Can Sanders Win Without Clinton In the Race?

[Garrett78]

7. No. And the field will be much smaller by Super Tuesday.

The last question I asked in the OP of my thread is the most critical: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=322

I suspect many haven't even looked at the primary schedule. After New Hampshire, it's going to get ugly for Sanders.

As I've posted before:

Sanders won't be in a 1-on-1 race, and he won't be running against someone who millions had been conditioned to hate over a period of decades. 2016 was tailor-made for Sanders. The only place for the anti-Clinton crowd to go was Sanders--this is why pointing to his popular vote percentage (43% or whatever it was) in the 2016 Democratic Primary is basically meaningless. Plus, there will be fewer caucuses this time around. It seems to be a popular theory among Sanders supporters that vote-splitting is a binary phenomenon where only the non-Sanders candidates are hurt by vote-splitting. This, of course, is absurd, and I've explained why in posts #21 and #47 in the thread mentioned above.

2nd in Iowa and 1st in New Hampshire propelled Sanders forward. I don't see him doing as well in those states in 2020, even as they remain 2 of the whitest and most rural states in the US (how wonderful that we give undue influence to a couple of states that don't remotely reflect our electorate). If he does relatively poorly in Iowa and doesn't win New Hampshire, it'll be quite embarrassing for him. So much so that I could see him dropping out before South Carolina, if not before Nevada. Certain states are more critical for some than for others (think Klobuchar and Iowa, or Sanders and New Hampshire or Warren and New Hampshire).

And Super Tuesday, assuming he hasn't already dropped out, will be even worse for him than it was in 2016. He'll lose badly in nearly every contest that takes place on March 3, 2020. Not to mention South Carolina 3 days earlier (where Sanders got Republican-esque support among Black voters in 2016: 14% to Clinton's 86%). I can't help but wonder how many people have actually looked at the primary schedule.

Anyway, he'll find it much tougher to justify sticking around, and I suspect there will be quite a bit of pressure on him to leave the race (including pressure from within his camp).

That there are people who seriously think he's a contender, or even the favorite, is dumbfounding. Reality will provide a swift smack.