Senator Bernie Sanders pauses during an election night rally at Barker Hanger in Santa Monica, Calif., on Tuesday, June 7, 2016.Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of U.S. politics.
For the last few days, when Hillary Rodham Clinton seemed to clinch a historic presidential nomination but Senator Bernie Sanders continued to slog bravely through California, the Democratic fight was over legitimacy. Now it seems simply over.
With victories in two-thirds of the contests Tuesday – including Mr. Sanders's target state of California, where he lost decisively – all but the last holdouts believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the Democratic presidential nominee.
That title, however, isn't conferred by news organizations but by the Democratic National Convention itself, which meets at the end of next month in Philadelphia. That is the slender reed upon which Mr. Sanders, who won only the small states of North Dakota and Montana Tuesday but who vowed that "the struggle continues," is hanging his nomination hopes.
But the Democratic fight just lost its status as the ultimate he said/she said controversy. (She says she's got it. He says she doesn't.) Mrs. Clinton has it, though technically Mr. Sanders has a point. Whether he wants to pursue that point for another six days, when the District of Columbia votes, or whether its pursuit is pointless, is the big question that he and his counsellors must confront right now.
This is the moment when outsider candidates, or those with infinitesimal hopes for victory, usually surrender, and usually they do it with grace. Senator Gary Hart of Colorado did it in 1984, and Mrs. Clinton herself did it in 2008. The argument coming out of the Clinton camp is clear: What was good for the gander eight years ago should be good for the goose this year.
And yet this gander doesn't think he is cooked. He points to his strength in one-on-one matchups with Mr. Trump, and they generally are better than Mrs. Clinton's. He points to the crowds he's attracted, the passion he's stirred, and almost everyone agrees that both are greater than those belonging to Mrs. Clinton and her followers.
No matter. Mr. Sanders might have had great chemistry with the electorate – particularly young people – but American politics is more about mathematics than chemistry. In his remarks Tuesday night, Mr. Sanders seemed to recognize that.
"I am pretty good in arithmetic, and I know that the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight," he said in California. "But we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate we can get."
But Mr. Sanders no longer is fighting merely against the math. A man who made history - there are few more remarkable political stories than that of a Socialist from a tiny state challenging a consensus nominee, and then winning nearly two dozen states - now risks standing on the wrong side of history as the Democrats move toward nominating a historic figure of their own.
For Mrs. Clinton seemed dusted by history Tuesday night when she claimed victory, saluted her rival, pivoted toward the general election and, in remarks in Brooklyn, N.Y., noted her place in "an amazing journey, a long, long journey''- the struggle of women that first sought fundamental rights at the Seneca Falls, N.Y., convention of 1848 and that only won the right to vote less than a century ago.
Mr. Sanders' own remarks noted the Democrats' need to defeat Manhattan billionaire Donald J. Trump, but if the very sense of history that now seems so much a part of the party's vision holds, he will face relentless pressure in coming days to acknowledge what seems apparent to his colleagues and, increasingly, to his allies as well. The big staff cuts the Sanders team is implementing is only the start of the downgrading of the Vermonter's efforts.
The Democrats are eager to take the fight to Mr. Trump, who triumphed Tuesday in contests that were overshadowed by his latest controversy, this one involving his assertions that a judge with Mexican-American roots was biased against him. This line of argument, which he refused to relinquish after Republican leaders expressed their contempt, only added to the Democrats' ardour.
And yet the triumphant Mrs. Clinton faces enormous challenges of her own. The once-formidable lead she held over Mr. Trump has vanished. Mr. Trump's nominating convention comes first - next month, in Cleveland - and if history holds he could get a bump in the polls from that. She will very likely get her own bump a week later, but the two could go into the traditional Labour Day start of the general-election campaign in a virtual tie in the most unpredictable presidential campaign in generations.
Unpredictable – and, to an astonishing slice of the electorate, unpalatable. Never have two contestants entered an American general election with so many voters alienated. This alienation is of a special provenance: an alienation against both candidates amid a broader political alienation that took its form in the repudiation of the Republican establishment this winter and the enormous challenge Mr. Sanders mounted against the Democratic establishment through the spring.
Whatever Mr. Sanders' decision as he meets with advisers Wednesday, and then with President Barack Obama later this week, the campaign now takes a distinct turn. Mr. Trump said Tuesday night he will intensify his attacks on Mrs. Clinton next week. She almost certainly will respond. There will be no summer break this year.