The Sanders Campaign Is Running On A Cred Deficit And It Is Benefiting From Corruption In The Process

This quote from Paul Krugman's column is appearing in a lot of places this morning.

… Now, as the bumper stickers don’t quite say, stuff happens. But at this point it’s something like a 90 percent probability that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Anyone denying that arithmetic is basically pulling a con job on Sanders supporters.

So what does that say about appropriate behavior on the part of her rival? Two things, I’d argue.

First, the Sanders campaign needs to stop feeding the right-wing disinformation machine. Engaging in innuendo suggesting, without evidence, that Clinton is corrupt is, at this point, basically campaigning on behalf of the RNC. If Sanders really believes, as he says, that it’s all-important to keep the White House out of Republican hands, he should stop all that – and tell his staff to stop it too.

Second, it’s time for Sanders to engage in some citizenship. The presidency isn’t the only office on the line; down-ballot races for the Senate and even the House are going to be crucial. Clinton has been raising money for other races; Sanders hasn’t, and is still being evasive on whether he will ever do so. Not acceptable….

Sanders doesn’t need to drop out, but he needs to start acting responsibly.

To which I say, A-men a thousand times.  Is it any great wonder that someone with Hillary Clinton's CV - someone who has been a, you know prominent DEMOCRAT for the past three decades and who is running way ahead for the DEMOCRATIC nomination for president is way ahead of a man who WAS NOT A DEMOCRAT until he decided to run for the DEMOCRATIC nomination for president last year?  

And Bernie Sanders has not been supporting candidates down ticket as Hillary Clinton has been, candidates that even a slightly theoretical President Sanders would depend on every step of the way if he were to deliver even one of the things he vaguely floats as an agenda.  

Bernie Sanders' credibility is as an INDEPENDENT Senator from one state with a lot of great ideas and fantastic soundbites and even that great if entirely symbolic filibuster he mounted, his credibility isn't as a natural choice as the DEMOCRATIC nominee for PRESIDENT!  

A good part of his support is from people who aren't Democrats, many of whom hate the Democratic party even more than they seem to the Republicans - I'm especially talking about the delusional folk who still maintain that the Greens are anything but a political and consumer fraud at this point.  

I'm talking even more to the idiots, especially those Sanders supporters I'm hearing on the radio and reading online who are mouthing dark innuendos about his failure to get the DEMOCRATIC nomination because of some kind of inherent corruption.   As I've been pointing out here for a long time now, Bernie Sanders' greatest success has been in exactly that part of the process which is the most corrupt, the most prone to hijacking by a cabal of true believers, open to open coercion BECAUSE IT HAS NO PRIVACY IN THE VOTE,  the caucuses.   At this point Hillary Clinton's support, as Barney Frank pointed out, is in the most democratic part of the process, the primaries, Sanders in the least democratic part of the entire electoral system, the causes.    That differential in their success means that if there is corruption, it's favoring Sanders, at this point. 

I had a lot of respect for Bernie Sanders before he announced this quixotic and fanciful campaign for the presidency, he has used up a lot of that already and it will be entirely gone if this doesn't stop within the next week.  And I do mean that he's going to have to go through the angry tantrum that a lot of his temporary supporters will mount as soon as he's done the only rational thing, asking them to stop doing the RNC's work for them.   If he can't face that inevitable backlash from the silliest of his supporters, he's got even less credibility than he has at present.