Hillary Clinton will have to work to sway Bernie Sanders' millennials

WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders is likely to exit the presidential race in the near future, possibly as early as this week. But for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the question of how to win over his army of young, dissatisfied supporters — and what the future holds if they don’t -- remains an open one.

While pundits, pollsters and political experts expect Sanders’ supporters to coalesce around Clinton, who was declared the presumptive nominee last week — and even Sanders has said he’ll work with her to defeat Republican Donald Trump — many of Sanders’ supporters aren’t interested in being wooed.

“There are options. It’s not our responsibility to make sure Donald Trump isn’t president,” said Kelly Collison, a 27-year-old pharmacy technician from Bath who spent much of the last year as a volunteer organizer for Sanders in Michigan and elsewhere, and who won’t vote for Clinton under any circumstance.

If Sanders, the independent U.S. senator from Vermont drops out and supports Clinton — after months of voicing his backers’ anxieties about the former secretary of state — Collison said she’ll support the Green Party’s Jill Stein.

“If he (Sanders) does that, there will be a lot of frustration with Bernie, but that doesn’t change anything,” Collison added. “We’re not supporting anyone who doesn’t have our values.”

Even as Clinton made history last week as the first woman to become the presumptive nominee of a major U.S. political party and supporters basked in the breaking of a cultural glass ceiling, sentiments like Collison’s rang out across social media.

They carried with them doubts about what Clinton can do to swing those Sanders supporters behind her, though she has already begun to reach out to them, telling CNN she “totally respects their feelings” and noting that on many issues — universal health care, raising the minimum wage, income inequality and others — they share the same goals, if not the same policy prescriptions.

Failing to win them over, however, could be perilous for Clinton, especially in a state like Michigan, targeted as a battleground by Trump and the scene of her most surprising defeat of the primaries. After being up more than 20 percentage points in polls before the March 8 election, she lost to Sanders in a race that saw record turnout, including far higher numbers among younger voters than anyone expected.

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“He turned out a lot of younger voters who otherwise wouldn’t have participated,” said Bernie Porn with EPIC-MRA in Lansing, which does polling for the Free Press. “There was nothing to point toward him having that many people turn out.”

Exit polls showed Sanders winning 81% of voters age 18-29, which made up 19% of those voting in the Michigan Democratic primary; nearly as big a percentage as those 65 and older, who went for Clinton, but by a much smaller margin. He also beat her among 30- to 44-year-olds.

Sanders still has an edge with younger voters: A national Fox News poll this week that showed Clinton with a 42%-39% lead on Trump, indicated that voters under age 35 preferred her over Trump, 41%-35%. But among those younger voters, Sanders led Trump by a whopping 61%-30%.

Porn said he thinks it will be up to Sanders — still looking to change Democratic rules and push his campaign’s agenda ahead of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in late July — to make a strong pitch to bring his supporters behind Clinton this summer, especially in Michigan and other states where he did well.

Other options — like the naming of a vice presidential nominee more in line with his supporters, or moves to bring Sanders more directly into the campaign and at the convention — are being talked about as well. There will also no doubt be an all-out effort to point out the differences between Clinton and Trump on social policies and much more as a way to attract his supporters.

Talk of unifying the party will only grow.

“Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders should be commended for their civility and spirited debate on how best to move our country forward. … It’s time for Democrats across Michigan and throughout the country to come together to continue the fight,” the Michigan Democratic Party said in a statement last week as Clinton became the de facto nominee.

But on Facebook strings of Sanders’ supporters like Collison, it’s easy to see many are not ready to make up and may never be, regardless of what Sanders or the party does, with Clinton as candidate.

Too many questions, they say, remain about rules they consider unfair, like those giving votes to unbound superdelegates. In California, there are estimates that as many as 2.5 million primary votes remain uncounted, and Sanders and his supporters are still waiting for a full report on the outcome, though the results would have to come in overwhelmingly for Sanders to change the result — which had Clinton winning handily there.

And despite the fact that pundits say Clinton has moved to more progressive positions -- raising questions about pending trade deals, opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, expanding Social Security — in part as a response to Sanders’ challenge, to many of his supporters, she remains untrustworthy, linked to Wall Street and accused of flip-flopping on positions from going to war in Iran to gay marriage.

To them, Sanders’ promises of single-payer health plans and free public college tuition, of wanting to get big money out of campaign financing, continue to resonate with them as more genuine.

Former U.S. Sen. Don Riegle of Michigan, who endorsed Sanders just before he and Clinton debated in Flint before the March primary, said that concern — of being genuine — is the one Clinton needs most to address if she is  to win those supporters over.

“Bernie can’t tell people how to vote. People are going to vote how they’re going to vote,” he said. “That takes some thought … It’s persuasion.”

“She has to want to do it. It’s how she feels. If she conveys (policies aligned with Sanders’ supporters) in a sincere way, people will get it,” he added. “You can’t just tell people to vote for you.”

Even if Clinton can afford to lose some of Sanders’ support and still win, however, Riegle said it would be “an enormous mistake” not to find a way to include millions of new voters and keep them active in the party at a time when a historic political realignment may be under way.

This year, millennials, defined as those born between 1982 and 2000, surpassed baby boomers as the nation’s largest living generation.

President Barack Obama moved to bridge that gap between Clinton and Sanders’ supporters Thursday when he endorsed her, not only saying there’s never been anyone “so qualified to hold this office” as Clinton and praising her commitment and character; but noting that Sanders deserved credit for bringing “millions of Americans, not just Democrats, who’ve cast their ballots for the very first time.”

Sanders, after meeting with Obama at the White House before the endorsement, said he planned to stay in through the Democratic primary in Washington, D.C. this week and would continue to fight for his campaign’s priorities. But Sanders also made clear he’d be meeting with Clinton in the future “to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump.”

Finding that path may be difficult, though.

Many say they will write Sanders in, regardless of whether he gets out. Others said they plan to abandon the party, even after a string of high-profile endorsements — from Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a hero of the progressive movement – for Clinton.

The sooner Sanders’ endorsement, if and when it comes, and the more active the Clinton campaign is in bringing his supporters into the process, the more likely it is to make a difference. But to some, it won't matter.

“I don’t think we’re ready to quit this movement and I don’t think he (Sanders) should be either,” said Sara Long, 22, of Lansing, who has been both a paid and volunteer organizer for Sanders and will be a Michigan delegate for his campaign at the convention.

“He doesn’t choose my vote. I respect the man, but I won’t vote for someone just because he tells me to,” she said, adding that she knows many who will vote for Trump before Clinton. “We want to vote some kind of legitimate change. We don’t want to vote to maintain the status quo.”

Shawn Danino, a 26-year-old graduate student in Ann Arbor and the lead volunteer organizer for Students for Sanders at the University of Michigan, said he still has deep concerns about Clinton — especially what he considers a too-unquestioning position on Israeli policies and her stance on marijuana decriminalization — it’s likely he’ll wind up supporting her on the ballot this November.

“I most likely will be voting for her,” he said. “I have a lot of admiration for her but I have a lot of policy concerns.”

But he said that among his pro-Sanders colleagues, there are many, many more “who are completely unwilling to support Hillary.”

And not all of them are millennials. One woman who e-mailed the Free Press on Friday said she still could not  buy into Clinton, despite her historic achievement.

“I'm voting for Bernie,” said Trisha Pyzik, 44, of Tecumseh, who presumably plans to write in his name if he gets out of the race. “I can't stand the thought of my other choices and I can't keep Obama. … As much as I'd love a woman president, I'd rather it be Elizabeth Warren.”

Contact Todd Spangler:  703-854-8947 or  tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler.