Bernie Pulls The Rug Out From Under His Most Ardent Fans and Campaign Managers. Will They Notice?

The Sanders campaign, the official one and the totally off the wall online, social media, campaign, has been running on the fumes of claiming that everything that doesn't favor Sanders is absolute proof that the Democratic process is "rigged."  That has become common non-knowledge to the extent that it was what Donald Trump said in his second withdrawal of a debate op to sanders.  When Bernie Sanders was asked about that by CBS's John Dickerson, he, Bernie Sanders, said that the process was not rigged.

"What has upset me, and what I think is -- I wouldn't use the word 'rigged' because we knew what the rules were -- but what is really dumb, is that you have closed primaries, like in New York State, where three million people who were Democrats or Republicans could not participate," Sanders added. "You have a situation where over 400 super delegates came on board Clinton's campaign before anybody else was in the race, eight months before the first vote was cast. That's not rigged, I think it's just a dumb process which has certainly disadvantaged our campaign."

First and most importantly, for Donald Trump, the beneficiary of the Republican winner-takes-all system and its many corruptions, including what Bernie Sanders is complaining about currently, closed primaries, to be calling the Democratic process corrupt is laughable.   For the Sanders campaign line that "the process is rigged" to be swiped by Trump and used by him only shows the extent to which the Sanders campaign is acting as a spoiler, helping the Republicans.

Second, it also shows that Sanders' high minded persona, when all  of the dross is removed, boils down to the fact that he's a politician and politicians generally favor what wins them an election.   There is nothing that shows more clearly that even the PR product, St. Bernie, is a politician than his flip-flops, reversals, and now nuances about the super delegates.  Now apparently, that he has gone to the position that they should flip to favor the loser in the popular vote he's shifted the complaint to them having declared their intention to vote for his opponent before it was clear that Sanders was losing the nomination.   If he's going to be consistent, if Hillary Clinton comes out ahead in the vote count, he should insist that super delegates supporting him vote for her and he would have to be an example to them by casting his super delegate vote for her.

The extent to which someone supports a given candidate is based on their candidate's positions is variable.  Given that candidates often change their positions - quite often a good thing - that's unavoidable.  And what you say about supporters not knowing the positions of their candidate can be said about their candidates, generally. Among the two Democratic candidates,  I think that no one benefits from being an unknown quantity to their supporters like Bernie Sanders is.   I've found in the past few days that a lot of them angrily deny that Sanders is a super delegate to the Democratic convention.  Hillary Clinton, of course, is the most investigated candidate for president in the history of the office, the most exposed, the closest to a known quantity that has ever been listed on a ballot. That has not stopped people from lying about her, most often to her disadvantage.

Some of the biggest lies I've heard during this campaign come from the unofficial Sanders campaign, lies told about Hillary Clinton and about the Democratic Party which is allegedly under Hillary Clinton's control.   With what Bernie Sanders said to John Dickerson the other day, those lies and paranoid declarations should stop but I don't think there's a chance in 100 that they will.   Those lies and the paranoia they've been rooted in have been encouraged by people at the top of the Sanders campaign, Jeff Weaver, Tad Devine, and others.   And the choice to not reign them in, to stop the irresponsibility and the enablement of Republicans from a nominally Democratic campaign ultimately has been Bernie Sanders'.   I might be wrong or even arguably wrong but I don't remember a campaign by someone for the Democratic nomination who has provided this level of useful subliminal and overt material for the Republicans to use against the candidate.  That is something that really rigs the political system and it's something that the alleged left has really been exposed as doing this year.  Is it any wonder why we aren't trusted as a reliable support group by Democratic politicians when we act like that?   A big factor in why the left doesn't have more influence is our own unreliability as a group.