Pete Buttigieg is sounding the alarm: Bernie Sanders is running away with the Democratic Party's presidential race and he needs to be stopped before it’s too late.

“Before we rush to nominate Sen. Sanders in our one shot to take on (President Donald Trump), let us take a sober look at what is at stake for our party, for our values and for those with the most to lose,” Buttigieg said Saturday after Sanders was declared the winner of the Nevada caucuses.

The former South Bend mayor went on to say that Sanders “believes in an inflexible ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.”

If Buttigieg really thinks Sanders is a threat to take his party and country in the wrong direction, then the best thing he could do is end his campaign and make it less likely that Sanders will win.

FiveThirtyEight gives Sanders a coin flip’s chance of winning the Democratic nomination, while it gives Buttigieg less than a 1% chance — placing him below Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Each candidate, plus Sen. Amy Klobuchar, is vying to be the alternative to Sanders. But, collectively, they're making it easier for Sanders to win.

To be clear, I am not calling on Buttigieg to drop out. Buttigieg has arguably run the most impressive campaign of anyone in the field and he has earned the opportunity to end it on his own terms.

Plus, there’s that non-zero chance that Buttigieg could actually win the nomination. Buttigieg so far has been the most successful Democratic candidate outside of Sanders and he can plausibly argue that he is best positioned to contend for the remainder of the primary, even if polling in future primary states suggests otherwise.

“Ours is the only campaign that has beaten Sen. Sanders anywhere in the country during this cycle,” Buttigieg said.

That is true. The problem is that every non-Sanders candidate has their own case for why they are uniquely suited for a one-on-one battle, if only the rest of the field would smarten up and consolidate behind them.

The candidates have started openly bickering with one another about who should drop out first. But it’s inconceivable that any of them will exit before Super Tuesday, the March 3 primary day when more than 30% of delegates will be awarded. By the time anyone above the Tom Steyer tier of candidates exits the race, Sanders could be cruising toward an insurmountable plurality of delegates.

Buttigieg took a moment during his broadside against Sanders to make a point about sacrificing one’s ideals for the good of the party. It was meant as a critique of Sanders' perceived selfishness, but it also can be turned on Buttigieg.

“I believe the only way to truly deliver any of the progressive changes that we care about is to be a nominee who actually gives a damn about the effect you are having from the top of the ticket on those critical frontline House and Senate Democrats that we need to win,” Buttigieg said. “The presidency is not the only office that matters and we have got to support those frontline races because we need them to win in order to make sure that this agenda that we have is more than just words on a page.”

Buttigieg’s framework is that nominating Sanders would not only pit an unacceptably (and perhaps unelectably) rigid ideologue against Trump in November, but also it would weaken the Democratic Party’s chances to win crucial congressional races across the U.S.

If you follow that line of thought to its logical conclusion, though, it is clear that Buttigieg’s persistence in the Democratic primary is making all of those Sanders-related fears more likely to come true.

A University of Houston poll released Monday shows Sanders and Biden tied in delegate-rich Texas, which is one of the Super Tuesday states. Buttigieg is in fifth place, doing just well enough to drag down Biden’s odds of beating Sanders there — and lowering the chances that anyone but Sanders can win the Democratic nomination.

If Buttigieg has surveyed the political landscape well enough to conclude that Sanders would be a hindrance to Democrats in November, then he is certainly not ignorant to the role he is playing in the party’s nominating contest now.

The time is coming for Buttigieg to decide what is more important to him: preventing the dreadful outcome that he predicts a Sanders victory would bring or benefitting from the influence of a lingering campaign.

Contact IndyStar metro columnist James Briggs at 317-444-6307. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesEBriggs.