"Bernie Sanders is taking a big risk: If he doesn’t drop out soon, he could become a villain"
Even Hillary did not have the ambition and ego being displayed by Bernie tonight. Even Ted Cruz accepted the reality that he would not be able to wrest the Republican nomination from Donald Trump. But not Bernie. Instead, despite an insurmountable deficit in pledged delegates and the popular vote, Bernie is proposing to take his fight for the nomination to the convention. And the only justification is that he might be able to convince superdelegates to ignore the will of the voters and hand him the nomination. This is an act of political narcissism that even Donald Trump could appreciate. Thus, rather than unify the Democratic party for the fight it will have, or admitting that Hillary is indeed the presumptive nominee, Bernie is going to continue the charade that his campaign has now become.
http://www.salon.com/2016/06/07/bernie_sanders_is_taking_a_big_risk_if_he_doesnt_drop_out_soon_he_could_become_a_villain/
The very notion that Bernie and his surrogates continue to behave as if the superdelegates are still in play is the beginning of the end of Bernie’s reputation, even with some of his supporters, including online journalists who are disavowing their support.
There was a time when we could look to Bernie as the conscience of the left. Today, however, his moral high ground position is rapidly evaporating. Among other reasons, Bernie and his people have been deliberately swindling the public about delegate math and the alleged fluidity of superdelegates for weeks now and, in the past several days, the deception has grown thicker than ever. (Bernie told the National Press Club, for example, that a majority of pledged delegates is 2,383, even though it’s actually 2,026.) The Bernie campaign is telling us that somehow the superdelegates, who have affirmed their support to networks and publications of record, will, for the first time ever, inexplicably abandon the winner of a majority of pledged delegates and the winner of the popular vote for a relatively untested democratic-socialist because… why? California? May polling for the November election? Rally attendance?
This is like cajoling a homeowner to sell a house to a buyer who doesn’t have the money, but who just really, really, really wants it, and all their friends say they deserve to own it. Indeed, suggesting that supers don’t count because they haven’t officially voted at the convention is like announcing that you haven’t eaten lunch until you’ve fully digested it. It’s like hearing from contrarian wonks who wait for the electoral college to hold its ceremonial votes in December before acknowledging the obvious winner of the November election.
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Here’s a man who’s entire brand is about being a man-of-the-people, and he’s hinting today that he’s okay with begging superdelegates — participants in an allegedly undemocratic system he claims to despise — to entirely overrule the people’s choice. In other words, Bernie wants to exploit the evil establishment system he’s been attempting to destroy, using $208 million in individual donations, in order to defy the clear choice of Democratic voters. Because Rasmussen in May?
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You nailed it. That is the Bernie we know and support.
