What Will Sanders Do After Tuesday?
KING: Welcome back. Hillary Clinton is banking on a big night Tuesday in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware vote. And if she can win four out of the five her pledge delegate lead, which is about 253 right now, could be in the ballpark of 290, maybe more when the votes are counted. Now, she has an even bigger lead, first, let's project out Tuesday night. That's the wrong race. Democrats here, Hillary Clinton thinks she'll win four out of the five, stretch out to here. Now, much bigger lead if you bring in the superdelegates, gets Hillary Clinton way out here, even close to the finish line, right? You see that? Senator Sanders back here unless he has a big night on Tuesday. But let's forget the super delegates for a moment, set them aside. If her pledged delegate lead is in the 290, 300 ball park, Wednesday morning, Senator Sanders would then have to win about 63 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to catch Clinton on that count. Now, that's an unlikely scenario. One of the things Senator Sanders doesn't like, like in New York, four of the five states voting Tuesday are so-called close primaries. Only in Rhode Island can independents vote. Senator Sanders doesn't like that.</s>SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't mind losing, but 3 million people in New York state, 3 million people who registered as independents did not have the right to participate in the Democratic or Republican primary.</s>KING: Not in Senator Sanders' view democracy but it is the Democratic Party and the party as we've seen on the Republican side with Donald Trump complaining about a rigged and a crooked system, the parties make their own rules, and in this case, the closed primaries not good news for Senator Sanders, had a tough time in the campaign.</s>PACE: Yes, this is a tough moment. He's making a similar argument in different words to what Trump is saying, the system is disenfranchising a lot of American voters. I think there are merits to that. We go through this every four years parties realize, remember what their rules are. But the math is just incredibly difficult for Sanders. He's learning what Hillary Clinton learned in 2008, which is based on the way that Democrats run their primaries, once a candidate pulls out to a fairly good sized lead, it's really difficult to catch up. And he is continuing to make the case there is a pathway to him. His campaign manager is talking about flipping super delegates. But there's no sign that super delegates are looking to move away from Hillary Clinton toward Bernie Sanders and that's really his only option at this point.</s>KING: And when she went through this in 2007 and 2008 ultimately, I think most people in the party knew she was a lifelong Democrat, that as hard as it was, she was going to figure it out, that she was going to find a way to embrace then-Senator Obama and try to bring the party together and she did that, and Obama was grateful enough to make her secretary of state when he won the election. It's more of a question mark for Bernie Sanders because he was an independent before he became a Democrat. A lot of the Clinton people are suspicious or skeptical that he's ready to be a big "D" Democrat. And they also see this online stuff, where supporter of both campaigns are in a nasty world in the social media. And sometimes the surrogates at events, what is the calculation Wednesday morning for Bernie Sanders if he has a 290, 300-pledged delegate lead and the math is, frankly, it's hard as it is to understand for the Sanders people, impossible?</s>BALZ: I think there's two calculations. The first is what kind of a campaign does he run between now and the end of the primaries? Everybody knows he's going to run through California and the District of Columbia on the last day of the primaries. But what does he say about her? How does he prosecute the case? Eight years ago when she was in a similar position she told her aides I'm going to run to the end but I don't want to do anything or say anything that would make it more difficult for Barack Obama to become president in November. That's a question for him. The second thing is what does he want at the convention? What does he want in terms of the platform? What does he want in terms of how the system will work going forward? Will there be rules changes? And then the third is, what does he do and say to his supporters to make it clear that he wants to win in November and have a Democrat in the White House?</s>KING: So, what is -- if Senator Sanders, and you could tell he's starting to think about this, been a bit of a divide publicly in his campaign. Tad Devine, the campaign strategist, is saying, let's see how he do on Tuesday and we think about it, the Jeff Weaver, the campaign manager, saying we're going full bore to the end, it's up to the candidate in the end. If Senator Sanders moderates his tone, if Senator starts thinking about what I want in the platform, starts being a big "D" Democrat what is the burden on Hillary Clinton to reach out to his people? The younger ones say never vote for Clinton.