There is every reason to believe that at the convention Mr. Sanders will offer a rules change requiring superdelegates to vote for the candidate who won their state’s primary or caucus. A vote on that proposed change would almost certainly occur—and it would function as a referendum on the Clinton candidacy. If Mr. Sanders wins California, Montana and North Dakota on Tuesday and stays competitive in New Jersey, he could well be within 200 pledged delegates of Mrs. Clinton, making a vote in favor of the rules change on superdelegates more likely.
Another problem: In recent weeks the perception that Mrs. Clinton would be the strongest candidate against Donald Trump has evaporated. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Mrs. Clinton in a statistical tie with Mr. Trump, and recent surveys from ABC News/Washington Post and Fox News show her two and three points behind him, respectively.
Then there is that other crack in the argument for Mrs. Clinton’s inevitability: Bernie Sanders consistently runs stronger than she does against Mr. Trump nationally, beating him by about 10 points in a number of recent surveys.
The worries about Mr. Sanders’s strength have stirred the beginnings of a capitulation to him—by the Clinton camp, in league with the Democratic National Committee—at the convention. To placate him, they have already granted Mr. Sanders greater influence over the party platform. Two divisive figures, Cornel West and Rep. Keith Ellison, have been added to the platform committee, ensuring that the party will be pulled further left. In addition to putting Mr. Sanders’s socialist nostrums on display, the platform negotiations are likely to spur an ugly fight over the U.S. relationship with Israel.
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