TOW #10 - How Bernie Sanders Has Already Won

Bernie Sanders has already won? Looks like I've been watching a different presidential race than author, David Axelrod. Now David Axelrod is quite a known figure in the political world, one for being the Chief Strategist of President Obama's campaign for presidency, and two, he is CNN Senior Political Commentator. Clearly he knows his stuff. However, yearning for an explanation, I dove right in to the article. What I read was completely different than what I had envisioned. Instead of claiming Sanders was going to win the nomination, he revealed that by pushing Clinton in the race, due to his successful campaign, has pushed Clinton to create bolder stances and a stronger base for her campaign. Through the use of juxtaposition, Axelrod establishes the idea that Sanders has been the driving factor in making Clinton a better prepared candidate for becoming president in 2016. In 2008, Clinton made some costly mistakes in her campaign, that she has began to fix so far into her campaign in 2015. "Folks in Iowa, home of the first-in-the-nation contest, say her team is building the superior ground game she lacked in 2008. This is critical to victory in the organizationally rigorous caucuses." (para. 4). Axelrod uses the Iowans comparison of the two campaigns, to reveal how instead of Clinton being on the fence about some of the political issues, she has now solidified some of those opinions. He later reveals that Bernie Sanders' views on inequality, outsized influence of Wall Street, and gun control, have forced Clinton to embrace the issues, rather than being conservative on what she says. "Clinton did her share of Second Amendment signifying to rural whites in her failed effort to derail Obama in the last race... But this time, she has stressed her commitment to new gun safety measures. But the cautious Hillary Clinton... could have been reticent to make gun safety a central theme, had Sanders not been in the race." (Para. 10).  What Axelrod does by comparing her views on gun control from now, to when she was running in 2008, he effectively proves that through creating a strong opposition, Bernie Sanders has attributed to forming a new Hillary Clinton, who stands strongly behind her ideas, making her a better fit to become president one day.