Far exceeding any initial expectations, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign has powerfully shaken the Democratic party and energized its base. Nevertheless, a good politician not only sees the way to victory but also knows when defeat is inevitable. Sanders’ campaign has defied the odds before, but the math almost entirely bars Sanders from the nomination. Consequently, his campaign only serves to sow further division in the party and make it more likely that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump will win the general election. It is time for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race. 

In a May 17 speech, Sanders declared that he will stay in the race until “the last ballot is counted.” His perseverance is admirable; however, it is equally quixotic. 

Sanders has performed well across the country, defying the predictions of experts and turning the primary from a crowning into a real contest. Nevertheless, his campaign has suffered key defeats, most recently in New York on April 19, then Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania the following week. Despite Sanders’ tremendous support from younger voters, according to an April 19 Los Angeles Times article, Clinton has crucially remained ahead with key demographics such as women, Latinos and African-American voters. 

These demographic problems have plagued the Sanders campaign from its inception. A tie in Iowa and landslide victory in New Hampshire gave Sanders the momentum needed to make his campaign competitive. Iowa and New Hampshire, however, do not represent the entire Democratic Party. 

After Clinton’s victories in Nevada and South Carolina, a pattern began to emerge: Sanders would narrowly edge out or tie Clinton in the northern contests he won, and Clinton would win landslide victories in the southern primaries. 

For example, according to a March 1 New York Times article, on Super Tuesday, Clinton won Alabama by nearly 60 percentage points over Sanders. Clinton has fared well in these states largely because southern Democrats include many non-white voters, whom Sanders has had problems attracting. 

The Democratic Party awards delegates for the national convention proportionally, meaning that Clinton’s victories on Super Tuesday and beyond were always far more meaningful than Sanders’ subsequent wins. By the time Clinton swept all five states on March 15, the race was essentially over. According to a March 15 Vox article, following that day, Sanders needed to win every primary contest by around 58 percent in order to take the lead in delegates. Since then, however, Clinton’s lead has only grown.

After factoring in superdelegates, Clinton’s lead grows astronomically higher. According to a May 6 Vox article, the superdelegates make up around 15 percent of the total delegates. Most superdelegates favored Clinton from the start, and her sizeable lead in pledged delegates has further secured their support. According to a May 20 Bloomberg article, Clinton has the pledged support of 525 superdelegates while Sanders has only 39. The Sanders campaign hopes to sway unpledged delegates, but there has been little indication that this will happen. 

In 2008, many of the superdelegates switched to support the eventual nominee, Barack Obama, but only because he took the lead in pledged delegates. A similar feat would require Sanders to win 68 percent of the remaining unpledged delegates, according to May 18 International Business Times article.

The longer the Sanders campaign continues, the more animosity grows between Sanders and Clinton supporters. Currently, Clinton needs to focus on decreasing her unfavorability ratings and consolidating support in the party. Instead, she has to spend the next two months fighting off attacks from both the left and the right. Given that Sanders has a miniscule chance of winning, this is entirely inappropriate. 

The results of Sanders’ stubbornness have already begun to manifest themselves. The “Bernie or Bust” movement, in particular, is the most malignant example. 

This movement consists of a loud faction of Sanders’ supporters who say they will refuse to vote for Clinton if she wins the nomination. Many intend to write in Sanders, vote for third party candidates or not vote instead. Bernie or Bust is a direct result of the vitriolic anti-establishment message of the Sanders campaign. 

Many Sanders supporters view their struggle as one to retake progressivism back from career politicians and Wall Street. As Sanders often targets Clinton as part of the problem, it is not surprising that many of his supporters refuse to vote for her. As long as Sanders remains in the race, that will continue.  

At the recent Nevada Democratic State Convention, according to a May 16 New York Times article, Sanders supporters harassed the democratic chairwoman Roberta Lange with death threats after she declined to change a voting procedure in a way that could have benefited the Sanders campaign. Lange received thousands of threatening calls and texts to her phone within hours. This is but one example of how Sanders’ tactics of division can severely impede the party as it tries to unify for the general election. 

In a two-party system, the general election is always a binary choice. Sometimes, voters have the chance to check a ballot for a candidate they admire, but they always select the candidate they despise least. 

Come November, Sanders supporters will have two main choices if they vote: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Frankly, there are no valid reasons for Democrats to dislike Clinton enough to justify not voting for her. She is highly qualified and solidly liberal. 

Voters can reasonably disagree about whether Clinton is more qualified or suited for the White House than Sanders — or vice versa — but it is just sore losing for Sanders’ supporters to refuse to vote for the nominee of their party because they liked the losing candidate more.

Further, Sanders’ refusal to drop out is a huge waste of party resources, as he continues to raise millions of dollars in campaign contributions. It seems like a waste not only because he will not win but also because these are dollars that would be better spent in ads and other expenses helping to target Trump. Beyond that, the Clinton campaign must also waste resources campaigning in states such as California and Kentucky that will not be competitive in the general election.  

Democratic unification behind Clinton is so vital because of Donald Trump’s nomination. By not suspending his campaign, Sanders lays bare the divisions within the Democratic Party — and worse, exacerbates them. As the events in Nevada show, Sanders supporters grow more desperate and radical as he prolongs the death of his campaign, and Clinton supporters grow more frustrated. In what might be a close election between Trump and Clinton, these votes can make a difference. 

A May 10 Quinnipiac University poll found Clinton to be leading Trump by only one percent in Florida and Pennsylvania and Trump to be leading in Ohio by 4 percent. A narcissist born into the top one percent, Trump is the antithesis of Sanders’ message. 

At his best, Sanders stands for integrity and transparency in politics. Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is only the latest demonstration that he does not share these virtues. Consequently, Sanders’ supporters should be more committed to stopping Trump than they are currently committed to stopping Clinton. 

According to a February 23, 2004 CBS News article, in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, Ralph Nader won 97,488 votes, while Al Gore lost the state by only 537 votes to George W. Bush. This was true in five other states. Should Sanders’ supporters choose to vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party instead of Clinton, the margin of victory in many swing states is so small that Donald Trump may inadvertently be elected instead. Four years of a Trump administration would be the ultimate defeat of Sanders’ campaign.