April 11, 2016 05:38 PM UTC

Give Me Night or Give Me Blucher

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• by: Voyageur

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Hard pressed by Napoleon at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington cried: “Give me night or give me Blucher!” In the end, Blucher’s hard-marching Prussians fell on the French rear and won the day for the allied armies.

Hillary Clinton can be forgiven for voicing similar sentiments as she reels from a string of seven Bernie Sanders victories that have eroded, though far from erased, the lead she ran up in Southern primaries capped by her one-day sweep of Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, followed by a convincing win in Arizona.

But as the venue shifted to the West. Sanders showed his mastery of the caucus process where, after losing the first pair in Iowa and Nevada, he swept the next ten, including his recent wins in Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii. This weekend, he also won a symbolic 55-44 percent win in Wyoming, although the two rivals split the 14 pledged delegates 7-7, according to the Washington Post.

Even more important, Sanders won the Wisconsin primary, the political equivalent of Marshall Ney’s furious charge against the stalwart British squares at Waterloo. [Pardon me for belaboring the metaphor.   I’ve been to Waterloo where an observation tower lets you look out over the battlefield while surrounding you with a mural of Ney’s charge. For all its valor, that assault failed to break the British squares, just as Hillary retained a lead of at least 214 pledged delegates after Wisconsin.]

But as the embattled former Secretary of State casts a practiced eye about the battlefield, she no doubt notices that the terrain is about to change drastically. First of all, the caucus fights are just about over.   Only North Dakota remains on the list of state caucuses, on June 7.   Now, the battle shifts to primaries, where Hillary has won 15 of 21 contests. Even more important, five of the next six primaries are closed primaries, where only Democrats can vote.   Sanders has never beaten Clinton in a closed primary. Even in Wisconsin, Clinton and Sanders were even among Democrats, with Bernie’s 13-point victory margin coming solely from Independent or Republican crossovers. Hillary likewise bested Sanders among Democrats in Michigan, with Bernie gaining the victory by winning more than two-thirds of crossovers.

Those crossovers can’t help Sanders in New York, where the deadline for switching registrations passed almost unnoticed last Oct. 9 – yes, Oct. 9! — though new registrants could sign up as late as March 25.   This closed primary is reinforced by the fact that New York and other mid-Atlantic states have higher percentages of minority voters. Sanders has never beaten Clinton in a state with more than 25 percent minorities. About 46 percent of the New York vote could come from minorities.

If Wisconsin gave Sanders momentum in New York, it seems to have been short-lived. Friday the Emerson poll gave Hillary an 18-point lead. Fox followed Sunday with a 16 point lead for Clinton. Monday, the Monmouth poll showed Hillary up by 12 while an NBC/WSJ/Marist poll gave her a 14-point edge.   Certainly both Sanders and Clinton have beaten polls in the past. But the closed primary system makes it hard for Sanders to generate the surge of new voters and cross-overs that led him to victory in Michigan and Wisconsin.

If Hillary is optimistic in New York on April 19, where analyst Nate Silver now gives her a 96 percent chance to capture a majority of its 291 delegates, her odds look even better a week later when five more states weigh in on April 26. Pennsylvania has 210 delegates, Maryland 118, Connecticut 70, and Delaware, 31 delegates – and all are closed primaries as well as hosting the kind of diverse electorates that have so far favored Clinton.   Only Rhode Island, with 33 delegates, allows limited crossover voting.

That’s 753 delegates chosen in the next two weeks on battlefields very favorable to Hillary Clinton. Even a 10 percent plurality of them would wipe out all the gains of Sanders’ western campaign and return her to an edge of some 300 pledged delegates. Sanders almost certainly wouldn’t quit because he will doubtless go on raising huge sums from his faithful. But as a practical matter, he’d be fighting more to give a voice to the new and idealistic troops he’s raised to the Democratic banner than for any realistic hope of winning the 2016 nomination.

When Napoleon’s Old Guard made its final doomed charge at Waterloo, it marched to the motto, “The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders.”

Bernie’s New Guard will likewise never surrender. But they don’t have to — because the young have the privilege of living to fight another day. Like the cadres Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy raised in 1968 and George McGovern rallied in 1972, Bernie’s proud irregulars can take their place beside the aging Democratic legions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to beat Donald Trump or Ted Cruz this fall – and stay to shape the future of American politics for generations to come.