</s>PARKER: I mean, there is some polling and evidence that shows if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, that those Sanders supporters in that progressive wing of the Democratic Party will come over and support Hillary especially if she's running against some like Donald Trump. There certainly is sort of an impetus on Hillary to reward him in some way especially if he stops persecuting sort of the personal case against her, which is sort of the nightmare scenario for Democrats, right? Because he's going to say something the Republicans can use against her in the fall, we already saw that happen with Donald Trump. Donald Trump the other day stood up at an event and he said Bernie Sanders says that Hillary Clinton's not qualified to be president. Not me, Bernie. So now I'm going to say it. So, I think if that stops she'll be grateful and going to need to find a way to repay him.</s>RAJU: And one of the things we've seen so far is that a lot of the Hillary supporters who are party establishment types and Democrats have not really pushed Bernie to get out of the race because they don't want to alienate his legions of supporters, but at the same time, he's not really said a lot of things sharply barbed attacks until the unqualified line. If he continues that aggressive line of attack after a bad day on Tuesday and if he loses Pennsylvania in particular, that's going to be a problem for him from his colleagues, who are going to come after him pretty hard and how does he deal with that pressure. I think he'll have to consider that going forward, given that he says something strongly, sharply worded against her, it's going to probably come back and bite him.</s>BALZ: You know, we talked about this every time there's a competitive primary, what will it take to bring the party back together. But there does seem to be something about this year in which you've got different kinds of an electorate and I think we've reached the point in the Democratic race where it might be difficult, it might take time, by November maybe they'll all be back on the same page, but I think it's incumbent on both sides to work to make that happen.</s>KING: She has for the most part dialed back her criticism of him. She was tough in Connecticut this week, which if you look at the demographics of the states Tuesday, Rhode Island and Connecticut, probably the toughest for Hillary Clinton and she brought up the gun voting record in Connecticut because of Sandy Hook. She brought up his gun voting record there. But more and more, she's trying to focus on Donald Trump. Listen to Hillary Clinton here. We heard Ted Cruz earlier in the show saying when Donald Trump's campaign manager says it's an act or it's a performance, Ted Cruz says don't believe anything he says. Hillary Clinton take is different. Don't let him get away from what he says about the wall, what she says about Muslims because he means it.</s>CLINTON: Trump keeps saying things like well you know, I didn't really mean it. It was all part of my reality TV show, running for president will be on your screen. Well, you know what? If we buy that, shame on us. He's already showed us what he believes and he's already said what he wants to do, and he wants to go after every one of the rights we have.</s>KING: To Ashley's point, Julie, a lot of Democrats think if Trump rater for party unity even if you don't like Clinton and you're for Sanders and disappointed that Trump is the motivator. In the Clinton campaign do they believe that's enough or she has to do more than just saying I want to you join me, to say something about campaign finance reform to be more direct about political reforms and Wall Street reforms?</s>PACE: They definitely see Trump as a motivator, something they could go to young voters could you stay at home and let Donald Trump be president but they also know they can't spend the entire summer and the entire fall campaign talking about Trump, responding to him. There has to be some proactive message from her, some vision of what she would do but how to do that especially in this environment where Donald Trump is so skilled at controlling the narrative and being at the center of attention, it's really an unanswered question. It's actually I think one of the biggest questions they face going into the fall campaign how she carves out space for her own message but doesn't let his attacks on her go unanswered.</s>RAJU: And how to define Donald Trump, that's one of the things that Republicans are realizing they tried to define him early this election season, didn't quite work and for Democrats, when do you begin that effort to truly try to define him in the eyes of general election voters.</s>KING: General election voters -- run in a general reaction, you need a running mate, right? Clinton/Warren, Trump/Rubio? Ready or not, the veep stakes buzz is ramping up, the reason it isn't all idle speculation, well, that's next.