I saw several headlines today along the lines of Sanders leaves door open to Clinton VP spot. Reading the headlines does give the impression that Sanders might be interested, but the actual interview does not really suggest this:
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Friday left the door open to being Hillary Clinton‘s running mate if she were to offer him the position after the party’s convention this summer.
“Right now, we are focused on the next five weeks of winning the Democratic nomination. If that does not happen, we are going to fight as hard as we can on the floor of the Democratic convention to make sure that we have a progressive platform that the American people will support,” Sanders said during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer broadcast on “The Situation Room.”
“Then, after that, certainly Secretary Clinton and I can sit down and talk and see where we go from there.”
Asked if Sanders would drop out of the race if he were offered the VP slot now, the independent Vermont senator responded, “I think that that is a hypothetical that will not happen.”
Clinton has all but clinched the Democratic nomination but she has shied away from directly calling for her opponent to drop out of the race
Sanders has insisted that he’ll fight until the party’s convention in July, hoping to play a role in crafting a more progressive party platform.
“We’re going to be in this until the last ballot is cast,” Sanders reiterated Friday.
Sanders said that while he will continue to differentiate between his and Clinton’s positions, “What’s most important is we defeat Donald Trump.”
“Hillary Clinton and I disagree on many issues, I think her judgement on the war in Iraq was bad, I think her judgement on trade policies where she supported virtually every one of these disastrous trade policies was bad, I think the fact that she supports a $12 minimum wage when clearly we need a $15 an minimum wage, I think that’s bad. I think her creating super-PACs and raising money from Wall Street and other powerful special interests, not a great idea,” Sanders said.
From both this description and watching the video of the interview, it looks to me like Sanders pretty much ignored the question of being Clinton’s vice president to get back on message about continuing to run against Clinton on the issues. The headlines are technically true that Sanders did not close the door, but I think that is more because he wanted to talk about other things, not because he is interested in the position.
If not for the degree to which the Democratic Party (including Democratic-leaning independents) are divided this year, it normally would not make much sense to have both Sanders and Clinton on the same ticked, in either order, due to their age. It would make sense for either to have a younger running mate.
This year there is the outside chance that if Clinton wins the nomination she might offer the vice presidency to Sanders as many Sanders supporters are currently unlikely to turn out to vote for her if she is the nominee. Having Sanders on the ticket would probably lead to some Sanders supporters to hold their nose and vote for the ticket.
Establishment Democrats are also upset to see that Donald Trump is repeating (and to some degree exaggerating) Sanders’ charges that Clinton has poor judgment. While that could hurt Clinton in a general election, the fact is that this is true about Clinton. Rather than blaming Sanders for speaking the truth, they should never have done so much to rig the nomination battle in Clinton’s favor. While Clinton currently has a strong lead, should she lose to Trump, the fault would belong entirely to those who have backed a candidate such as Clinton who is unfit to be president.
Sanders also discussed how he would make the strongest candidate against Donald Trump due to his greater support from independents. Numerous polls have demonstrated that Sanders does significantly better than Clinton in head to head polls against Donald Trump. He also repeated that if he is not the nominee he would do everything he can to keep Donald Trump from being elected president.
The full video of the interview is below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGQObwmFWQE
