Obvious reasons that Bernie should stay in until the convention.

[Fozzledick]

Yeah, I know, Hillary has "won" the majority of pledged delegates in the primary, even discounting voter suppression and other shenanigans, but not by the super-majority needed to clinch the nomination. One way or another the nomination will be decided only when the super delegates actually cast their votes at the convention, and a lot can happen between now and then.

There's always the possibility of a wild, unexpected catastrophe that no one expects: Hillary could have a heart attack, or be hit by a meteorite, or be assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan (an all-purpose cover story that would preclude any serious investigation and reduce any discussion of actual facts to a disreputable "conspiracy theory&quot , or make a serious gaffe that sends her campaign into a tailspin. All of these are extremely improbable but not impossible.

Note that I did not include the chance of an indictment from the email "investigation". That's just the usual Republican bullshit and I don't take it seriously. What I do take seriously is the possibility of the following scenario:

Trump, buoyed by his own megalomania and confidence in My New Order as a handbook on how to seize political power, continues to get even crazier, stupider and more obnoxious (yes, I'm assuming that that's possible), antagonizing and alienating every demographic group except sexually frustrated WASP males who didn't finish High School, and directly insulting the Republican party establishment.

By the time they get to their convention they've had more than enough of his bullshit and are ready to bend, break, or rewrite every rule in their book to prevent him from winning on the first ballot, even if they have to blatantly falsify the vote count (it's not like they haven't done it before).

All hell breaks loose at the convention. Ted Cruz tries to rally support from the now unbound delegates, but no one actually likes him and he falls short on the second ballot. After a few more indecisive votes they realize the party is hopelessly divided. They call a recess to, as W.C. Fields once put it, "Grab the bull by the tail and face the situation". After some closed-door arguing, horse-trading, favor-swapping, ass-kissing, bribe-tendering and smoke-filling, they come forth with a blandly inoffensive "moderate" party regular: John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan or whomever. Trump's supporters are furious, but the rest of the party unifies around their one true principle: hatred of Hillary Clinton.

By the time the Democratic convention comes around, the Republican's bland, non-of-the-above candidate is leading Hillary in the national polls and even worse in the critical swing states by at least five points, possibly ten or more, but Bernie is beating him by ten to fifteen points in the same polls. The internals show Bernie's added support is coming from a disconnected triad that spans the political spectrum from one end to the other composed of young progressives, moderate independents, and disgruntled Trump followers who just want to stick it to the Republican establishment, none of whom have any love for the Republican's default candidate but all of whom just can't abide Hillary.

The super delegates are then called on to do the job they were created for: in the event of a divided party following a closely contested primary with no overwhelming winner to select the candidate that's "best for the party" and "strongest to beat the Republican nominee", even if they didn't come in first in the primary "popularity contest".

I realize this isn't the most probable outcome right now, but as I said a lot can happen between now and then, and it ain't over 'till it's over. (To anyone who's tempted to claim that it is over, no it isn't until the super delegates vote at the convention, but feel free to get it out of your system.)

[itsrobert]

1. 2.5 days

oh brother

[bravenak]

2. +1

[Live and Learn]

3. More spam? nt

[Mr Maru]

4. Looking forward to it.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

[Fozzledick]

8. No, 42 days.

Math!

[itsrobert]

11. actually over 30 days ago

Math

[Fozzledick]

16. Wibbily wobbly timey wimey.

You seem to be stuck in reverse.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. It wasn't close. 08 was close. This is not close

[CorkySt.Clair]

6. I wasn't aware there was a Bernie fan fiction scene

Not a sanders supporter but that's kind of cool.

[Fozzledick]

18. I just felt like ranting about the obvious possibility that's not being discussed.

If Trump flames out before being officially nominated then it's a whole new ball game, and Bernie is positioned to be the strongest alternative.

[Lord Magus]

7. This is if anything even more nonsensical than the indictment fairy scenarios.

In the event that somehow Republicans denied tRump the nomination, the almost certainly violent outrage of Trumpanzees would not leave any parachuted-in nominee in a position to have 5 to 10 point leads over Hillary. It would be 1968 all over again, except even worse and this time with the Republicans on the receiving end of the public backlash. Armed riots at the Republican convention would likely be even more damaging to the Republican Party than having Trump as their nominee.

Also nobody's even going to be polling Bernie vs insert fantasy Republican nominee here. Polling isn't cheap and nobody is going to waste lots of money by polling matchups that have less than zero chance of happening. And if the RNC said "fuck democracy" by parachuted in a nominee that didn't win the primaries, it's insane to think that the DNC's best response would be to say "fuck democracy too" and do the same thing.

The reality is that we don't have a "divided party" with "no overwhelming winner" because Hillary is the overwhelming winner. There also is not in fact any "super-majority needed to clinch the nomination." A simple majority is all that's required and it's pure fantasy to pretend the superdelegates are in play all the way to the convention.

The reality is also that if something happened to make Hillary unable to be the nominee, that does not make Bernie automatically her replacement. Nor does whether he's suspended his campaign or not have any relevance to whether he would be chosen as the replacement nominee. I would think you'd understand this given that your own fantasy scenario has the RNC handing the Republican nomination to somebody who suspended their campaign in early May.

[Fozzledick]

13. I based my estimates on polling done while Kasich was still in the race.

He consistently beat Hillary among the general electorate while losing to Bernie. That struck me as the most reasonable projection of the worst-case scenario.

[Lord Magus]

17. Then you based your estimates on something completely meaningless.

General election polling from April is worthless.

[pat_k]

9. One of the courses he could take would be to..

... endorse Clinton as the Democratic nominee, but call on his pledged delegates and superdelegates to support him on the convention floor to demonstrate the level of support for a New New Deal within the party.

If he went that way, between now and the convention (and after) his task would be two fold: (1) calling on people to support Hillary, and (2) calling on people to keep fighting for his proposals (and that means winning back Congress by the largest margins possible).

He can keep after Trump, but shift his focus to campaigning for Democrats running for Congress. Winning seats in the House and Senate is the most effective way to set the stage for real progress. It may be impossible to get Clinton or the party establishment to advocate his agenda because they believe it can't happen, but if we get enough Dems in Congress, the "can't happen" excuse goes out the window.

NY Times reports:

Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday that he would “take our campaign for transforming the Democratic Party into the convention,”

They also reported that he is "refusing to concede the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton though not explicitly saying he would challenge her for it."

The problem with the second part of the report is that, after California, the campaign made it crystal clear that for the coming days they would be in the process of deciding next steps, and furthermore, that they would not be announcing or taking those next steps until some time after DC votes. In other words, they were keeping their commitment to campaign in every state until the last vote is cast.

The assertion that he is "refusing" to endorse Clinton is asinine. Since CA he has not said anything even resembling "I will not concede the nomination before the convention." The only thing he is refusing to do is make a final decision before he said he would.

All this "drop out yesterday" and "refusing to concede" crap is extremely annoying. When Obama tells us he will make an announcement regarding Y on X date, the the press doesn't keep pestering him and lambasting him for not doing anything before X date.

[hack89]

10. Hillary is the overwhelming winner. Not even close. nt

[BobbyDrake]

12. "Notice I didn't mention the emails." Yeah you did. Right there, when you mentioned not mentioning.

Straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. You might as well just have said, "I'm not saying Hillary Clinton is a loser..." and made the metamorphosis complete.

Did you really think no one would notice?

[Fozzledick]

14. You seem obsessed with attacking something I never said.

Did you really think no one would notice?

[Juicy_Bellows]

15. It could happen.

Trump keeps piping off about islam and getting nuttier by the day. I've assumed he doesn't really want the job.