Sanders is right

[Onlooker]

Calls for Sanders to drop out are just plain wrong. If Sanders stays in, he keeps so many young people engaged. The energy of that engagement is sure to spill over for enthusiasm and support for Democrats.

Yes, there will be Sanders supporters who do not vote for Hillary, but the bigger danger is apathy -- millennials and others who lose interest once Sanders is out of the race. If Sanders stays in, he has an outside chance of winning, but more importantly, he brings something that the Republican race proves money can't buy. He brings votes. If Trump is the nominee, I have no doubt that he will use his intellectual and oratory skills to motivate the millennials and others to do everything possible to prevent the country from drifting to the right. Not only should Sanders stay in until the convention, he should be as involved as he's willing to be post-convention to help the Democratic nominee get elected and to keep his political revolution alive.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/bernie-sanders-says-calls-for-him-to-exit-democratic-race-are-absurd/

“The bottom line is that when only half of the American people have participated in the political process … I think it is absurd for anybody to suggest that those people not have a right to cast a vote,” Sanders told MSNBC in an interview.

...

“To suggest we don’t fight this out to the end would be, I think, a very bad mistake. People want to become engaged in the political process by having vigorous primary and caucus process. I think we open up the possibility of having a large voter turnout in November. That is exactly what we need,” Sanders said.

“A low voter turnout, somebody like a Trump can win. High voter turnout, the Democratic candidate will win,” he said, referring to Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race to pick the Republican nominee for the November presidential election.

[renate]

1. I couldn't agree more

I hope (and am fairly certain that) most young voters are not reading DU these days, because the things they'd see here about Bernie would really piss them off.

The idea that support for Bernie is readily transferable to support for Hillary is naive. Sure, I'll vote for her if she's the nominee, and it looks like she will be. But I've been a crawl-over-broken-glass-to-vote-Democratic voter for decades. Young people are busy and most of them haven't personally watched the history (e.g., Florida 2000) to really understand that voting is worthwhile.

Besides the fact that low turnout is deadly for either eventual Democratic nominee, I think (or hope anyway) that the further to the left the eventual nominee is, the better it is for our party. If it's not Bernie, I hope he'll stay in until the convention to rack up delegates and maximize his ability to deliver his message.

It's interesting how history views FDR as the savior of the American way, yet how far the current DNC is from his principles. I think Bernie is far closer to FDR than Hillary is; I want him to have a lasting impact whether he's the nominee or not.

[Waiting For Everyman]

2. Completely agree with this.

Let the people vote!

Anyone getting in the way of that is indefensible.

[GreatGazoo]

3. Assuming Clinton becomes the nominee, Sanders dropping out now hurts her

The Clintons strategy is their usual center-right play -- the electorate is significantly to the left of nearly all the candidates so HRC only has to be to the left of whichever guy the GOP winds up running to take 60 - 65% of the vote. Add to that, she now has Trump scaring people on the right and by November many of them will be ready to vote for HRC if only to keep Trump and the uncertainty he brings, out of power. Trump would be disastrous for Wall St, the markets and American multinationals because markets hate uncertainty and the guy is Caligula. So many pragmatic conservatives will be forced to use a vote for HRC as the only way to protect their money.

So the Clintons and the future of the Democratic party benefit from having Sanders get, and keep, people engaged in this GE in a way that HRC has been unable to so far. New York is a closed primary and Sanders supporters are out registering or re-registering people right now. We will be registering people right to the deadline. Millenials are breaking strongly for Sanders which means many of them would not be registering at all perhaps if they were unmoved by the other candidates and Sanders was not in this thing. The same is true in terms of raising interest.

The corollary of the media blackout is that Sanders is pioneering the emerging techniques for organizing and GOTV via non-MSM such as social media and peer-to-peer information networks. The DNC is going to need stuff like that going forward and if CLinton can win without it (eg, with only the MSM crowd) then her campaign won't be the one developing the base and the campaign techniques for 2018 and beyond.