I'd Still Vote For Sanders If He Were The Democratic Nominee But Now I'd Have To Hold My Nose To Do So - Hate Mail

The other day I pointed out that the Sanders campaign is playing chicken with the Democratic Party which it is trying to carjack, using reform of the nomination process as the pretext to keep on lying about the person who is beating him in the vote count and, importantly, to keep raising money.  The not at all tacit threat to blow up the convention in Philadelphia if they don't get their way could stand as the most irresponsible stand taken by a challenger from the alleged left in the history of those efforts.   Josh Marshall puts that threat into perspective and shows why it isn't only entirely irresponsible, it is hypocritical of the would be white-knight cum savior and his PR operation.

The Democratic party and its Chicago convention were torn apart in 1968 over a fundamental cleavage over the Vietnam War. The Sanders camp is going to blow up the convention to push debate schedule reform? That's amazing. Reform of the primary process is a much more substantive matter. But remember, as I've argued before, the parts of the process most in need of reform (Caucuses and post-election day shenanigans) are the ones helping Sanders the most! Now his whole campaign is based on getting the superdelegates - which for most of the campaign he has said constitute the core anti-democratic aspect of the process - to hand him the nomination. Consistency is an overrated commodity in much of life, especially in politics. But you can't make the logic of your arguments so structurally unsound that they collapse under the weight of their own ridiculousness.

To do what they're doing at this point, when the alternative is another nightmare Republican administration is obscenely cynical and corrupt.  Bernie Sanders is going to bring himself down in this process.  He's not going to be able to just go back to the Senate and everything is going to be as it was before.  I can't imagine anyone trusting him after this.  

One of the more obscure things that the Sanders campaign has done is try to rig the process to gain more delegates than Hillary Clinton in states like Nevada and Missouri in which they lost the popular vote.  I'm sure that effort figured, heavily in the car wreck in the Nevada convention.   In a discussion of Sanders' reform rhetoric, Josh Marshall pointed this out.

In any case, that leaves us with the big three reforms. But here's the problem: the biggest beneficiary of all three of these 'problems' is actually Bernie Sanders. Sanders' wins have been concentrated overwhelmingly in caucus states. Sanders has also done a better job in the dark delegate hunt. He seems to have picked up or is in the process of picking up more delegates in Nevada, even though he 'lost'. And he seems to be in the process of doing the same thing in Missouri.

But what about super delegates? It's with super delegates at least that Clinton is gaining an unfair advantage, right?

Well, not exactly. Clinton still does have overwhelming support among super delegates. But they don't even count as long as she secures a majority of pledged delegates. And she has a clear lead with pledged delegates. So even though super delegates support Clinton, her current lead does not depend on them at all.

The conduct of his campaign in this election has hardly made Bernie Sanders the anointed savior of process reform.   Not in the Democratic Party which he is attacking.  Not in any party that didn't center on a personality cult.   As I've pointed out and as I could prove, I was a huge fan of both Congressman and Senator Bernie Sanders,  I wrote about him in heroic terms during his eight and a half hour filibuster speech.  But his conduct in this campaign, apart from its high point when he said no one cared about Hillary Clinton's e-mail,  especially since the beginning of Spring has exposed many of his limits and less than heroic or even ethical features.

If he were the nominee of my party I would vote for him in November.  I could have said I'd have done that with no regrets before April.   I'd have to hold my nose to do it now.