Editor’s Note: Errol Louis is the host of “Inside City Hall,” a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
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Errol Louis: With lead in N.Y., Hillary Clinton has little to gain and much to lose from accepting Sanders' challenge to debate there
He says Brooklyn-born Sanders has the cred and the cash to threaten Clinton dominance there; this likely explains her reluctance
With a lead in her home state that recent polls put at a commanding 34 percentage points, Hillary Clinton has little to gain by taking Sen. Bernie Sanders’ challenge last Sunday to debate him in New York, while Sanders has every incentive – and a battler’s chance – to try to pull off an upset on Clinton’s home turf (which also happens to be the media capital of the world). Clinton said Tuesday in a campaign stop that she was open to the idea, but nobody’s offering any dates.
Consider the lay of the land. To date, Clinton has won 1,267 pledged delegates compared with 1,037 for Sanders. That makes New York’s 247 delegates a tempting target for Sanders; in addition to possibly closing the delegate gap, a win in New York would deliver a devastating psychological blow to Clinton’s front-runner status.
Strategically, Sanders has little choice but to go for broke. He has tended to fare better in states with caucuses, of which only a few remain that collectively don’t yield enough delegates for Sanders to catch Clinton.
Sanders comes to the fight with formidable resources. Born and raised in Brooklyn, with the accent to prove it, he has native cred in New York and a large base of energized, progressive Democrats who support him. And as the longtime senator from a neighboring state, Sanders is a known quantity in parts of upstate New York.
Voter registration spiked in the days up to the deadline for being eligible to vote in the primary, and the Sanders team has vowed to campaign as if their candidate were running for governor of New York. Sanders will have the cash to make good on the boast: For the second month in a row, he has raised more money than Clinton, relying on a large and growing army of small-dollar donors.
All that spells possible trouble for Clinton, and it explains why Clinton strategist Joel Benenson issued a warning to his opponents.
“Sen. Sanders doesn’t get to decide when we debate, particularly when he’s running a negative campaign against us,” Benenson said on CNN. “Let’s see if he goes back to the kind of tone he said he was going to set early on. If he does that, then we’ll talk about debates.”
The complaint reflects the notion, voiced repeatedly by Team Clinton in recent months, that Sanders has not lived up to his pledge to never run a negative ad. As early as January, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook accused Sanders of breaking his pledge by running an ad about “two Democratic visions for regulating Wall Street,” a disparaging reference to Clinton’s receiving campaign donations and speaking fees from Wall Street financial firms.
It’s hard to imagine Sanders dropping that line of attack: It’s basic to his political identity and a key part of why progressives support him. But in the short term, that spirited attempt at sparking a political revolution may come at a price: Clinton may still deny him a high-profile debate in New York.
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