineered in your supporters, you have to take stock of where you are and who is running on the other side.”
She’s also been sharpening her economic message to try and address an angry electorate frustrated with what they see as an economy recovery that’s left much of the country behind.
“Her experience — with due respect to both Senator Sanders and Mr. Trump — is one of being able to be tough, stand up, to go toe-to-toe with the Chinese,” said campaign chairman John Podesta. “That’s what the American people need in the Oval Office.”