Bernie Sanders wins in West Virginia; celebrates with victory speech in Oregon

Defy­ing the naysay­ers who have sug­gest­ed he’s out of fuel and momen­tum, Bernie Sanders scored anoth­er late-in-the-sea­son vic­to­ry tonight by scor­ing what could be a dou­ble-dig­it vic­to­ry in West Vir­gini­a’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic primary.

With 65.7% of precincts report­ing, Sanders had around 51% of the vote (an out­right major­i­ty), with Clin­ton well behind at 36.5%. A few gad­flies accom­pa­nied Mar­tin O’Mal­ley in the sin­gle digits.

West Vir­ginia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry Results
Tues­day, May 10th, 2016

Speak­ing at a ral­ly in Salem, Ore­gon, Sanders cheered the result and declared that he is in it to win it, even though the math is hard. “We can do arith­metic,” he said, in a swipe at the pun­dits who have sug­gest­ed he’s ignor­ing the data that shows Clin­ton is on her way to clinch­ing the nomination.

Mean­while, his cam­paign tweet­ed, “Thank you to the peo­ple of West Vir­ginia for the tremen­dous vic­to­ry they gave us today.”

Atten­dees at the Sanders ral­ly roared their approval when Sanders declared that fear­mon­ger and pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump must be defeat­ed in the Novem­ber 2016 gen­er­al elec­tion. Sanders tout­ed polls show­ing that he does bet­ter against Trump in head-to-head matchups, as he often does on the stump.

Clin­ton’s cam­paign has so far opt­ed not to com­ment on the results, instead choos­ing to tweet out a pic­ture of Hillary Clin­ton with a group of moms.

Sanders’ endurance is giv­ing some of Clin­ton’s estab­lish­ment back­ers heartburn.

For­mer DNC Chair­man Don Fowler groused to Politi­co, “The defeat in Indi­ana I was just hor­ri­fied at, frankly… The longer Bernie stays in, and the longer he is not math­e­mat­i­cal­ly out of the process, the weak­er we’re going to seem to be.”

Fowler should quit wor­ry­ing and enjoy the ride. A com­pet­i­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­test that runs all the way through nom­i­nat­ing sea­son is good for par­ty­build­ing. It gives peo­ple in all fifty states plus the ter­ri­to­ries a rea­son to turn out and par­tic­i­pate. And it’s good for who­ev­er becomes the nom­i­nee because it ensures they have a rea­son to be out cam­paign­ing and work­ing to earn votes.

In 2008, Hillary Clin­ton her­self went the dis­tance with Barack Oba­ma, and refused to drop out until Oba­ma had the nom­i­na­tion sewn up. She announced that she would sus­pend her cam­paign on June 7th, 2008. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty sub­se­quent­ly uni­fied around Barack Oba­ma, who went on to win a sweep­ing vic­to­ry in the Novem­ber 2008 gen­er­al election.

Clin­ton did not do Oba­ma a dis­ser­vice by stay­ing in the race all the way through nom­i­nat­ing sea­son in 2008. Like­wise, Bernie Sanders is not hurt­ing Clin­ton by keep­ing his cam­paign active this year. The time for uni­ty is approach­ing, but in the mean­time, there’s noth­ing wrong with let­ting the peo­ple vote.

The next states to hold con­tests will be Ken­tucky and Ore­gon. Ore­gon will be the last of the states in the Pacif­ic North­west to hold a nom­i­nat­ing event on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side. (Wash­ing­ton, Alas­ka, and Ida­ho held cau­cus­es in March.)