The Buzz from the US: Bernie Sanders, the Band-Aid that Just Won’t Come Unstuck

The socialist candidate won the West Virginia primary on Tuesday evening. While this victory does not threaten Hillary Clinton’s status as the favorite to win, it does oblige her to remain focused on the primaries.

Bernie Sanders made headlines on Tuesday evening after winning the West Virginia primary. The outcome of this vote was largely expected in this state with over 90 percent white inhabitants, a weak point for Hillary Clinton, who has based her success principally on black and Hispanic minorities’ support, as well as women. And the small number of delegates in play (29) does not endanger the favorite’s chances of winning the nomination, as she retains a comfortable head start over Sanders, with 2,228 delegates out of the 2,383 delegates required (against 1,448 for Bernie Sanders).

But the challenger’s new victory emphasizes the echo of his “socialist” message, which continues to reverberate while the primaries draw to a close. Far from abandoning the race, “Bernie” has been named the favorite to win elsewhere, in the states of Kentucky and Oregon, whose primaries will take place next week. In the hope of a twist, the candidate is currently wooing the superdelegates who support Hillary Clinton. They are not at all formally committed to voting for her during the July convention and could change their minds at the last minute, but that scenario is still very theoretical.

Nevertheless, Bernie Sanders’s determination has forced Hillary Clinton to focus on the primaries, which are being prolonged and costing a lot of money, as well as to endure repeated failures, while her rival, Donald Trump, no longer has any competition and is already beginning to prepare for the standoff in the fall. On Tuesday evening, he unsurprisingly won the two states where the Republican primaries were being held (West Virginia and Nebraska). Hillary Clinton should nevertheless resume control in the last wave of votes held during the month of June: According to the polls, she is ahead in California and New Jersey, two states that will go to the polls in June and whose proportion of minorities is larger.