Clinton’s bid for Democratic unity a tough sell among Sanders supporters

WASHINGTON - With every pledge to unify the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton is acknowledging one of her biggest challenges between now and November: getting millions of Bernie Sanders' fans to give her their votes.

The Clinton campaign still is trying to figure out exactly what Sanders wants in exchange for rallying his supporters to her side.

With 13 nominating contests still to go, and Sanders vowing to fight on, Clinton's campaign is taking a soft-sell approach, and waiting for a clear signal of intentions from the Vermont senator.

'I see a great role and opportunity for him and his supporters to be part of that unified party to move into not just November to win the election against Donald Trump, but to then govern based on the progressive goals that he and I share,” Clinton said in an interview with CBS's 'Face the Nation” program that aired Sunday.

Although Clinton now leads Trump in most national polls, the billionaire's unorthodox and unpredictable campaign has defied political forecasting on his march to becoming the presumptive Republican nominee. He also has a campaign message that includes a strain of the populism that has fueled Sanders in the Democratic race and that Clinton can't afford to ignore.

‘amazingly consistent'

'What we know about Sanders state by state is what we know nationally because it's been amazingly consistent,” said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Research, which conducts exit polling for a consortium of news organizations.

Sanders' supporters consist of young, white, liberal and independent voters who are more aligned with Democrats than Republicans. They distrust Wall Street and the political establishment. They value trustworthiness and compassion over experience and electability. They include a core of perhaps 15 percent that may be unwinnable for Clinton and from where any defections to Trump may be more likely to occur.

making the change

David Fredrick, the co-founder and executive director of Grassroots for Sanders, said there are many in his coalition who would rather vote for a third-party candidate or skip the ballot than turn out for Clinton under her current platform. He said Sanders fans want to know if she emerges as the nominee 'that she's going to bat for the issues that we love Bernie so much for.”

Clinton will lose votes by 'tearing us down by saying ‘pie in the sky,' ‘unachievable dreams.' We can't handle the insults to where our platform is, and that's where Hillary needs to make that change if she wants to have us keep coming,” he said.

'We need to be looking at something that's far more liberal than what she's doing,” Fredrick said. 'Maybe not as liberal as what Bernie's doing, but if she's going to be moderate, moderate left. We can't have her as moderate or moderate right.”

The good news for Clinton is that voters under 35 would overwhelmingly back her over Trump in a general election match-up, according to a USA Today/Rock the Vote poll conducted in March. Clinton would get 52 percent of those votes to 19 percent for Trump. The bad news for her is the poll also found that 29 percent of Sanders supporters said they would sit out the general election or vote for Trump.