Senate Democrats are quietly plotting how to get Bernie Sanders to drop out

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published 3 June 2016

With the Democratic primary season nearly finished, and Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) still refusing to drop his increasingly impossible bid for the nomination, Democrats on Capitol Hill have decided to take matters into their own hands. CNN reports that senior Democrats are in "private conversations" over how to push Sanders out of the race — without it looking like they forced him out:

In a phone call last month, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid made the case to Sanders why it would make sense for him to leave the race after New Jersey and California vote on June 7, according to sources familiar with the conversation.The widespread view, according to interviews with senators, House members, and senior party officials, is that Sanders needs to see the writing on the wall himself: That he has no mathematical possibility to win the race and would be better-served to see his agenda enacted if he urged his backers to support Clinton. [CNN]

It is indeed all but impossible for Sanders to win the nomination. As one CNN anchor put it to a Sanders supporter this week, Sanders would need "107 percent of the remaining delegates" to win the nomination. Hillary Clinton needs just 9 percent.

Sanders refuses to give it up. "Our campaign has been dismissed and written off more times than I can count," Sanders said Wednesday in Palo Alto, California. "We're going to leave California with enormous momentum going into the convention. And I believe we've got a real shot to come out of that convention with the Democratic nomination for president of the United States."