Former Bill Clinton adviser suggests brokered convention could pave way for Hillary to win nomination

A former adviser to President Bill Clinton says it’s not too late for Hillary Clinton to steal the Democrats’ presidential nomination from Bernie Sanders once again.

Dick Morris predicted Sunday that the former secretary of State will clinch the nomination on the second ballot at a brokered convention, the Washington Examiner reported. The Democratic Party is panicking as Sanders, having swept the Nevada caucuses, appears increasingly unstoppable — and on the verge of destroying the Democratic Party as we know it.

“Here’s the deal that I think is going down,” Dick Morris told host John Catsimatidis on Sunday’s episode of The Cats Roundtable radio show. “I think Hillary and [Mike] Bloomberg have gotten together and cooked up a scheme.”

Paving the way for Hillary

Sanders’ overwhelming victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday left centrist Democrats and MSNBC anchors alike lashing out at the prospect of losing control of their party to a democratic-socialist, as moderate Democrats begin to fret that Sanders is building a what his former opponent Andrew Yang called a “nearly insurmountable” delegate lead, according to Politico. Indeed, with a packed field of moderate candidates continuing to split the anti-Sanders vote, many have begun to speculate about a brokered convention.

Morris, for his part, predicted Sunday that Bloomberg, the Democratic establishment’s latest beacon of hope, will stay in the race long enough to deny Sanders an absolute majority of delegates before the convention in Milwaukee this summer. Then the vote would go to a second ballot, Morris explained, and Hillary Clinton would swoop in to save the establishment.

“And then Hillary begins to gain; the other candidates begin to drop out. And Hillary is the nominee. That, I think, is the establishment scenario,” he said. “Hillary is the only candidate that they’ll be able to come up with that can measure up to Donald Trump.”

A “massacre” at the ballot box

Like many centrist Dems, Morris also fretted Sunday that Sanders will get “massacred” by Donald Trump in November. Adding to the establishment’s anxiety is that no strong moderate alternative has emerged: Joe Biden was supposed to fill that role, but failed, and Mike Bloomberg’s first debate in Las Vegas was an embarrassment.

“The problem is that the party establishment doesn’t have a candidate. They can’t do Bloomberg because he got killed in the debate… Can’t do Biden because he’s already lost the front-runner status… [Pete] Buttigieg looks like a high school kid at the Model U.N.,” Morris complained. “[Elizabeth] Warren is third, but she’s pretty far to the left, and they’re not going to want to trust her.”

It seems Sanders’ spectacular rise has many moderates seeing phantoms of 1972, when the far-left George McGovern suffered one of the worst electoral landslide defeats ever to Richard Nixon. For his part, Sanders has declared war on the Democratic establishment, leaving many to compare his rise, and his party’s fearful response, to the Trump revolution in 2016.

Indeed, in what looks to many like a reflection of 2016, the liberal establishment has been piling on Bernie, attacking him as a communist sympathizer and a Russian asset in the wake of intelligence leaks claiming that the Kremlin wants to help his campaign. MSNBC’s reaction to the Nevada caucus results was widely criticized Saturday, especially after anchor Chris Matthews compared Sanders’ capture of the Democratic Party to the Nazi takeover of France.

Bad blood in the Democratic Party

If the nomination is “rigged” against Sanders, then it wouldn’t be the first time. Bad blood still lingers between Sanders supporters and the Democratic establishment over the role that superdelegates played in nominating Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Under rules changes sought by Sanders, superdelegates can only vote on the second ballot this time — but in the case of a brokered convention, they’d still have a say, The Guardian noted.

Sanders was the only candidate at the Democratic debate in Las Vegas last week to declare that the candidate with a plurality of delegates at the end of the primaries should become the nominee, adding to speculation of a brokered and bitter convention.

A rematch between Trump and Hillary sounds fanciful, and it would require the party to overrule the will of voters in a desperate power grab. But with Sanders on top, it’s clear the Democratic Party is in a state of panic — and there’s no telling what may happen.