Bernie Sanders Campaign Manager Calls Math ‘Media Narrative’

The Sanders campaign has officially abandoned the reality-based community — where math lives.

Here is Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders’s campaign manager and apparent anti-math dude, explaining to NPR’s Audie Cornish how Sanders can win, despite Hillary Clinton’s huge lead among pledged delegates and definitive lead with super delegates.

AUDIE CORNISH: But if he has to win 68 percent of all the delegates going forward, in all the races, and he falls short of that — you know, do you have an obligation to be honest about what his path is?

JEFF WEAVER: Well, no, but see, but that’s a media narrative from people who think that politics is just standing at a board, doing mathematics. But it’s much more than that.

Politics is certainly more than people “doing mathematics.” Winning the presidential nomination, however, is about who has more delegates. Right now, that’s Hillary Clinton. And contrary to the Sanders’s campaign’s own narrative, that’s unlikely — as in, next-to-impossible unlikely — to change. That isn’t narrative or spin; it’s plain ol’ regular boring standing-at-a-board math.

So, according to Weaver, if Bernie’s path to victory is not about winning the majority of pledged delegates, what is it about?

You know, Bernie Sanders — if we can substantially close the gap between Secretary Clinton and Sen. Sanders in terms of pledged delegates, when they get to the convention, nobody has the delegates to win, with pledged delegates. It’s gonna be the superdelegates who are gonna have to decide this.

We can argue about the merits of having superdelegates, but we do have them. And if their role is just to rubber-stamp the pledged delegate count, then they really aren’t needed, right? So they’re supposed to exercise independent judgment about who they think can lead the party forward to victory.

Bernie Sanders has previously argued that each state’s superdelegates should rubber-stamp the results of that state’s primary or caucus. At least in the states Sanders won.

“If I win a state with 70 percent of the vote, you know what? I think I am entitled to those superdelegates,” Mr. Sanders said. “I think the superdelegates should reflect what the people of the state want, and that’s true for Hillary Clinton as well.”

Now, though, the superdelegates should ignore the results and what the people want and instead “exercise independent judgment.”

Unless, of course, they do that, and Hillary Clinton is still in the lead. Then, certainly, we’ll be treated to a whole new theory about why math is just a theory and the will of the people should be ignored.