Senate Democrats avoid calling Sanders front-runner

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate are sidestepping references to his front-runner status, even though he has the most delegates and is the odds-on favorite to win California and Texas on Super Tuesday.

Senate Democrats, most of whom do not support the Vermont Independent’s boldest proposals — “Medicare for All,” tuition-free college and the Green New Deal — aren’t ready to crown Sanders as the likely nominee, arguing that former Vice President Joe Biden or another candidate might surge to the top.

“You know, it’s hard to say. What, about 3 percent, or something like that, of people have voted? So a lot more people have to have their voices heard,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) when asked if Sanders is now the front-runner…

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is up for reelection in a state President Trump narrowly lost, acknowledged that Sanders has won the most contests but said the race is far from over.

“We’re not even a hundred delegates into this process, so we have a long way to go,” she said.

Sanders surge spreads fear among House and Senate Democrats

By now most political observers are probably familiar with the so-called electability argument against Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders: He’s a self-described democratic socialist who will lose swing voters to President Trump.

They’ve probably heard Sanders’s rebuttal as well: that he’ll make up for it with “the highest voter turnout in history,” particularly among young voters, new voters and voters of color.

But during last night’s Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., several of Sanders’s rivals tried to blunt his momentum ahead of Saturday’s Palmetto State primary by claiming, for the first time in a national setting, that the problem isn’t just that the Vermont senator is unelectable himself.

It’s that nominating him would make dozens of down-ballot Democratic House, Senate and state legislature candidates more vulnerable, too.