A Bernie Sanders Victory Just Got a Little Less Impossible

When this presidential campaign began 10,000 years ago, Hillary Clinton was expected to cruise to the Democratic nomination. She had the resume of a president-in-waiting, a terrifyingly vast fundraising operation, and no prominent challengers on the horizon.

"Clinton is basically guaranteed to win the Democratic nomination with little opposition whatsoever," VICE contributor Kevin Lincoln wrote in April 2015. Back then, people were speculating about a possible Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden campaign—no one was talking about an angry old man from Burlington who kept yelling about how great the healthcare is in Denmark.

A year later, Bernie Sanders's emergence has resulted in one of the most substantive primary policy debates in memory. The fact that the fancy people in mainstream media and politics have had to grapple seriously with a guy who calls himself a Democratic socialist and says stuff like "the business model of Wall Street is fraud" is a moral victory for the Vermont senator.

But Sanders has also scored actual victories, too: In the past month, he's won caucuses in Idaho, Utah, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, and, as of last night, the Wisconsin primary.

Now here comes the part where, like every article written about Sanders, we note the obstacles between him and the Democratic Party nomination. Even leaving out unpledged "superdelegates," Sanders is well behind Clinton in the delegate count, thanks to her series of landslide wins across the South. He also remains several points back in polls in New York, Pennsylvania, and California, three delegate-rich primaries that will basically decide the contest over the next two months.

Given those realities, a Clinton win in Wisconsin would have more or less wrapped the whole thing up. Instead, Sanders not only beat the frontrunner, but eclipsed her by a large margin, outperforming polling expectations.

The victory lends credence to the narrative of Sanders's campaign: He can overcome the long odds if voters in the upcoming primaries can be convinced he has a legitimate chance to beat Clinton, and go on to defeat whatever rough beast slouches out of the Republican National Convention in July. After Tuesday, Clinton's still got the numbers on her side for now, but Sanders has the momentum.

"Momentum is starting this campaign 11 months ago and the media determining that we were a 'fringe' candidacy," Sanders said during a speech in Wyoming last night, according to the New York Times. "Do not tell Secretary Clinton—she's getting a little nervous… But I believe we've got an excellent chance to win New York and a lot of delegates in that state."

It wasn't just the media who thought that Sanders didn't have a shot at the candidacy. According to a Times story published Monday, which quoted several people close to his campaign, Sanders himself "was originally skeptical that he could beat Mrs. Clinton, and his mission in 2015 was to spread his political message about a rigged America rather than do whatever it took to win the nomination."

According to the Times,that outlook prompted Sanders to campaign only part-time for most of 2015, while Clinton devoted all of her energies to the race, and may have played a role in his early reticence to attack his opponent over her private speeches to Goldman Sachs and the ongoing scandal over her private email server.

Even now, Sanders is not quite willing to throw mud like a man who actually wants to be president. In an interview with the New York Daily News this week, he refused to say that Clinton wasn't "trustworthy," instead emphasizing that although he disagrees with her, "I have not attacked her personally."

The problem is, Clinton doesn't seem to have the same set of standards. In that same Daily News interview, Sanders seemed to stumble over the details of how exactly he would break big banks up and prosecute wrongdoing on Wall Street—questions that you'd expect him to have polished answers on. Immediately, Clinton pounced on him for being unprepared, with a campaign staffer tweeting, "At some point, you have to have actual details. How you'll break up the banks. Pay for your college and health care plan. Win the nomination."

On Wednesday morning, Clinton herself appeared on Morning Joe and said, "I think he hadn't done his homework and he'd been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn't really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions."

All this sets up a showdown at the Democratic debate scheduled for April 14, five days before the New York primary. There will almost certainly be a question thrown at Sanders about that Daily News interview, and the specific ways he would go about fighting Wall Street, as well as about his general preparedness to be president. He's got a week to cobble together a clear plan for implementing his policies.

Thanks to his Wisconsin win, Sanders has a path to the nomination, but a key step on that path is going to be dominating that debate—not just by laying out his positions and inspiring voters who already love him, but also by going after Clinton in a way that makes her appear shaky and defensive—something he really hasn't managed yet.

If he falters, and New York delivers the nomination to Clinton, we'll still have spent the last six months talking about bank breakups, student loan forgiveness, and income inequality for the last six months, largely thanks to Sanders. And that can hardly be called a defeat.