Bernie Sanders is to blame for Hillary Clinton's decline in poll numbers against Donald Trump, many of the Democratic front-runner's allies told
The Hill.
The Vermont senator's steady barrage of criticism against Clinton as he continues to challenge her for the Democratic nomination, while at the same time the Republicans are beginning to rally around their presumptive nominee, has helped Trump rise in the polls and, for the first time, take the lead in the latest Real Clear Politics average of national surveys.
Clinton supporters insist that this is not only causing potentially harmful damage to the Democrats' chances of winning the White House, but is also unnecessary since Sanders has no chance of capturing the nomination, with the Democratic National Convention only two months away.
Sanders shows no signs, however, that he is contemplating quitting the race or reeling back his barbs at Clinton. He has been concentrating on the June 7 California primary, which has a whopping 475 pledged delegates, the most of any state.
Although he realizes it is nearly impossible to catch Clinton in the number of delegates overall, Sanders hopes to enter the convention riding a wave of victories.
His strategy,
The Orange County Register reports, would then be to convince the super delegates, who are 15 percent of the overall delegates and overwhelmingly support Clinton, to change their allegiance.
Sanders has constantly called the existence of such a large number of super delegates unfair and part of a rigged system, since, unlike the other delegates, they are not apportioned according to primary results and almost always back an establishment candidate.
However, Clinton supporters say that strategy is also misguided because the latest polls for the California primary show Clinton maintaining her 18 percentage point advantage over Sanders that she held in the last survey three weeks ago.
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