Sanders: The sooner he exits, the more clout he gets | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Bernie Sanders has newfound clout within his grasp – if he exits the presidential race quickly and gracefully.

When and how he’ll exit remains a mystery. Top Democrats – from President Barack Obama, to Vice President Joe Biden, to some Senate colleagues – are gently nudging him to give up his quixotic quest for the party’s nomination. Sanders and Obama are to meet at the White House Thursday.

Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, has made it clear that he doesn’t plan to leave the race until after the final primary, Tuesday in Washington D.C., even though that vote doesn’t carry enough delegates to change the math.

“I am pretty good at arithmetic, and I know that the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight, but we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate we can get,” Sanders wrote Wednesday in an email to supporters.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has 2,765 Democratic convention delegates, well above the 2,383 needed to nominate. Sanders has 1,864.

Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist in Florida who worked for Obama in 2008, said Sanders should take a few days to rest and consider what he is looking for as his race winds down.

Should Sanders endorse Clinton soon and, equally important, urge his supporters to back her, he could increase his influence in the party.

“You were a minor figure, and now you come back to the Senate with a greater kind of stature,” said Norman Ornstein, congressional analyst at Washington’s center-right American Enterprise Institute. “But he can also fritter it away.”

Party leaders want quick unity, as polls show vividly that the sooner Sanders embraces Clinton, the quicker her tight lead over likely GOP nominee will jump.

Political observers say Sanders, who requested the meeting with the president, may try to work out an exit strategy with Obama. Obama, they said, can be a sounding board, assure Sanders he will be influential in the party in the coming months, and even act an arbiter between the two campaigns.

Obama and Sanders spoke Sunday.

One thing Obama could do is talk to Sanders about ways the senator could continue to be influential, said Lynda Tran, who worked on numerous presidential races and previously served as national press secretary for Organizing for America, which grew out of the Obama campaign as a way to mobilizing grassroots support.

Obama, Tran said, could promise to push some of Sanders’ most-important issues, such as reining in Wall Street, lowering college costs and raising the minimum wage, all proposals the president supports, even going as far as issuing executive actions or new legislation.

Sanders also has the potential to address those issues as he returns to the Senate. Some also-rans have found greater stature in the Senate, post-campaign, such as the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Sanders has been an independent since coming to Congress 25 years ago, though he caucuses with the Democrats. He’s never been a party insider. His presidential campaign was a longshot, a bid to get his agenda discussed, and it wound up a movement.

The danger for Sanders is that he could easily revert to his old Senate self. “He hasn’t had a reputation of being much of a doer,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.

If Democrats win Senate control in November, a real possibility, Sanders is in line to chair its Budget Committee. The panel’s big job is to write the general outline for the future budget, a blueprint setting priorities for a long list of domestic, defense and foreign policy issues.

Trouble is, in recent years, that committee hasn’t had much clout. While it holds hearings and writes budgets, the biggest decisions have been made at higher levels.

If Sanders is to be a big player, “he still would have to prove that he could put a coalition together if he wants to legislate,” said Burdett Loomis, a congressional expert at the University of Kansas.

That’s where the promise of 2016 comes in. “The budget committee platform is a real platform to promote your agenda,” Ornstein said. The media notice, and while Sanders’ agenda may not get far if the House of Representatives remains in Republican control, which is likely, he can build momentum.

Sanders and Clinton served together in the Senate from 2001 to 2009. The two spoke Tuesday night, according to a Clinton aide, who would not reveal details of the call. A Sanders spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Vice President Joe Biden, also in the Senate during those eight years, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that people need to be patient with Sanders.

“I think that’s his call,” Biden said. “It’s clear we know who the nominee is going to be. I think we should be a little graceful and give him the opportunity to decide on his own.”