It's not about when Bernie leaves the race, but how [View all]

By Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler / Special to The Washington Post

“Last night was not a good night for our campaign,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., admitted in a news conference Wednesday afternoon. After Tuesday’s rout in Michigan, Missouri and elsewhere, his odds of winning the Democratic nomination have tumbled from probable to remote to far-fetched. It’s a dizzying fall, and it must be deeply disappointing for him and his team. But now, Sanders has a decision to make. It’s not about when to drop out of the race, but how.

Will he fan the flames of his revolution, or will he do everything in his power to defeat President Trump? He cannot do both. And his decision may determine whether Democrats gain the White House or if we will face a second Trump term.

To start, Sanders should immediately dismiss the fiction that he is losing primaries because the process is rigged against him. He repeated this nonsense on Sunday, when he used a TV interview to rail against a putative establishment plot to force Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg out of the race to consolidate the moderates. Not only is that offensive to those candidates, it’s an unhinged conspiracy theory that no serious presidential contender should consider, much less amplify.

In truth, no one in the race had more influence on the 2020 primary process than Sanders, who won substantial concessions from the Democratic National Committee after complaints about the rules last time around. Sanders is losing because in nearly all of the 25 contests thus far, he has badly underperformed his 2016 totals.

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