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How to concede a presidential nomination
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June 7 presidential primary elections, 2016
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June 7, 2016
By Jim Barnes
When will Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders concede the Democratic presidential nominating contest to Hillary Clinton? That question has been swirling around political circles since Clinton swept all five primaries (Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio) up for grabs on March 15, garnering what appeared to be a daunting—and ultimately insurmountable—lead in pledged convention delegates over Sanders.
That question took on added urgency after the Associated Press surveyed uncommitted Democratic superdelegates in the wake of Clinton’s victory in the Puerto Rico primary on June 5 and found that enough of them were ready to declare their support for the former Secretary of State, giving her the requisite number of delegates to claim the Democratic nomination. Other news organizations followed suit and confirmed this AP report as voters in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota were going to the polls for the final round of Democratic primaries and caucuses on June 7. And had AP not surveyed the Democratic superdelegates, the television networks would have certainly declared Clinton the presumptive nominee shortly after the polls closed in New Jersey at 8:00 pm EST, where she is likely to win handily.
As Clinton herself recounted in the opening pages of her book, Hard Choices (Simon & Schuster, 2014), about her own capitulation to Barack Obama at the end of the 2008 Democratic nominating contest, “This was not going to be easy for me, or for my staff and supporters who had given it their all.” She added, “There had been hot rhetoric and bruised feelings on both sides, and, despite a lot of pressure from his backers, I had refused to quit until the last vote was counted.” (By that standard, maybe we shouldn’t expect Sanders to surrender until the voters of the District of Columbia cast their ballots in the last primary this year on June 14.)
In Hard Choices, Clinton describes how she surreptitiously met with Obama on June 5, two days after the last primaries in 2008, at the Washington D.C. home of her friend, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. At that meeting, when Obama asked what he needed to do to bring Clinton supporters on board his campaign, “I said he’d need to give them time, but a genuine effort to make them feel welcome would persuade the vast majority to come around,” Clinton recalled. She was right.
Clinton gave a rousing address to her supporters on June 7 at the National Building Museum in Washington where she consoled them, spoke of placing “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling that had impeded the presidential nomination of a woman by a major political party and uttered the magic words: “The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish our goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States.” As Clinton recalled, “If the speech was hard to write, it was even harder to deliver. I felt I had let down so many millions of people, especially women and girls who had invested their dreams in me.” The first time Clinton and Obama would make a joint campaign appearance was three weeks later in New Hampshire, the site of her big comeback victory in 2008 after Obama had captured the Iowa caucuses.
The point is, after a hard-fought presidential nominating contest, it takes some time and diplomacy to choreograph each new Appomattox. And some are more difficult than others. In 1988, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson had run a dazzling insurgent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and finished runner-up to Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Negotiations over Jackson’s acquiescence to Dukakis went all the way to the Democratic convention in Atlanta that year.
I covered that convention for the National Journal magazine and its ConventionDaily newspaper and I well recall interviews at the time with advisers to Jackson including Ron Brown (later Democratic National Committee chairman), Harold Ickes (later White House Deputy Chief of Staff and long-time political consigliere to Bill and Hillary Clinton), John C. White, (who had previously chaired the DNC for President Jimmy Carter) and chief Dukakis delegate counter Tad Devine (now a top adviser to Bernie Sanders) about what a delicate dance that was. In the run up to that convention, Jackson pressed for and won concessions on the platform and party nominating rules.
After learning that he wasn’t going to be Dukakis’s running mate—that honor went to then Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen—Jackson warned that he might seek to have his own name placed in nomination to be the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee. Jackson’s attention-getting, week-long trip to the Atlanta convention in a bus caravan dubbed the “Rainbow Express” evoked images of 1960s civil rights struggle.
Veteran political reporters Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover wrote of this post-primary maneuvering in their book on the 1988 presidential campaign, Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? (Warner Books, 1989): “Jackson could follow this course of pursing the vice presidency while keeping his campaign alive without fear of public criticism from fellow Democrats. If he had been white, he could have expected some demand that he get behind Dukakis in the interest of party unity. But few in the party were prepared to risk being accused of racism by making such a demand of Jackson.” He didn’t follow through on that threat, but he did press (unsuccessfully) floor challenges on two platform planks. But by the time Jackson arrived in Atlanta, even some prominent civil rights leaders thought he needed to acknowledge that Dukakis had more than enough delegates to be nominated. As Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis told Orlando Sentinel reporter Anne Groer: "Jesse must be willing to see that it's not a civil rights movement; it's a political affair. This is not a march from Selma to Montgomery. This is not the freedom ride here. The man Dukakis has won the nomination. Jesse’s got to come in and support the ticket if he wants to be a meaningful player in the Democratic Party.”
When Jackson addressed the convention on its second night, he didn’t quite deliver a full-throated endorsement of the Democratic standard bearer. “Tonight, I salute Governor Michael Dukakis,” said Jackson. “He has run a well-managed and a dignified campaign.” Jackson, an impressive speaker, employed this language to link arms with the nominee: “His fore-parents came to America on immigrant ships; my fore-parents came to America on slave ships. But whatever the original ships, we're in the same boat tonight.” It would be more than week later, in Chicago, before Jackson would explicitly advocate a vote for Dukakis in the fall.
Many Clinton supporters point to her example in 2008 and expect Sanders to follow suit. I suspect the Vermonter will give way in a manner more like Clinton did than Jackson in 1988.
But, it’s important to remember that Sanders is in a quite different political place than Clinton was in 2008. His has been an insurgent’s campaign, while Clinton was the favorite of much the Democratic establishment in 2008 (and even more so in 2016). When Clinton gave her “18 million cracks” speech endorsing Obama, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if she wasn’t already thinking about leaving the door open to another presidential run in 2012 (if Obama had lost the 2008 general election) or 2016. Resisting Obama could have alienated black Democratic primary voters who have gave her overwhelming and critical support in this year’s nominating contest. And at least many of Clinton’s supporters thought she should be given serious consideration by Obama to be his running mate. That couldn’t happen if she was still at odds with him.
Sanders probably recognizes that this is his last run for national office—he’ll be 78 in 2020—and realizes that he’s got little chance of landing on the ticket with Clinton as her VP pick. Most of the Democratic Party establishment has given his candidacy short shrift and Sanders needs to consider the sensitivities of his grassroots supporters who have fueled his candidacy with small campaign contributions and by volunteering. In a sense, he needs to win “something” for them in order to keep them energized for the fall campaign. It’s up to both Sanders and Clinton to figure out exactly what that is.
James A. Barnes is a senior writer at Ballotpedia who has covered every Democratic and Republican national convention since 1984. He will be in Cleveland and Philadelphia for Ballotpedia in July.
See also
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
- Presidential election, 2016/Straw polls
