With each city Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Bernie Sanders vis­its, the num­ber of sup­port­ers he draws to his ral­lies keeps grow­ing. Since June 1, Sanders has spo­ken to 100,000 peo­ple across sev­en events.

If Sanders’ rallies, like Obama’s, are signs of a growing movement, why do the Post’s columnists focus their articles on doubting the political potential of that movement and hailing the inevitability of Hillary Clinton?

In Phoenix, Ari­zona, on July 18, he drew 11,000 peo­ple, set­ting a new record for 2016 pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. His record con­tin­ued in Seat­tle with 15,000 sup­port­ers, and then in Port­land with 28,000 sup­port­ers. In Los Ange­les on August 10, Sanders drew about 27,500 sup­port­ers, accord­ing to the Sanders campaign.

But for Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Philip Bump, those num­bers ​“don’t mat­ter much.”

Bump asserts Sanders’ recent surge in the polls is sim­ply thanks to the low-hang­ing fruit of the lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic wing, many of whom sup­port Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren just as much as they sup­port Sanders. He also writes: ​“There is Hillary Clin­ton, and there is Not Hillary Clin­ton. Not Hillary Clin­ton used to be named Eliz­a­beth War­ren; Not Hillary Clin­ton is now named Bernie Sanders.”

Anoth­er Post colum­nist, Chris Cil­liz­za, also attrib­ut­es Sanders’ crowds to the cities being major­i­ty lib­er­al, writ­ing, ​“Port­land is a known den of pro­gres­sivism where Pres­i­dent Oba­ma drew mas­sive crowds dur­ing his 2008 campaign.”

Bump and Cil­liz­za seemed to for­get that Sanders had drawn his then-largest crowd of 11,000 peo­ple in con­ser­v­a­tive Phoenix. Most Repub­li­can can­di­dates’ largest ral­lies drew about 5,000 sup­port­ers. On August 18, Repub­li­can can­di­date Ben Car­son drew 12,000 sup­port­ers in Phoenix, the biggest crowd for a GOP can­di­date.

So far, Clinton’s largest ral­ly had 5,500 sup­port­ers. Bump claims Clinton’s lack of large crowds is inten­tion­al; she prefers ​“neat­ly tai­lored group[s] of a few thou­sand” in ​“a space meant to dis­play an audi­ence that size for the cam­eras” as part of a strat­e­gy to dis­tance her­self from the image of being an unap­proach­able jug­ger­naut. Bump writes:

Could Clin­ton fill an are­na in Los Ange­les if she want­ed to? Of course she could. Unques­tion­ably. … There are unions in Los Ange­les that can fill a sta­di­um on a week’s notice. This is not as big a task as it looks.

Sanders, on the oth­er hand, has filled tens of thou­sands of seats with­out lever­ag­ing unions to arti­fi­cial­ly fill seats. Regard­less, attract­ing large crowds has indeed been a big task for Repub­li­can candidates.

To be fair, Cil­liz­za and Bump rec­og­nize Sanders’ abil­i­ty to draw crowds with grass­roots cam­paign­ing and enthu­si­asm. Cil­liz­za writes, ​“But, crowds are at some lev­el an indi­ca­tor of organ­ic ener­gy — it is after all how it became clear in 2006 and 2007 that some­thing major was hap­pen­ing with Oba­ma.” Bump writes, ​“Now, I’ll grant that [fill­ing an are­na] is prob­a­bly eas­i­er for Sanders — that he has more ener­gy behind him.”

But these state­ments always come with a catch. Cil­liz­za framed Sanders’ suc­cess in attract­ing sup­port­ers main­ly as an irri­tant to Clinton’s cam­paign — not because he could win, since ​“Clin­ton isn’t in the dan­ger of los­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion that she was in 2008.” Rather, vis­i­ble enthu­si­asm for Sanders could cre­ate a dan­ger­ous ​“per­ceived lack of pas­sion” for Clinton:

Repub­li­can base vot­ers will be fired up beyond belief to take back the White House — and vote against Clin­ton — next Novem­ber. She has to find ways to cre­ate that pas­sion for her­self with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic base.

A more recent op-ed by Cil­liz­za reject­ed the entire premise that Clin­ton could be over­tak­en, say­ing, ​“It’s too late for Democ­rats to start rethink­ing Clinton’s 2016 via­bil­i­ty.” He writes Clin­ton has more polit­i­cal favor than Biden, Al Gore or ​“your ide­al rich-per­son-with-no-record-and-a-fresh-faced-appeal.” The only men­tion of Sanders is in the sec­ond-to-last para­graph as ​“the lib­er­al alternative.”

Bump not­ed that sup­port­ers at the LA ral­ly — which he round­ed up to 28,000 — are only a tiny frac­tion of the 2.5 mil­lion of LA res­i­dents who vot­ed for Oba­ma in 2012, and there­fore do not show us how many peo­ple will vote for Sanders in 2016. This met­ric is mean­ing­less; of course the num­ber of peo­ple who vote for a pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee is going to be larg­er than the num­ber of peo­ple who attend a ral­ly more than a year before the election.

Cil­liz­za com­pared Sanders’ 28,000 turnout in Port­land in August to Obama’s 75,000 in the same city in May 2008 — even though Obama’s ral­ly, the largest of his 2008 cam­paign, occurred dur­ing the height of pri­ma­ry vot­ing in Ore­gon, where­as Sanders’ was approx­i­mate­ly nine months in advance of the primary.

A fair­er com­par­i­son would hold Sanders’ ral­ly in LA up to Obama’s LA ral­ly in Feb­ru­ary 2007, which was about one-third as large. Despite some cor­po­rate media naysay­ing, Obama’s LA ral­ly was high­light­ed by the Post as a note­wor­thy achieve­ment, since 9,000 ​“is a larg­er turnout than Pres­i­dent Bush usu­al­ly gets and cer­tain­ly more than Obama’s rivals in the 2008 cam­paign are pulling in.”

If Sanders’ ral­lies, like Obama’s, are signs of a grow­ing move­ment, why do the Post’s colum­nists focus their arti­cles on doubt­ing the polit­i­cal poten­tial of that move­ment and hail­ing the inevitabil­i­ty of Hillary Clinton?