How Sanders is actually winning

Bernie Sanders has already won.

While his hopes of victory in the battle for the Democratic nomination are nearly extinguished, the Vermont senator has surpassed all expectations in the presidential race, creating a movement of impassioned supporters that is likely to shape politics for years to come.

“He has ignited a new powerful and enduring grassroots movement inside the Democratic Party,” said veteran Democratic strategist Robert Shrum. “He has brought a new generation of people into politics, and I think they will be around for a long time.”

Against all odds, Sanders has won 18 contests. He has inspired young and progressive voters. He has raised huge sums of money, without the help of a super-PAC. And he has forced his key issues of income inequality and campaign finance to the center of the race.
It’s an enormous achievement for someone who was dismissed as a marginal candidate when he launched his campaign a year ago.

Back then, Sanders was not much more than an asterisk in the polls. In the RealClearPolitics national average among Democrats, he was registering less than 6 percent support, and Hillary Clinton was 56 points ahead. Today, Sanders’s support in the same national average is 45.8 percent, and Clinton’s lead is less than 3 points.

“I would say that Bernie Sanders has achieved everything he wanted, except to win the nomination,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.

The writing is on the wall in the nomination battle, with the delegate math heavily against Sanders. The candidate acknowledged Wednesday he would be laying off “hundreds” of staff members, and his statements at a rally were generally perceived as conciliatory to Clinton.

“We are in this campaign to win, but if we do not win, we intend to win every delegate that we can, so that when we go to Philadelphia in July, we’re going to have the votes to put together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen,” Sanders said Wednesday, according to CNN.

“And our job, whether we win or whether we do not win, is to transform not only our country but the Democratic Party — to open the doors of the Democratic Party to working people and young people and senior citizens in a way that does not exist today.”

The Independent senator’s ideological allies have also stopped predicting he will win the nomination.

More here: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/277966-how-bernie-sanders-is-actually-winning