Is Sanders' refusal to end his campaign shrewd? Or just vain?

It would be shocking for Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump to be elected president of the United States. But it would also be surprising for the Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, in her current incarnation, to win, because 2016 is an anti-establishment year. And Clinton is a charter member of the Washington political establishment.

Anti-establishment anger is roiling both political parties. On the Republican side, it drove the improbable success of the Trump campaign. Among Democrats, it drove Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' surprisingly strong “political revolution.”

The two movements have the same adversary: Clinton and the political establishment. Could they somehow work together to bring Clinton down? The answer is no. Because what divides the two movements -- their causes -- is far stronger than what might bring them together.

Americans have seen this kind of thing before. In the late 1960s and 1970s, to be exact. That's when two different movements emerged to challenge the Democratic Party establishment -- the George Wallace movement on the right and the anti-Vietnam War movement on the left. It was the left and the right against the center. 

But their causes were very different. The Wallace movement was driven by racial backlash. Wallace voters were enraged by the Democratic Party establishment's courageous -- and costly -- decision to embrace civil rights. The antiwar movement, meanwhile, was enraged by the party establishment's commitment to anti-communist military intervention. But the anti-establishment anger that the two movements shared was not as powerful as the issues that divided them.

On Tuesday night, Trump made his appeal: “To Sanders supporters left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms.” Clinton made her pitch as well: “Let there be no mistake,” she said Tuesday night, “Senator Sanders, his campaign and the vigorous debate we've had about how to raise incomes, reduce inequality and increase upward mobility, have been very good for the Democratic Party and for America.'' 

In other words, Sanders' causes are my causes. 

Trump's causes are not Sanders' causes. Except maybe opposition to foreign trade.  But that won't be nearly enough to bring the two movements together. “We will not allow right-wing Republicans to control our government,” Sanders said Tuesday night. “And that is especially true with Donald Trump as the Republican candidate.”

So why is Sanders continuing to run? He knows he can't win the nomination. “I'm pretty good at arithmetic,” he told his supporters while pledging to “continue to fight for every vote and every delegate that we can get.” 

Sanders is not fighting for the nomination. He's fighting for a cause: “to transform this country.” The longer he holds out, the more Clinton and the Democratic Party elders will be pressured to move to the left.  With the support of the Sanders movement, which Clinton is likely to get in the end, she is very likely to win the election.

In her victory speech Tuesday night, Clinton promised a payoff that sounded like it came right out of a Sanders stump speech: “We all want an economy with more opportunity and less inequality, where Wall Street can never wreck Main Street again.  We want a government that listens to the people not the power brokers, which means getting unaccountable money out of politics.” 

Next week, Trump will make his pitch to the Sanders constituency when he promises to discuss “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.” Such as? How “Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund.”  And how “the Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return.” Trump's message to Sanders voters: “We can't solve our problems by relying on the people who created our problems.”

Many Democrats are enraged that Sanders refuses to concede a hopeless quest for the Democratic nomination. He claims that Clinton is winning because she has the support of unelected superdelegates in a “rigged process.” 

But Clinton is winning the elected delegates as well. She beat Sanders by more than 3.5 million popular votes in the Democratic primaries. In fact, the only way Sanders could be nominated is by persuading those superdelegates to defy the popular vote. 

To Clinton supporters, Sanders' refusal to get on the Clinton bandwagon looks like a crusade driven by vanity. He has never seen this kind of adulation and he doesn't want to give it up. One anti-Sanders protester in Los Angeles was carrying a sign that said, “Bernie: Get over yourself!”

But what Sanders is doing may also be a shrewd move. He's betting that Clinton will beat Trump. And that the longer he holds out, the more she will have to move to the left to conciliate his followers and adopt his positions.

Trump's message will be that Clinton is the candidate of the status quo. She would be a third term for President Barack Obama. Elect her and nothing will change. 

Sanders is betting that the longer he keeps up the pressure on Clinton, the more likely she will be to embrace the kind of change he wants. That's why he is promising to “take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia,” where the Democrats will hold their national convention next month. Sanders wants to make the Democratic Party the party of “real change in this country.” 

“The struggle continues,” Sanders pledged on Tuesday night. Because if Clinton wins with Sanders' message -- he wins, too.

Previously:
• 04/14/16: The Status Quo Candidate
• 03/01/16: The GOP establishment has rallied behind a candidate. Does it matter?
• 09/23/15: Weekend at Bernie's 2
• 08/24/15: The Un-Obama
• 08/20/15: The Great Defier
• 08/13/15: Govern this, guv: Partisian pols and winners
• 08/11/15: How Trump wins
• 08/03/15: Say It Ain't So, Joe
• 07/22/15: What the latest presidential polls tell us --- hint, it's not who's going to win
• 06/22/15: A Two-Oxymoron Race
• 06/18/15: Losing Our Religion: Not so fast, Dems
• 06/15/15: Rebellion in the Dems' Ranks
• 06/11/15: Divide and Conquer
• 10/22/14: Dems Are Having Trouble With the Working Class, Just Like the 2010 Midterms

Bill Schneider, a leading U.S. political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Resident Scholar at Third Way. Along with his work at Third Way, Bill is the Professor of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University and is a contributor to the AL Jazera English network. Bill was CNN's senior political analyst from 1990 to 2009 and was a member of the CNN political team that was awarded an Emmy for its 2006 election coverage and a Peabody for its 2008 coverage. Schneider has been labeled "the Aristotle of American politics'' by The Boston Globe. Campaigns and Elections Magazine called him "the most consistently intelligent analyst on television.''

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