Katy Tur: Can Bernie Sanders Continue Blaming the Establishment for His Own Losses?

During his appearances on the Sunday shows, Senator Bernie Sanders partly attributed his poor Super Tuesday showing to Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropping out, saying the establishment pressured them to do so.

Politico’s Tim Alberta wrote about how winning Michigan — like he did in the 2016 primary — would be harder for Sanders this time around.

Alberta spoke with MSBBC’s Katy Tur this afternoon and said 2016 was more about Hillary Clinton’s faults than Sanders’ strengths. He noted that Sanders has had a “very good ground game” and plenty of energy on his side, but the speed of the consolidation around Biden could mean the former veep could end up winning big.

“Bernie Sanders won white working class voters by a pretty significant margin against Hillary Clinton four years ago, and there’s just no way that that demographic group is going to recoil from Joe Biden they way they recoiled from Hillary Clinton,” he added.

Tur then brought up the Sanders camp swipes at the establishment and asked, “Can he continue to blame the establishment if he loses in Michigan? He said the establishment Democrats have — they pressured Amy Klobuchar, they pressured Pete Buttigieg (although Buttigieg denied it) to drop out of the race and endorse Joe Biden. Can you continue to blame the Democratic establishment if you’re not winning the kind of voters that you said you were going to win?”

“He can try,” Alberta said, “but I think fewer and fewer people are going to buy it, quite frankly… You are what the voters say you are. And if you’re only winning 28, 30, 35 percent of votes, then that’s just not going to cut it. And if Bernie Sanders in this state where he really planted his flag four years ago… if he gets blown out here tomorrow then he doesn’t have much of an argument moving forward.”

You can watch above, via MSNBC.