Sanders’s wife: Everyone always says ‘he can’t win’

Bernie Sanders’s wife said Monday that her husband has a history of beating the odds despite concerns over his electability.

“That’s always been the rap on Bernie,” Jane Sanders told host Chris Cuomo on CNN’s “New Day.” “Everybody always says he can’t win.”

{mosads}“He won the mayor’s race by 10 points,” she said of his 1981 mayoral victory in Burlington, Vt.

“If 10 people had stayed home and bought the ‘he’s not electable’ [angle], we wouldn’t be here today. So every vote and every caucus member counts.”

Sanders then cited her husband’s unsuccessful 1988 House campaign as evidence of voter power.

“They said he couldn’t be a congressman,” she said. “He lost his first election because the voters bought that. He lost by 3 percentage points.”

“When they woke up the next morning they said, ‘Oh, he could have been elected had we not just voted because we thought he couldn’t be,’ ” Sanders added. “The next time he won by 17 percent.”

Sanders said her husband is overjoyed with his surge in popularity this election cycle.

“I think we’ve been very surprised at not the resonance of his ideas, but of the fervor of the support,” she said.

Bernie Sanders is fiercely battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination despite his independent affiliation in the Senate.

Clinton leads him by 4 points in Iowa heading into its first-in-the-nation caucuses Monday evening. Bernie Sanders has the edge in New Hampshire, however, notching an 18-point edge over Clinton there.

The Vermont lawmaker trails Clinton by over 14 percent nationwide, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.

Clinton has repeatedly argued that Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is unelectable. Sanders has countered that he offers an alternative to establishment politics and business as usual.