Will Trump Democrats Topple Hillary?

Jacob Heilbrunn

Politics, United States

The Republican front-runner will undoubtedly emulate Sanders in attacking Clinton's weaknesses.

Bernie Sanders will not defeat Hillary Clinton. Right now she looks as though she will do well in upcoming primaries in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. But Sanders’s fiery performance in last night’s debate and his win in Michigan are underscore that there is a path, however difficult it will to be traverse, for Donald Trump to defeat Clinton in the fall.

Right now, Clinton looks like a shoo-in against Trump. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Clinton has a sizable lead over the New York mogul. Voters give her the edge not only in handling crises and the economy, but also when it comes to personality and temperament. It will be a heavy lift for Trump to surpass her, particularly if he us unable to portray a more statesmanlike persona in coming months. So far, he does not appear even to have assembled a foreign policy team, though he keeps promising one.

Nevertheless, if a month is an age in politics, then eight months is an eon. Trump has time to catch up. And he has a roadmap to victory. After his big election win Tuesday, Trump said, “We will take many, many people away who normally go Democrats. We will have people come over here and who have never, never voted Republican.” Trump might even want to study the Sanders campaign. Sanders nailed Clinton during the debate when he observed about her Goldman Sachs speeches, “When you get paid $225,000, that means that speech must have been an extraordinarily wonderful speech.”

Sanders is also tormenting Clinton on the issue of free trade. In her heart of hearts, she supports a global economy. But once again, she’s trying to pretend otherwise, turning her back on free trade with Asia, the very Trans-Pacific Partnership that she negotiated and that was supposed to be the crown jewel of the Obama administration’s Asia reset. But Sanders continues to pummel her, denouncing in Michigan “disastrous trade agreements written by corporate America.” There’s little here to distinguish Sanders from Trump.