News Analysis: Division within Democratic Party in spotlight, overshadowing Clinton's presidential run

With the final primaries of the 2016 U.S. presidential election approaching, a Quinnipiac University National poll released Wednesday finds the candidates most likely to lead their parties into the general election are locked in a much tighter race.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton's small 45-41 percent lead over Republican Donald Trump contrasted sharply with her 13-point edge in a CNN/ORC poll released on May 4, just before the New York real estate billionaire locked up the Republican presidential nomination.

The narrowing margin took place in less than a month when the Republicans were slowly rallying behind their presumptive nominee Trump and the Democrats are stuck in a prolonged primary fight between Clinton and her long-shot challenger Bernie Sanders.

The bitter discord in the Democratic Party with Sanders' persistent momentum on the campaign trail and his appeal among the progressives and young voters came into the limelight, overshadowing Clinton's run to the White House, experts said.

Some even cautioned that the Democrats' split is helping the Republicans as some Democrats are anxious to see Clinton begin to unify the party and focus her attention on an election showdown with Trump.

BITTER DIVISION

"The person that is doing the most to elect Trump is Bernie Sanders," Allan Lichtman, an American political historian who teaches at American University in Washington, D.C., told Xinhua.

"By prolonging the Democratic contest, by prolonging the contest of the party in power, by continuing to attack Hillary Clinton, he is creating a situation -- even though he has no chance to win the nomination, that makes much more possible for Trump to win," he said.

"Historically, if the party holding the White House doesn't come together pretty early, they lose," said Prof. Lichtman, the author of "The Keys to the White House" which elaborates his proven method of predicting the winners in presidential elections.

Clinton, a former secretary of state and first lady, said on Tuesday that her aides and Sanders' have been in talks about how to unify the Democratic Party as the primary season closes. Those conversations will intensify, she told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead."

But Sanders, 74, presented a different scenario. He told a rally in Santa Cruz on the same day that after the June 7 contests, neither Clinton nor him would have garnered enough pledged delegates to become the Democratic nominee.

Six states will hold presidential nominating contests on June 7, with California being the biggest prize of 546 delegates up for grabs.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll released Thursday showed that Clinton is clinging to a narrow two-point lead over Sanders in California ahead of the primary.

So far, Clinton has secured 2,312 delegates, 71 short of the number needed to clinch her party' nomination for the Nov. 8 general election. That number included 543 super-delegates, the party insiders who can back any candidate at the Democratic National Convention regardless of how people voted in primaries and caucuses.

Sanders is lagging far behind, at 1,545 delegates. Arguing that Clinton's lead is largely based on her wide advantage among the 714 super-delegates, the Vermont senator has vowed to carry his campaign all the way to the convention scheduled for July in Philadelphia.

Although he admitted it was an uphill fight to overtake Clinton, he called the California primary "the big enchilada." He will also "make the case to the super-delegates" that he is the stronger candidate to defeat Trump in November, Sanders told NBC News' "Meet the Press" program.

Throughout the year, Sanders and his supporters have questioned about the nomination process and ways they believe it has favored Clinton, including closed primaries in major states such as New York, and the use of super-delegates.

Many of his supporters said they knew that Sanders' ambition of winning the nomination was a long shot, but they still held hope he could mount a late comeback.

"The division within the Democratic Party is the decisive factor in the duel between Hillary and Trump. It is wrong to focus on the Republican Party. The party holding the White House should defend its status quo," Prof. Lichtman said.

HELPING REPUBLICANS?

David Lublin, a professor in the Department of Government of the American University, said at this point, the split among the Democrats was hurting Clinton not as much as Sanders has been attacking her.

"Over the past few days, he is coming under a lot of criticism for the way his supporters acted in Nevada, also his own criticism of Senator Clinton," he told Xinhua.

Sanders supporters lashed out at party leaders at the chaotic Nevada convention in a spillover of frustration within the rank and file over the party's handling of the primary process.

Top Democratic leaders, including Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, have publicly ruminated on the possibility of violence at the July convention as they prepared for a general election battle with Trump.

For Democrats, as long as Sanders remains in the race, they are faced with a delicate balancing act of securing Clinton nominated and avoid alienating passionate backers of Sanders. Last week, the Democratic Party announced that it will give Sanders a prominent say in writing the party platform in a move party leaders hope will soothe the bitter split.

Sanders has said he would not play the spoiler -- by running as an independent or backing a third-party candidate. He told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that he would "do everything that I can" to ensure Trump is defeated, but he put the onus on Clinton to persuade his supporters to back her.

Prof. Lublin did not believe Sanders' attacks of Clinton were helping Trump to win. But with the primary in its twilight, "a lot depends on how Senator Sanders wants to act more than what she (Clinton) does," he said.

"It's a long way until November. It's another six months. Essentially, Trump faces a big problem -- he has to win an unprecedented high share of the white votes in order to win the election. There's little sign that he will be able to do that. Seventy percent of women already dislike him," he said. Endit