By Michael A. Cohen MAY 03, 2016
Instead of coming to grips with the overwhelming evidence that Democratic primary voters prefer Hillary Clinton be the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, Bernie Sanders continues to create his own political reality — devising new and creative excuses to explain why he’s losing to her and why he should be the party’s standard-bearer in November.

First there was the complaint that Southern, conservative states have their primaries early, which “distorts reality,” because these states won’t support a Democrat in November. This is certainly a compelling assertion from a candidate who has won such red-state stalwarts as Utah, Alaska, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Idaho, and Wyoming.

Next the Sanders camp argued that the primary system is unfair because places like New York have a closed primary that doesn’t allow independents to vote. By this logic, it is undemocratic not to allow voters not registered as Democrats to vote in a Democratic primary tasked with choosing the Democratic nominee for president. If independents could vote, claims Sanders, it would be a different race (even though Clinton has actually won more open primaries than Sanders).

For Sanders, it seems, the only fair and equitable manner for choosing a Democratic nominee is one that favors him.

This brings us to the Sanders campaign’s latest “the dog ate my homework” excuse. In what was a bizarre press conference Sunday at the National Press Club in Washington, Sanders took aim at a new target — superdelegates.

It’s anyone’s guess why Bernie and Jane Sanders are on the offensive against Hillary despite her overwhelming lead among pledged delegates and in the popular vote.

Jane Sanders just vowed a “fight” on the issues at the Democratic convention, and in the past 72 hours, both Bernie and Jane have claimed Hillary is “anointed.”

This aggressive strategy is extremely counterproductive to the Democratic Party — and consequently to the progressive cause.

Rachel Maddow is having none of it, calling the Sanders strategy “fantastical” and “radical.”

Watch:

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Here are some key points Bernie should remember (via NBC News):

1. The Democratic nomination isn’t determined by just pledged delegates; a candidate becomes the presumptive nominee when he or she crosses the 2,383 magic number consisting of both pledged delegates and superdelegates.
2. In 2008, Barack Obama crossed the magic number with considerable help from superdelegates. And with superdelegates representing 20% of all delegates back then (it’s now 15%), Obama certainly didn’t have a majority with just pledged delegates alone in that very tight ’08 race.
3. But if you want to reduce the Dem race to *just* pledged delegates, Clinton’s current delegate lead is THREE TIMES the size of Obama’s in 2008 (when it hovered around 100).
4. The last candidate to win with pledged delegates alone was Al Gore.
5. Hillary leads Bernie by more than 3 MILLION votes. She led in 2008 and still dropped out to endorse Obama.
Something has gone wrong in the Sanders camp and some serious soul searching is in order.

Now that losing democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders is threatening a “contested” Democratic National Convention as part of his increasingly hyperbolic insistence that he can still somehow win the nomination, he’s receiving pushback from various corners. Tonight MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, whom some have come to view as a fan of Sanders, broke down the math of his new plan, and proceeded to write it off as a mere fantasy.

With Hillary Clinton on a certain path to win more than fifty percent of the total delegates ahead of the convention based on the remaining proportional delegates she’ll pick up alone, she’ll mathematically clinch the nomination in late May or early June. Bernie Sanders and his campaign are making the claim that it won’t count because the superdelegates could theoretically all flip to him at the convention, and therefore he’s going to be able to “contest” the convention. But that’s not how anything works, and now even Maddow – who is often excited by the idea of political dramatics – is writing it off.

1) After reading "America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny" by Andrew Sullivan in NY Magazine it hit me like a gut punch to the stomach that Trump could win the election by changing his “act” enough to appeal to on-the-fence voters who couldn’t imagine an unhinged maniac as president even though they lean Republican and despise Hillary.


2) Bernie dropped his positive rhetoric about why he was the better candidate and has switched almost entirely to why Hillary is unfit to be president. This gives ammunition to Trump and it is naive to think he won’t use it to great effect. Trump has proved to be a masterful manipulator. He played role he needed to in order to make “The Apprentice” a success, and he crafted a similar but equally effective act to win over supporters when he went live on the stump as the candidate of the angry, fearful and disgruntled Americans yearning for a savior to “make America great again.”



3) This is the clincher. Bernie is now saying he will take his fight to the convention where he will work on winning over enough super-delegates to be the nominee for the party. I think this will be a losing battle because Hillary is indeed the establishment candidate (as Bernie has been saying all along, as if this disqualifies her entirely from being president - and it doesn’t). Hillary will end up being the nominee; but a contentious convention will leave the party in disarray. It will leave her badly damaged as she embarks on her campaign against Trump.

Donald Trump never met a preposterous statement he wasn’t willing to stand by, and so it is with his apparent belief that women are unfairly advantaged over men in our society. On Fox News on Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Trump why he would say that Hillary Clinton is a talentless hack who is coasting on the “woman card,” i.e. the unearned privilege he believes women enjoy over men, and Trump defended himself by pulling his P.C.-police-suppress-the-truth card.

“Well, I’m my own strategist and I like that — what I said and it’s true,” Trump said. “I only tell the truth and that’s why people voted for me.”

The audacity of it is stunning, of course. If he hadn’t been born a white man in a wealthy family, Trump would be a used car salesman in Des Moines who spends his weekends on desultory Match. com dates with divorcees who never call him again. Meanwhile, a huge amount of Clinton’s appeal is that she’s a smart and talented woman who has overcome a huge amount of sexist abuse in order to get as far as she has.

But Trump’s bleating about the “woman card” epitomizes the appeal he has to his supporters, even as he manages to alienate everyone else in the country. There’s a certain logic to his argument if you believe, as most conservatives do, that sexism is a thing of the past and that feminists are just making up stories to “play the victim” and earn the sweet, sweet cash they supposedly get from saying sexism still exists.